Alice in Wonderland

Seen at: Metrolux Loveland, about two months ago

This is the movie that kept me from writing my blog for a while. After I saw it, on a whim after driving through the backroads of Weld County one sunny afternoon, my thoughts got all jammed up. There was too much to say about this movie. I had to let my thoughts simmer down, so I could be succint.

This movie will not be particularly enjoyable by most people who see it. Certainly it gave me a queasy feeling at times. But it is probably the most significant Hollywood movie to come out in the Spring of 2010.

Why? Because it encapsulates so much of what Hollywood is trying to say lately. It is the apotheosis of the "girl with the sword" motif that Hollywood is shoving down our throats lately. Moreover the girl with the sword is sweet Alice, a Victorian young woman.

It has the Postmodern fascination with prophecy. Instead of Lewis Carrol's (classical) mathematical puzzles, we get a magical scroll that shows the future, one in which Alice is destined to pick up a sword and slay the Jabberwock. But the poem says "he" instead of "she." Very gendy-bendy.

There were a few moments that were really hard to take. When Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum seize Alice by the arms and drag her away, I felt my Victorian sensibilities being violated to an extreme degree.

But this is not about the Victorian era. It's a fucked up mirror to our own fucked up times, even more fuckeditty-upped than Shutter Island. It's a must see, if you want to understand what 2010 is about.

Wonderland is really Underland---the Underworld, that is, Sheol, the pit, or Hell. Alice has gone to Hell.

The three-D sucks. It wasn't shot in 3D. It certainly washes out the color (they should have done the Wizard of Oz thing, made it 3-D only after Alice goes to Wonderland/Underland.

The chess pieces no longer move in their prescribed moves. They just charge ahead and attack each other chaotically. It's a civil war of the female: bad mother versus good mother. Do you want to know why the Mad Hatter is mad? It's because of the War. The War drove him mad.

See what I mean? What an awesome movie, in a certain way. The ending was to die for: Alice goes off and founds the opium trade. I kid you not.

War. Opium. Insanity. Johnny Depp breakdancing. This could be the movie of the year.