Eowyn in Wonderland

The new film version of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, starts out very like Alice in Wonderland, but after she chases a white rabbit, falls down a rabbit hole and drinks something labeled, "drink me," and eats something labeled, "eat me," not so much. As time goes on, the film is less like Alice in Wonderland and more like a film with a bunch of characters named Alice, Red Queen, White Queen etc etc in a very derivative sequel that reminds one of Lord of the Rings and The Golden Compass. Oh yes, there is a Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), a Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry's voice), a caterpillar (Alan Rickman's voice), a Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, well mostly her head), a White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and an Alice (Mia Wasikowska), of course. 

And it all looks very Wonderland (in 3D!) but I guess the original story wasn't, hmmm, derivative enough. So Tim Burton thought to himself, let's have a dragon (Jabberwock) and a famous sword wielded by a young woman in armor (Lord of the Rings) and have her ride around on a Bandersnatch that looks a lot like a polar bear (The Golden Compass). And since Johnny Depp is playing the Mad Hatter, he can't be a minor character who isn't in the story much, so now he's the main character. Maybe Tim could have called the movie, "The Mad Hatter in Wonderland."

To be fair, even though the Jabberwock and the Bandersnatch are not characters in the Alice books, they were contained in a famous poem that appeared in Through the Looking Glass,

 "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

And, of course, it was never meant to be Alice fighting the Jabberwock. But the scene actually works quite well in the movie. I think that all these extraneous action scenes were added for the 3D because most of Alice in Wonderland works just fine in 2D. 

There are three kinds of characters in Alice in Wonderland, those who are completely or mostly a real actor (Depp, Wasikowska, Hathaway), those who have their head attached to a CGI body (Bonham Carter, Tweedledee and Tweedledum), and those that are completely CGI. Some of the characters are really great, especially the CGI characters like the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar. Depp is always good but his Mad Hatter is a bit too Willy Wonka. Bonham Carter as the Red Queen is less than one dimensional, yelling her iconic, "off with their heads" over and over and over. I thought Wasikowska was very good as Alice. She is only 20 and I haven't seen her before except a bit of In Treatment. She was also in Amelia, and Defiance but I still haven't seen them. 

Tim Burton, what can I say? He's great. I'm not sure what he was thinking with this movie. With Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he put his imprint on it, but stuck mainly to the story. His version of Alice in Wonderland brings First Knight to mind. This was a film with Sean Connery, Richard Gere and Julia Ormond playing characters called King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, which was almost but not entirely unlike the story of King Arthur. All this being said, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a very entertaining movie. And the scene with Alice as Eowyn was definitely a nice "girl power" moment. So what the hell, go see it. You'll probably like it better if you've never read the books. But who cares. As the poem says, Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

A Girl and a Wife

I've read a couple of great books lately, The Time Traveler's Wife, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And it just so happens that I also saw the movies based on these books within weeks of reading them. It's often hard for me to like films based on books that I've read. I much prefer movies based on books that I haven't read! But I was interested to see how these two excellent books were adapted into movies. Both movies are OK, but neither holds a candle to the original book. In both cases, much of complexity in the story is lost because of the constraints of fitting into a 2 hour movie format. When adapting books for the screen, two things usually happen. First, films tend to concentrate on the main storyline of the book and delete subplots that are deemed not to be central to the plot. Second, the director and the screenwriter adapting the book usually cannot resist making big changes even to the main storyline. In the case of The Time Traveler's Wife, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first thing to go was the romantic subplots. And both films change the endings as well.

The Time Traveler's Wife is a great title but it is also not quite right. It would be more correctly be entitled, "The Time Traveler and his Wife" because this story is told fairly equally from the points of view of both Henry (Eric Bana) and Clare (Rachel McAdams). Henry has a genetic mutation that causes him to travel, not quite randomly, through time. It is the first novel written by Audrey Niffenegger. And I have to say that the book totally blew me away.  I love time travel stories, and the way Niffenegger weaves the stories of Henry and Clare together back and forth through time is amazing. Clare meets Henry for the first time when she is a little girl and he is in his thirties and traveling back in time.

Then when she meets him as a young women in real time, he doesn't know who she is. On their wedding day, Henry disappears to another time and place, but luckily another older version of himself shows up to take part in the ceremony. These are just examples of the fascinating non-linear progression of the relationships in this book.  Henry even hangs out with different aged versions of himself quite a bit. The movie contains most of the main plot but the many layers of time traveling gets mostly lost so that the movie can be a reasonable length. Henry's first girlfriend, whose suicide haunts him throughout the book, is completely excised, and Gomez (Ron Livingstone), Henry's best friend and Clare's lover from afar, becomes a very minor character in the film. The Time Traveler's Wife doesn't have too many changes to the plot, but they do make it so Clare doesn't have to wait so long to "see" Henry at the end of the story. The book is very intense, first with the love affair that seems pre-ordained, and then by the increasing desperation of both Clare and Henry as they hurtle towards an end that they can see coming only too well. The movie well cast. I like both Bana (Star Trek, Munich) and McAdams (Sherlock Holmes, Wedding Crashers) but it is very bland, with none of the intensity of the book. And the special effects of the time travel are a bit hokey.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a totally different kind of story from The Time Traveler's Wife but this murder mystery also has many layers of subplots. The movie version (in Swedish with subtitles) makes many changes to the plot of the book to streamline and simplify the story. And they also make a huge change from the book at the end of the film. In the film, the story concentrates on two people, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the "girl" of the title, and Mikael Blomqvist, a well-known journalist. The subplot that leads to the two characters crossing paths, has been cut from the movie so it doesn't flow as well. The main plot of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo concerns the disappearance of a 16 year old girl 40 years before the action of the movie begins. Blomqvist is hired to try and solve the mystery of her disappearance and Salander joins him in the search which leads far beyond the original mystery.

I don't see many Swedish films (Ingemar Bergman is no longer on the scene) but this film has a almost 50's feel, particularly in the music. And it was done in a very melodramatic style. I liked the casting of Blomqvist but I wasn't completely happy with Salander. But maybe no one can fill this role to match my imagination. It is interesting that even though The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is in theatres now, David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) has already announced that he is directing a Hollywood version. It is definitely his type of movie with a dark plot and dark characters. I look forward to his version. Apparently, he is trying to choose between Kristen Stewart (Twilight) and Carey Mulligan (An Education) for the lead role of Lisbeth Salander. Mulligan might be good but Stewart was born to play this role.