Tim Burton
Alice in Wonderland

The film "Alice In Wonderland" was released in 2010 full of high expectations among lovers of the book and the animated film. The movie is also available in 3D, and on this point, I would like to say a few words. Probably, originally "Alice In Wonderland" was not planned for 3D, and from this, I think stems the lack of special effects, which, besides increasing the ticket price and giving some a headache, are well-received by an audience eager to immerse themselves in a fantasy of colors and magical and mysterious atmospheres, such as those narrated in the original story, that is, in the book by Lewis Carroll.

Leaving aside the film's graphic aspect, I didn’t find the plot particularly interesting. For those who haven't seen it yet, it’s not worth divulging much of the story. But I think it's fair to say that the reinterpretation of Carroll's tale and Disney's animated film has significantly altered the meaning and also the beauty of Alice in Wonderland. It would be inappropriate to say that this story (the original one) has a meaning. Carroll’s work originated as a "nonsense-book", indeed a book without sense. The world into which Alice falls is a topsy-turvy world: everything is the opposite of everything; what should be, is not, and what should be, is; things are the consequence of their names, suffice it to think of the butterfly which in English is called butterfly and in Wonderland, therefore, has butterfly wings. I must say that the preface to Carroll's book written by Piero Citati is interesting: in our world, weight and number reign, time is linear, and books are read from left to right. In Wonderland, absurdity reigns.

What the director perhaps voluntarily(?) did not include in his film is the strangeness and absurdity of the "Wonderland". The plot is reduced to a simple good versus evil fight with Alice as a champion of good. In both the book and the animated film, Alice is curious to venture into the world she has discovered, but upon reflection, she realizes how all the absurdity pervading it makes her feel out of place, that all her beliefs crumble in the face of presumptuous flowers, a mad hatter, an evanescent cat! Alice cries, she wishes to return home, even if the real world is governed by the English customs she so despises. This is what the film lacks: Alice is compelled to perform an undesired act; she doesn’t seem curious because she is too grown-up to believe in certain absurdities. By using an already grown-up Alice as the protagonist, all the mystery of this world, imagined as a construct of ideas by a girl bored with the real world, vanishes. But this is obviously the sense we attribute to the story, because remember that in reality, it has no true sense.

Tim Burton created another story, a cute little story that nevertheless doesn't engage, rather feels predictable and therefore disappointing. Fortunately, the cast of actors was of a good level. I do not recommend it to those who haven't seen it yet, and for those who have seen it... d'oh!!