The Year in Film 2019 - Part Nine

 

Ladybird, Ladybird [Ken Loach, 1994]:

 

Watched: Oct 22, 2019

 

Crissy Rock's performance as the central character, a woman struggling to reclaim her children from social services after being trapped in an abusive relationship, remains one of the best ever on-screen. For me, she creates a fully realised character, lives and breathes her, makes her human. The subject matter is devastating, as it explores and impeaches a system of social care that all too often turns against the victims and works to grind-down the hopes and aspirations of those caught on the bottom rung of society by means of entirely systemic circumstances. The film plays well to director Ken Loach's usual intention to create works that inspire debate and make steps towards genuine social change, as he commits to a story that shows how genuine people fight against corruption and persecution; not through childish acts of designer violence, as in a film like Joker (2019), but through resilience, strength of will and the kindness of others. If the film doesn't leave its audience angry at the exploitation of its characters and the cycles of abuse and institutional prejudices relating to gender, ethnicity and class, then we've failed in our capacity as human beings.
 
 

Under the Silver Lake [David Robert Mitchell, 2018]:

 

Watched: Oct 23, 2019

 

What remains in the mind at the end of the film, more than the weird characters, the strange diversions, the sub-plots and gestures towards satire, the mysteries and conspiracies, is the presence of its sociopathic protagonist, whose problems may hold the key to unlocking the whole thing. Early nods to the eccentric LA noir of films like The Long Goodbye (1973), Body Double (1984), The Big Lebowski (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001) – with their own mysteries and conspiracies, their interludes and their scenes of characters just shooting the shit – eventually give way to this warped character study, in which the protagonist, as either cipher or unreliable narrator, may be the instigator of everything. Criticisms of Mitchell's film – his follow-up to the excellent and atmospheric horror movie It Follows (2014) – focused on charges of self-indulgence. While it's potentially true that any of the individual sub-plots here could've formed the basis for a standalone feature and been all the stronger for it, the film nonetheless got under my skin and left me fascinated and frustrated in a way that only the truly reckless and singular films can. In his direction and stylization, Mitchell once again proves that he's a formidable maker of images, with every shot and sequence very carefully planned and probably storyboarded to create extraordinary mise-en-scène. If his storytelling is meandering and oblique, then at least his aesthetic is controlled and original throughout.
 
 

The Bling Ring [Sofia Coppola, 2013]:

 

Watched: Nov 02, 2019

 

A frequent criticism of the films of Sofia Coppola is that they focus almost exclusively on characters from backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I don't see this as a flaw, personally. If anything, it illustrates that Coppola is a filmmaker of honesty and self-awareness. She understands wealth and privilege because this is the world she was born into. It gives her a unique perspective, which she doesn't shy away from. The vast majority of filmmakers come from wealth and privilege or at the very least are able to easily attain it. And yet they turn their gaze on the poor and the working class and in doing so fetishize their struggles as a virtue. Recent films like Roma (2018) and Parasite (2019) are each guilty of this, their millionaire directors either deifying the woman who acted as their housemaid for a meagre income, or in turn portraying the wealthy as an actual pestilence to be punished and cast out. Coppola doesn't succumb to anything so crass and hypocritical. Her portrayals of the bored and the beautiful are presented with criticism but also consideration. In The Bling Ring, which is based on true events, Coppola finds shades and nuances to these characters, showing them to be emotionally complex and capable of self-awareness, but at the same time susceptible enough to be swept along on the tide of shallow consumerism, lifestyle aspiration and brand envy. It's a surprisingly engaging work that takes characters that could've been presented as nothing more than spoiled brats and superficial monsters (which they still are, to a large extent) and places them in a wider system of influences and causalities that point to a cultural or systemic failure, wherein the stability of the family unit and the support of friendship were replaced by the empty one-upmanship of celebrity culture. It tackles some deep and satirical themes, but still manages to feel like one of its director's lighter and more entertaining works.
 
 

I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House [Osgood Perkins, 2016]:

 

Watched: Nov 05, 2019

 

This had a very literary quality to me. It reminded me at different points of the work of Shirley Jackson. Books like "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959), her great masterpiece, and her final book, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (1962), with their remote protagonists in retreat from a personal trauma, their houses full of mystery and dark secrets, and their emphasis on atmosphere and the playful use of language. It also reminded me of "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1890) by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. Another classic horror story centered on the perspective of alienated women, and the struggles against isolation, human cruelty, and maladies of the mind. In terms of aesthetics, its cinematic qualities, it reminded me of certain titles by M. Night Shyamalan. The M. Night Shyamalan of films like The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Village (2004), with their stark colour schemes, careful composition of shots, slow pace and sparse use of sound, as well as the same delicate performances, the florid dialog spoken as a whisper, the themes of trauma, ghosts and separation. Many audiences have found this beautifully titled film forgettable, even boring, but I was engrossed from beginning to end.
 
