"Alice In Wonderland"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
November 5, 2009
Watch "Alice In Wonderland" Trailer
For 19-year-old Alice Kingsley (MIA WASIKOWSKA, Pronounced Vah-she-kov-ska), life is about take a turn for the unexpected. Proposed to by Hamish, the worthy but dull son of Lord and Lady Ascot, during a Victorian garden party thrown in her honor, Alice flees without giving an answer, heading off after a rabbit she’s spotted running across the lawn, wearing a waistcoat and a pocket watch.
Following the White Rabbit (voiced by MICHAEL SHEEN) across a meadow, Alice watches as he disappears into a rabbit hole, then, suddenly, finds herself pulled down after him, tumbling through a strange, dreamlike passage before landing in a round hall with many doors. After a spot of bother involving a bottle labelled “DRINK ME”, whose contents shrink her, and a cake with the words “EAT ME” iced on top which makes her grow, Alice eventually finds her way through a door into a wondrous and fantastical world known to its inhabitants
as Underland.
There, she meets a menagerie of colourful characters, from a swashbuckling Dormouse to an off-his-rocker Mad Hatter (JOHNNY DEPP), from a grinning Cheshire Cat (voiced by STEPHEN FRY) to a
hookah-smoking caterpillar called Absalom (voiced by ALAN RICKMAN), from a creepy White Queen (ANNE HATHAWAY) to her spiteful older sister, the Queen Of Hearts (HELENA BONHAM
CARTER), the petulant ruler of Underland.
The movie
ALICE IN WONDERLAND marks both a return to Disney for director TIM BURTON (“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street”, “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory”) and the seventh time he’s worked with JOHNNY DEPP (“Public Enemies”, “Pirates Of The Caribbean” trilogy). Working alongside Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway are British comedian Matt Lucas (“Little Britain”) who plays the dual roles of Tweedledee and Tweedledum and Renaissance man Crispin Glover (“Beowulf”) who stars as Stayne, the Knave Of Hearts.
Providing the voices for Underland’s menagerie of inhabitants is an eclectic and impressive mix of acting talent, many of whom have worked with Burton before, and some who haven’t, including:
TIMOTHY SPALL (Bernard), BARBARA WINDSOR (The Dormouse), CHRISTOPHER LEE (The Jabberwocky), MICHAEL GOUGH (The Dodo), and PAUL WHITEHOUSE (The March Hare).
For Tim Burton, whose work has frequently dealt with dual worlds and always celebrated the outsider, the prospect of being able to put his own fresh spin on such a timeless classic as ALICE IN
WONDERLAND was impossible to pass up.
“It’s so much a part of the culture,” he reflects of Carroll’s tale that has inspired numerous stage, television and film adaptations down the years, including Disney’s much-loved 1951 animated
feature. “But as a movie, I’ve never seen a version I’ve really liked. It’s always been about a passive little girl wandering around a series of adventures with weird characters. There’s never any kind of gravity to it. So that’s the attempt with this, to take the idea of those stories and shape them into something that’s not literal from the book but keeps the spirit of it.”
Incorporating characters, story elements and the central themes from both of Carroll’s books, Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND is an entirely new story, with Wasikowska’s Alice returning to Wonderland for the first time since she was a child although having no memory of her previous adventures there. Part of what appealed to Burton in Woolverton’s script was that it centred on an Alice who, at nineteen, was not only substantially older than in Carroll’s books, but who also felt both real and identifiable.
“Everyone has their idea of Alice, and it was important to take away the baggage and make her as real a teenager as possible, but also keep some of the original aspects of her character,” says
Wasikowska. “It’s exciting to bring those characters and stories to another generation.”
As Alice undergoes her latest trip through Wonderland, the shy, self-conscious girl at the start of the film, is transformed into a strong, confident young woman. “In the beginning, Alice is very
awkward and uncomfortable in her skin,” Wasikowska continues. “So her experience in Wonderland is her reconnecting with herself and finding herself again, and finding she has the strength to be more self-assured and figure out what she wants.”
Playing such an iconic role as Alice was a dream come true for the Australian-born actress, although she admits to feeling a little intimidated at first. “There’s a lot of pressure in a way,” she notes.
“Everyone thinks they know who she is, and you can’t please everyone. So the hardest thing is making her your own, and making yourself comfortable with her and confident in the decisions you make.”
“I just liked her quality,” says Burton of his nineteen-year-old star who underwent four auditions before winning the part. “I always like it when I sense people have that old soul quality to them.
Because you’re witnessing this whole thing through her eyes, it needed somebody who can subtly portray that.”
For a fabulist filmmaker renowned for creating fantastical and breathtakingly elaborate worlds, Carroll’s rich tapestry of bizarre characters and their magical world afforded Burton ample opportunity to run wild with his imagination, putting his own, indelible Burton-esque stamp on the material.
“What’s amazing about Carroll’s books is that his imagery is so strong,” says Wasikowka. “Which is kind of why it’s so exciting that Tim is doing it because he’s such a visual person. The two of them together is really exciting.”
Indeed, when it comes down to it, the very idea of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, as reimagined by Tim Burton, is a match made in cinematic heaven. Using a mixture of visual effects techniques,
including actors shot against green screen, all CGI characters, as well as motion capture performances, and 3D, ALICE IN WONDERLAND promises to showcase Burton’s characteristically quirky, surreal and dark vision in a unique, richly detailed, and slightly disturbing way.
“The thing about Wonderland, like any fairy tale land, there’s good and the bad,” Burton muses. “The thing I liked about Wonderland is that everything is slightly off, even the good people. That to me is something different.”
A LITTLE ABOUT ALICE
MIA WASIKOWSKA (Alice) has, in the space of a few short years, established herself as a rising star of cinema. A trained ballerina turned actress, Wasikowska recently starred in Edward Zwick’s Defiance, and received critical acclaim for her portrayal of a tormented and suicidal teen in the HBO series In Treatment, winning the “Breakthrough Actress” Award from the Los Angeles-based organization Australians In Film (whose Host Committee includes Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, among others) for the role. Wasikowska began acting in her home country of Australia, landing a recurring role on the popular medical drama All Saints. She was awarded the “Best Young Actor” award by the Australian Film Institute Awards for her debut feature, Suburban Mayhem, and followed that with acclaimed performances in Lens Love Story, September, and Greg Mclean’s horror film Rogue.
Mia
Wasikowska was recently seen in Mira Nair’s Amelia, the biopic of female navigator Amelia Earhart, alongside Hilary Swank and Richard Gere. Currently, Wasikowska is in production on “The Kids Are All Right” as the daughter of Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, who sets out to find and pursue a relationship with her biological father. Lisa Cholodenko is directing for Overture Films.
