Burton presents new vision of old territory

For seasoned filmmaker Tim Burton, negotiating the fine line between his role as a sweetheart of Hot Topic patrons and a director exploring the boundaries of commercial viability is a full-time job. Alice in Wonderland’s wide release opening today marks the director’s most recent effort to darken the silver screen.

Red scare · Helena Bonham Carter’s bloodthirsy Red Queen terrorizes Underland, the fantastic world Alice mistakenly once called “Wonderland.” - Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures

In the film, Burton tells the story of the marriageable Alice Kingsley’s (Mia Wasikowska) inadvertent tumble into the topsy-turvy world of Underland — unbeknown to Alice, it’s a return journey for her.

Fleeing the pressure of a wealthy lord’s proposal, Alice escapes to the alternate reality lying far beneath a gnarled tree root. After properly resizing herself with shrinking tonics and enlarging pastries that will be familiar to anyone at all acquainted with Carrollian lore, the chronically dazed-looking girl finds herself in a world where she’s constantly accused of being “the wrong Alice” or, more worrisome for her, the right one.

The case of mistaken identity stems from a prophecy made by an all-foreseeing Oraculum scroll that pictures a bushy-haired champion slaying the dragon-like Jabberwocky, which the bloodthirsty and cranially endowed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) uses to keep the entire kingdom paralyzed in a state of fear and submission. Ever since it was forcibly wrested from the control of her dainty and bleached-out younger sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), Underland and its denizens have secretly yearned for the restoration of the peaceful White Queen, a pacifist by oath. Animals and humans alike — seeking to overthrow the Red Queen, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter and Michael Sheen’s White Rabbit — all nudge the reluctant Alice along on her path to free Underland from the Red Queen’s reign.

For those familiar with Burton’s extensive filmography, there’s little surprising in his latest offering. In keeping with the director’s penchant for visual spectacle, Burton’s vision of Underland is a darkly vivid fantasyland replete with unimaginable flora, fearsome fauna and larger-than-life personalities at every turn.

More so than any other filmmaker, Burton seems to have benefited from the explosion of new computer-generated technologies. In much the same way that George Lucas delayed production on the first trilogy in his six-part Star Wars saga, recognizing the 1970s technology available to him at the time was incompatible with his vision for the story, moviegoers get the feeling that Burton had put off his interpretation of the Lewis Carroll classic until the technology and finances were less of a limiting factor.

Almost no portion of the film was untouched by some form of movie magic: Acres upon acres were created from nothing, key characters were entirely engineered by computer and it’s unlikely that even one square inch of skin that appeared on camera wasn’t obscured by makeup.

Beginning with his stop-motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic James and the Giant Peach, Burton has had his name on more than a few interpretations of beloved childhood texts, including 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — considerably darker but not necessarily creepier than 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder.

The increasing commercialization of Burton’s visions makes for products that are often unrecognizable when compared to the director’s earlier work. The Technicolor dreamscape viewers are presented with in Alice bears almost no similarity to 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, for instance, let alone Ed Wood. It’s very likely Burton’s partnerships with big-name studios like Walt Disney Pictures for Alice and Warner Bros. Pictures for Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory require that Burton at least somewhat reign in his unabashedly gruesome sensibilities, if only for the sake of marketability. Thirty-nine years since his directorial debut, Burton has run squarely into the paradox of success. While working on these blockbusters, the polarizing director has most likely had to compromise his vision — if not outright sacrifice it in some instances — for commercial viability.

Alice’s cast, heavy on returners, suggests that Burton’s group of stock actors is possessed of a devotion on par with Christopher Guest and Wes Anderson’s respective troupes. Long-time collaborators Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman are both working with the director for the umpteenth time, as is Burton’s unspeakably talented partner, Helena Bonham Carter.

The quality of the film’s performances run the gamut. Wasikowska’s Alice is appropriately distracted and ethereal — she’s convinced that her entire experience in Underland is a dream. Stephen Fry perfectly channels the Cheshire Cat from the original Disney animated classic, and Alan Rickman’s Blue Caterpillar is a perfectly snarky hookah smoker. Unfortunately, Depp’s interpretation of the role of Mad Hatter is a disappointing amalgam of his past characters — it appeared that he simply fused the swagger of Jack Sparrow with the disconcertingly subdued lunacy of Willy Wonka, throwing in a sporadic Scottish accent for good measure in times of duress. The Red Queen was a truly unique invention, however, and Bonham Carter’s unsleeping paranoia coupled with insatiable bloodlust makes for a terrifying interpretation of the role.

There’s only so much imagination that a director could be expected to bring to a text as familiar as Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. But unlike most problems, the issue of well-worn material can in some way be remedied by throwing money at it — if that money is channeled toward realizing a vision of a world turned upside down.