03-26-10

Alice in Wonderland of Tim Burton

The most expected movie of the year, Alice In Wonderland, will release in French movie theater on 24^th of march. Disney, the filmmaker, confides the production of the film to a former employee, Tim Burton…

His adoptive’s brother, Johnny Depp, collaborates with the great producer for the seventh times, by interpreting the mad hatter. Schemer character, staggered and unstable, who got his strange temperament because of a too high level of mercury in the glue of his hat. Mia Wasikowska, young actress discovers by Tim Burton for his maturity, plays the role of Alice Kingsley. The terrible Red Queen will play by Helena Bonham Carter, the companion of the director, who has shot in a lot of Tim Burton’s movies.

History in brief. Alice Kingsley, young woman, is proposed to Hamish Ascot, frightening and arrogant man, during an urbane reception. Frightened by the idée to get married at his age, Alice sees a white rabbit who invites her to come with him. Fifted with a watch pocket, the rabbit guides her to an incredible dead tree. Alice who leans too much, falls in the hole of the trunk. She sweeps along in a long fall and comes back in a fantastic world: The Wonderland. Forgetting everything of her last trip, she travels all over this land becomes darker and more worrying under the Red Queen’s reign. She took the power thanks to frightened creatures with a dragon’s appearance. In order to beat the RED Queen, Alice will have to combine with The White Queen and the Mad Hatter.

Contrary to the old adaptation on screen of the Lewis Carroll’s book, Tim Burton keens on to transcribe the atmosphere of the book. Not a disciple of the former version, Tim Burton wants to give at every characters a strangeness sacrificing the story. His wish to create an emotional atmosphere marks all the movie. Particulary In the play of the Mad Hatter. His eyes are shapeless which means behavioral disorders. Trying to create a character out of the common, Johnny Depp plays a hatter who “loses his control everytime, because of himself, and could change from lightness to aggressiveness of pure rage”.  Resulting of a “fascinating psychological study”, the “character is very interessant to play”. This psychological research in the main characters takes place in the play of Alice too. Choosing for her serious, Mia Wasikowska imposes her universe. Clever, lively, and malicious, she breaks with a naïve Alice tradition, who just likes to carry around. The complicity between the two characters is blindingly obvious. We could imagine that their relationship is more than just a friendship…

Initially sets in 2D, Disney prefers to propose the movie in 3D. Surfing on the success of Avatar broadcasts in 3D, this choice was also taken for aesthetics reasons. Clever combination with pure animation and real shooting, the result is on the rise with the 3D. “Experience rather pleasant” for the producer, which “rises on the perception and enables to be more in the movie”. However the movie works in 2D too. We have to remind that the DVD release which, it’s a first time, has limited the explotation of the movie in the theater (12 weeks instead of 17 weeks). France, for the best or the badest, is the only country where we can’t touch the reglementation of the 17 weeks of exploitation. 3D, according to Tim Buron, “improves the experience” and “brings spectators closer together of what the director had in his head”.

Tim Burton proposes accros this modern fairy tale, an internal trip by exploring the psychological of the characters. He wakes up again our children’s soul and plays with our feelings in order to bewitch in his universe.

This post is also available in: French

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