alice in wonderland, 3D

The latest adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Tim Burton, is in 3D and aesthetically at full throttle. I took Micah to see it, mostly for the air conditioning and cocoon of a movie theater, and thus arrived with few expectations. I left feeling surprisingly inspired, empowered and thoroughly entertained.

Mia Wasikowska plays a superb 19 yr old Alice. She embodies an unlikely mix of tomboyish insistence, adolescent insolence, and a coming-of-age intelligence that is, in sum, refreshing to encounter in a big budget film. Of course her best lines are lifted straight out of the texts, but they are perfectly believable coming out of Wasikowska's mouth. The other strong acting highlights are Helena Bonham Carter, as a most fitting evil but vulnerable Queen of Hearts, and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, who does, literally, steal the show in almost every scene he is physically in. The nearly tactile nature of Wonderland that Burton and all his massive team managed to effect allowed for a magical experience of that other world of lore.

Special effects aside, the "moral" of the story that especially moved me was the transformation of Alice from an uncertain, yielding teenager to an empowered and discerning young woman. The question, "are you THE Alice?" echoes throughout the film, as Alice gets thrown into an adventure that feels like someone's else with the same name. She can't believe that she could possibly be the protagonist of a prophetic slaying of the Jabberwocky story, and yet, by the end of the film, she realizes that she is much more than she thought, and that she has not, in fact, lost any of her "muchness". As is so often in life, girls do lose their sense of innate confidence and agency through the vagaries of adolescence and adulthood, from the immense societal and familial pressures to be selfless, to caretake others at all costs and, above all, to accommodate men. When Alice returns to the original world, she knows exactly how to politely but firmly decline the offer of marriage by a man she does not love, and sets off to pursue an unmarried career in the unknown. It may have been the especially susceptible day I was having, but I found this to be a much needed reminder of the work I have yet to do to remember how much power I have to make fearless choices.