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Film: Alice (Neco z Alenky)
Year: 1988
Director: Jan Švankmajer
Writer: Jan Švankmajer
Starring: Kristýna Kohoutová and Camilla Power
Review:
This was a film that I didn’t know existed until it popped on to the Letterboxd top 250 horror films list that I’m working through. It ended up as the highest rated film that I hadn’t seen yet. I was able to find this streaming on Kanopy so I was intrigued to know just the synopsis and the images I saw ahead of this were creepy.
Synopsis: a surrealistic revision of Alice in Wonderland.
We start this by seeing a creek. There is a girl that is tossing rocks in and she is the titular Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová). She is sitting with an adult. Alice goes to touch the book this person is reading and gets his hand slapped.
It then shifts to an attic. We hear a sound like rocks landing in water. It turns out that Alice has set up a larger doll and a smaller one to mimic the previous scene. She has rocks in the lap of the smaller doll. She is tossing them into a cup filled with tea. It is here that she looks at a stuffed rabbit in a glass case. It comes to life, removing the nails from its hands and pulling out a hidden drawer. It is camouflaged to be a desert floor. The rabbit then gets dressed and flees with Alice following it into a desk drawer.
Then from there we see this little girl meet different variations of the entities from the story. She follows the White Rabbit, shrinks down with a little bottle of liquid and grows large by eating a tart. She cries to flood a room where she meets a rat with a treasure chest. She meets the White Rabbit's friends, different animals crafted from real bones. There are sock inch worms burrowing through a wooden floor and a more terrifying version of the caterpillar, made from a sock with teeth and eyes. That then leads them to meet Mad Hatter, another rabbit and the Queen of Hearts, who challenges her to a game of croquet with potentially deadly consequences.
That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I’ll start is by saying that this film is a feat. Švankmajer brings this to life using stop-motion animation which is impressive by itself. I’m a sucker for it so that will help the score for sure. We only have 2 actors, but we only see one. The other is a voice-over, Camilla Power, who is credited as Alice. She also speaks for all the creatures and narrates the events we are seeing. There isn’t much to the story. If you’ve seen any telling of the story, you know the plot points. This does cut out a lot and my guess were how much work went into bringing it to life in this way. That is why the shorter recap as well.
The reason that people watch this is for the visuals. This isn’t listed on the Internet Movie Database as horror. I was talking to my buddy Evan about this and I’m not fully sure this is horror. What I will say though is that this is like watching a nightmare. That is fitting since that’s the basis of the story itself. We don’t see Alice fall asleep in this one though. There’s something great at the end that makes you wonder, was she asleep the whole time? I like exploring the idea of the fragility of reality and perception. This can be a thin line which then brings in your mental state or the descent into madness. That was a good touch. I do like this version’s take on the loss of innocence. She is navigating a world that she doesn’t understand. That is an allegory for the outside world as both can seem terrifying.
Now things that I didn’t even realize until settling down to write this would be body horror. There is the literal here seeing these normal things change into monsters or creatures. There’s also something else here. This is loosely a coming-of-age story. You could see this as her body soon changing as she goes through puberty. This is a terrifying thing, especially if you don’t have someone to talk to. We don’t know if she does or not from the things we see.
Let’s then shift over to filmmaking. I’ve already said that I love stop-motion animation. The amount of work to bring this to life is unreal. Seeing Alice navigate these surreal rooms is interesting. We see her come to a lock door and then find a tiny key. The use of forced perspective to bring that to life is good. Everything they did here was practical so all the credit there. The cinematography and framing go into this to hide the seams. The bizarre interpretations of different characters were good as well. This feels like Švankmajer used what he had around him and there’s charm to that. The sound design is also good to give it a creepy vibe, helping consideration for the genre.
There’s not much to say about the acting. Kohoutová is good as this girl who is moving through this world. She’s young so part of it is having an imagination. Power’s voice is great in keeping the story moving and helping us make sense of different things that we’re seeing. All the credit into bringing the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts and the rest of the characters to life was no easy feat. It makes this work for sure.
I don’t think there is anything else to say here except that this is watching a surreal nightmarish take on ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Using stop-motion to bring to life a different variation in the characters that we know is great. Kohoutová is good as this young girl navigating this world like ours while still being different. It makes you just wonder if what she is seeing is in her imagination. I will say that the runtime is less than 90 minutes, but because this is more about the visuals it is a bit slow. I don’t love this. I’m still extremely impressed with the final product, especially since this sounds like our director’s first film.
My Rating: 7 out of 10