By Jonathan Fisher, March 7th, 2010
Tim Burton, I think, has gone through life misunderstood and underestimated. I was fortunate enough to see the Tim Burton gallery display at New York's Museum of Modern Art in December. One of the items on display was a short story he wrote as a fourteen-year-old for a school assignment, about a routine trip to the dentist turning into a nightmare. His teacher gave the story fifteen out of twenty and commented curtly, "use more dialogue." Just about every film critic, at one point or another, has made the same criticism of Tim Burton. Everyone acknowledges that he is a unique talent, a twisted visionary, a film-maker who truly understands the visual components of the cinematic experience. But his deficiencies have always been in his story-telling. He often comes under fire, from critics if not audiences, for being unable to express narrative in as confident a manner as contemporaries like Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson.
I've always been a Tim Burton enthusiast, a role which sometimes lends itself to apologism. I celebrate just about his entire catalogue, but I prefer the films that break out from his narrow, if unique, formula. Movies like Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Big Fish all upturn our expectations of just what a "Tim Burton film" will be. Rather than presenting us with an outsider who learns to believe in himself, set against the backdrop of cartoonishly twisted hills and spirals, these movies take genres -- the bio-pic, the musical, and the father-son drama, and subvert them by viewing them through Burton-coloured lenses.
Although historically I defend Burton more often than not, I am finding it difficult to come up with any convincing arguments in favour of his new film, a re-imagining of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland. Just about everything in this new movie is unexciting. Even the visuals, usually a predictable strength of a Tim Burton movie, are glossy, excessively shiny and lacking in character. The use of 3-D is a gimmicky distraction. Avatar immerses you in its world through 3-D. Alice in Wonderland has its colour palate dulled, its action sequences obfuscated, and its fourth wall broken far more than necessary.
Then there's the banal story itself -- not a straight adaptation of the original tale, but a re-imagining that features Alice (Mia Wasikowska) as a 19-year-old on the verge of adulthood who is about to become engaged to an unattractive and dull socialite. She absconds just before he pops the question, and finds herself tumbling down the rabbit hole once more (in this story, Alice did go down the rabbit-hole as a little girl, but has suppressed the memory and convinced herself that it was a dream). Once in Wonderland, she is reunited with Tweedledum and Tweedledee (both played by Matt Lucas of Little Britain fame), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen), and the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). All these characters remember Alice, and it becomes evident that they have somehow summoned her back to Wonderland to help the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) usurp the rule of the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter).
One of the problems with this new story is that it doesn't really establish why the Red Queen is so reviled by all the characters. It presents the Red Queen as a bulbous-headed, self-centred wench (which is true to the original story), but it doesn't explain why the Mad Hatter, for instance, has such a deep disdain for her. Most of the Red Queen's malicious behaviours seems confined to her own castle, and she doesn't seem to have much authority outside the castle walls apart from sending out her Red Army to do... what, exactly? The Mad Hatter seems to sit around and drink tea all day, and until he proclaims "Death to the Red Queen!", it seems he has no political persuasions either way. This is the problem -- there is a lot of assumed knowledge in this movie. We're expected to root for the characters because it's a cultural given that all the characters in Alice in Wonderland are 'against' the Red Witch. There is no attempt here to actually make us side with the characters, or to even develop the characters. When it comes down to it, this new story-line is very similar to the old one. Alice finds herself in Wonderland and has to liberate the population from the clutches of an evil overlord. If the story of Alice in Wonderland needed to be tweaked for a new audience, could screenwriter Linda Woolverton come up with something more than a mere re-hash of the book's original plot-line, set 10 years later?
Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter -- the seventh time he has collaborated with Burton. His performance as the Mad Hatter is one of the most forgettable of his otherwise stellar career. It's repetitive, and so similar to just about every other oddball character he's played in the last ten years. Johnny Depp is Burton's go-to guy, and has been for a long time. Burton needs to realise that there is more than one character actor on the planet that is capable of giving him what he wants. If you look at the great directors, it is true that they have two or three actors that the tend to trust. Variety, though, is also key.
Martin Scorsese has gone through phases where he has used the same actors for his films -- in the first part of his career, it was Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. Then there was a stretch where he mixed it up, using Nicolas Cage for Bringing out the Dead, and a cast of unknowns for Kundun. In recent years, he has famously collaborated with Leonardo DiCaprio. Directors need to cycle actors to make their movies feel fresh -- otherwise, their actors' performances become predictable and stale. Johnny Depp is a great actor, but I feel movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland would have been better served with someone else in his place. The same goes for Helena Bonham Carter, an actress who in recent years has become so pigeon-holed as an actress, it's difficult to remember a time when she's demonstrated an ability to convey anything other than psychoses. She is Burton's wife, and apparently his muse, but I feel his movies are suffering from his aversion to branch out in his casting.
Alice in Wonderland lurches from one set piece to another, lacking cohesion, thrills and, perhaps most regrettably, visual marvel, before culiminating in an uninteresting action climax. The sets are impeccably designed by Burton and his crew as always, but this time there's something missing. I blame it on the Uncanny Valley effect. Take the character of the White Rabbit. Comparing him to other Tim Burton creations -- Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, the aliens in Mars Attacks!, and even the apes in the failed remake of Planet of the Apes -- he lacks vibrancy. You look at the White Rabbit and consciously think, 'wow, that's quite an impressive computer-generated rabbit'. You look at the creatures of any of Burton's previous features, and you can feel his creative juices pumping through their design.
Famed screenwriting guru Robert McKee once wrote about technological shifts in the movies. His basic point is that every ten years or so, a monumental advancement in technology will occur. Often there is one film that showcases this advancement (think of The Matrix in 1999 and Avatar at the end of last year), which then sparks a series of movies trying to emulate that success. Often there will be many story-telling failures as film-makers and studios try their darndest to impress us with what they do technically. A lot of hard work went into Alice in Wonderland, and I don't mean to be reductive towards those talented crew-members who attempted to bring this world to life. When it comes down to it, though, cinema is a story-telling medium first, and a visual medium second. Alice in Wonderland, as much as it pains me to admit, fails on both counts.
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