A unique and haunting stop-motion animated vision of Alice in Wonderland
Movie
Czechoslovakia, Germany
Czech
Adventure, Animation, Fantasy
1988
JAN ŠVANKMAJER
Kristýna Kohoutová
86 min
TLDR
PSA: Do NOT put random things inside your mouth, my GOD.
What it's about
When a taxidermied rabbit in her room comes to life and frees itself, Alice follows the rabbit through a portal in her dresser to be whisked away to an unsettling version of Wonderland.
The take
While Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is widely considered a classic, there’s just something inscrutable, mysterious, and even a bit weird about the tale. Czech director Jan Svankmajer's version takes a distinctly unsettling approach, with everything but normal-sized Alice animated into creepy stop-motion, including, but not limited to, cards, puppets falling apart, and actual dead animals, and with every dialogue coming literally from Alice’s mouth, but it’s through this approach that makes the fantastical novel more like a strange dream rather than the Disney-fied fairy tale we’ve come to know. Něco z Alenky is a refreshing take that finally acknowledges the dark side of Alice in Wonderland.
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