August in Wonderland: Neco z Alenky

 Neco z Alenky (1988), known in English simply as Alice, is Czech artist and director Jan Švankmajer's take on the Wonderland story. Švankmajer felt that other Alice movies presented the story as a fairy tale, and he wanted to create a version that felt like "an amoral dream."  The Czech title is much better than the rather generic Alice; Neco z Alenky translates to "Something From Alice," and that's what we get.  It's a very carefully curated artistic presentation.

Right from the start it's clear that this Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) isn't the same as other Alices.  She's introduced in the traditional fashion, bored stiff as the sister next to her concentrates ona  book without pictures or conversations, but instead of musing about how to make a daisy chain without picking any daisies, Alice glowers as she tosses stones into the river.  A quick change of scenery and Alice is in the house, surrounded by detritus and clutter, throwing stones into a teacup instead.  And then things get weird.

A white taxidermied rabbit pulls the nails out of its feet, opens a hidden drawer to retrieve hat, gloves, and scissors, breaks free of its case, then runs across a field and disappears into a different drawer.  And Alice watches this happen and decides it's a good idea to follow this creature.  She slips into the drawer herself, and then things get really weird.

Of course that's more or less what happens in the book, and Neco z Alenky follows an abridged version of the plot of the book, though it's tilted to become more surreal and macabre.  Alice follows the White Rabbit deeper and deeper into  this found art Wonderland, always asking the Rabbit to wait, and the Rabbit either runs or responds with violence.  This White Rabbit isn't the same as other White Rabbits, either.  It's still a dandy, still perpetually late, but cuts a much more sinister figure and acts as the executioner for the Queen of Hearts, snipping off heads with an oversized pair of scissors.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Alice learns how to change size by eating small tarts and drinking ink; she becomes a porcelain doll when she's small, but doesn't seem to notice.  She nearly drowns in a  pool of her own tears and a rat tries to build a fire on her scalp.  She grows to giant size while in the White Rabbit's house, accidentally kills Bill the Lizard (he gets better) and is trapped in a plaster cast of herself.

And so it goes.  Alice meets a caterpillar made of socks, has tea with a puppet Mad Hatter and clockwork March Hare, and finally plays croquet with the King and Queen of Hearts, who get very annoyed when Alice refuses to stick to the script.

The movie is undeniably strange, and not just because of the visual style.  Kristýna Kohoutová voices all the characters (Camilla Power in the English dub) and serves as a sort of narrator; any time a character says something, there's a close-up of Alice's lips as she provides the dialogue tags.  On the other hand, we don't get to hear what Alice is thinking, and so the whole movie winds up feeling a bit more mundane than the books, since we're missing Alice's often bizarre musings on identity and biology and geography and Mabel's poky little house.  

More than anything else, Neco z Alenky reminds me of a pop-up book.  It delivers stunning and unexpected visuals, but there's story missing - it's something from Alice, heavily abridged.