ALICE on The OTHER side OF the MIRROR has been reviewed by Antoine in the context of the topic, Reflections of Poetry.
Again produced by Disney, ALICE on The OTHER side OF the MIRROR de James Bobin is a “false” adaptation of the novel by Lewis Carroll, released in 1871 ; later direct the classic of children’s literature, Alice’s Adventures in wonderland (1865). Fort the beautiful success of the first album signed by Tim Burton in 2010 – remained a producer for the occasion, Disney and its famous screenwriter, Linda Woolverton (beauty and The Beast, The Lion King, Mulan, Maleficent, etc), to sign this sequel of the adventures of Alice (with the always brilliant Mia Wasikowska) not hesitating to take their distances with the tale of origin. Side realization, it is the young british filmmaker, James Bobin, who is in charge of carrying out the project. Close to a certain Sacha Baron Cohen since the early years of “Ali G” and sympathetic director of the two recent remakes on the Muppets (The Muppets, the return in 2011 and Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Bobin seems to have the wind in their sails to Hollywood, something confirmed with his next realization ; the improbable cross-over between Men In Black and 21 Jump Street.
True story for children, ALICE on The OTHER side OF the MIRROR has two trumps of the first order : The Time, and Sacha Baron Cohen. As a newcomer in the universe, the English actor personifies The Time, and imparts a lightness and a sympathy to a concept generally dedicated to a sense tragic : the confrontation is absurd between The Time and the Hatter turns out to be the scene the most exciting in the film. Although its representation is so little creative on the plan of the visual imagination (monstrous clock, robot clock, room of the living and of the dead, an ocean of Time waves of memories), the time travel has, nevertheless, the vocation to awaken the fantasies and desires of the most buried. And if morality is consistent with a logic typical of a beautiful and believable – you can’t change the past but only learn lessons from that – the film plunges into distant trauma from both the most intriguing characters of the tale of Carroll : the Red Queen (Helena Boham Carter) and the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). Once is not custom, the traumas of children comply with the logic of fairy tales with the anguish of the abandonment to the Mad Hatter (father intransigent search of the family universe) and the treason initial for the Red Queen : the scene where his sister, Mirana aka “White Queen”, eats the last cookie on the sly and disperse it under a bed, accusing it and its sister orchestra, one of the focus areas of the children’s tale, that of orality, that is to say, the fact of eating or being eaten (in Carroll, the characters eat and drink so excessive).
“While the movie attempts to reduce the boundary between dream and reality, the stage is only the increase, in serving necessarily the reality.”
Beyond these two qualities evidence, the film is not free from defects : a narrative that stretches in length, particularly in its connection with the historical reality of a victorian era (all of these sequences lack the binding and thickness, and may not hold the comparison with those of the other side of the mirror) : the mother-daughter relationship is sloppy ; the theme of the emancipation of the woman from the gaze of men is short, etc., So that the film tries to reduce the boundary between dream and reality, the staging makes that the increase in the serving necessarily the reality. Also note the lack of humor, the bestiary to the unbearable “minions” mechanic, the comic situations are rare. Except for the number of Baron Cohen in the idiot of the queen, the antics of the Hatter, the gaze of the amorphous White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and the screams of the Red Queen, etc, nothing in the film manages to generate the slightest patter is comical.
By reducing the wing-side action – the opening scene and after more nothing until this beautiful pursuit against the “rust of time” – ALICE TO the OTHER side OF The MIRROR focuses on the characters of the tale and their traumas personal, built the origins stories of the two very ill of the universe, of Carroll, and succeeds, and this was not won in advance, to shape a personification of the Time nice to default to be original. Slightly higher than the first game, ALICE on The OTHER side OF the MIRROR is certainly not a great film, but to the intelligence to respect the poetic abstraction of some of the passages in the novel and deliver a story for children in its purest tradition, namely, arranging the archaic concerns of childhood.
Antoine Gaudé
AGREE ? NOT AGREE ?
• Achievement : James Bobin
• Screenplay : Linda Woolverton and based on the novel by Lewis Carroll
• Main actors : Mia Wasokowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen…
• Country of origin : United States
• Released : June 1, 2016
• Duration : 1 hour 50 minutes
• Distributor : Walt Disney Studios Distribution
• Synopsis : After his return from China, Alice is visited by a mysterious blue butterfly. She guesses that he is Absolem. Trusting him, she follows him around his house, and it is thanks to him that she crosses a mirror. On the other hand, Absolem informed Alice that the Mad Hatter, the great friend of the latter, is in danger. Without hesitation, Alice joined quickly the remains of the Hatter, that she is dying. After the White Queen, Mirana, the only way to save her is to go back in time. The mission of Alice is therefore to save the Hatter trying not to get caught out by the Weather, which has cooperated with the treacherous Red Queen, Iracebeth, the sister of Mirana.