 

The Lynx [Stanisław Różewicz, 1982]:

 

Watched: Nov 05, 2019

 

Set in a small village during the Second World War, the enigmatically-titled The Lynx is a forgotten masterwork about faith and morality; about the struggle to see light in a world beset by darkness. Subtly drawn, with gestures towards symbolic interpretation, the film grapples with questions of integrity, as circumstances of war lead a young priest to ask if murder is ever justified. In its visual austerity, its grappling with faith and culpability and the rigidity of its performances, it feels like the missing link between Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017). In the lead role, Polish superstar Jerzy Radziwilowicz has never been more subdued, as his character attempts to prevent the execution of a local farmer accused of treason during the period of occupation. Director Stanisław Różewicz shoots the film in subdued colours that bring out the cold austerity of the location and the wintry setting, with brief interludes of black and white offering glimpses into the conflicted subconscious of Radziwilowicz's priest. It's a powerful and engaging film that presents still relevant and complex themes of belief, righteousness, and personal identity.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: The Year in Film 2019 - Part One [6 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Two [9 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Three [21 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Four [24 February 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five [22 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Six [28 March 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Seven [10 May 2020], The Year in Film 2019 - Part Eight [17 October 2020]

On contemporary cinema: Superheroes and the denial of humanity

Thoughts on a quote by Alan Moore

 
Every few years, the former comic book writer, Alan Moore, comes out of retirement to give an interview in which he effectively pours fuel on the detritus of the modern comic book industry, superheroes and the general state of popular culture, and takes a flame to it. Recently interviewed for Deadline.com, the writer was there to talk about a new project that he's been working on; a surreal, independently produced fantasy film called The Show (2020). The conversation however soon turned (or more accurately, was pushed) towards the ubiquity of the modern superhero movie, to which Moore made his feelings plainly felt.
 
"Most people equate comics with superhero movies now. That adds another layer of difficulty for me. I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton Batman film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago, I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population.
 
This may be entirely coincidence but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the UK voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest grossing films were superhero movies. Not to say that one causes the other, but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing – a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions."
 
 

Publicity image of Alan Moore in The Show [Mitch Jenkins/ Protagonist Pictures, 2020]:

 
Unsurprisingly, many commentators and fans of the modern comic book cinema have accused Moore of hypocrisy and called him out for criticizing something that he's admittedly unfamiliar with. While there's an objective truth to this critique against Moore, I don't think the writer necessarily needs to see any of the recent run of highly acclaimed and hugely successful comic book movies for his point to be more or less valid. He isn't arguing against the objective quality of these films, nor the method of delivery, but rather their oversaturation of the marketplace, the politics of the medium, their ideology and corporate intent.
 
Some comic book films, on occasion, might grapple with the moral ambiguities of the superhero as a vigilante, or the lengths that superheroes take in the war on crime, but they don't make them the subject matter or the narrative that defines the whole.
 
As one example, Christopher Nolan's film, The Dark Knight (2008), is a genuinely great work that has aged incredibly well. While occasionally weighed down by unnecessary exposition and narrative contrivances, Nolan's film nonetheless emerges as an engaging and powerful treatise on the morality of vigilantism, the dualism between good and evil, and the reality of how readily the former can be corrupted by tragic circumstances. The subtext is alive with issues of post-millennium terror, giving the action a much deeper emotional resonance. And yet the film isn't really "about" any of these things. They're just subtext. They enrich the action and drama, but they don't define it.
 
 

The Dark Knight [Christopher Nolan, 2008]:

 

Image credit: https://film-grab.com/2010/10/02/the-dark-knight/

                                                                                                                       
Throughout the film, the moral ambiguity of the Batman/Bruce Wayne character is called into question, just enough for Nolan to skirt some of the more right-wing or fascistic elements of the subject matter. However, the issue is never really investigated, dramatically, to the same extent as the corruption of Harvey Keitel's character in director Abel Ferrara's grueling urban drama, Bad Lieutenant (1992). Similarly, the psychological trauma felt by the character in Nolan's film is an important part of the Batman mythology, but it isn't dealt with as sufficiently as the mental illness of the protagonist in the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which is about the impact of mental illness on the individual, and the effect it has on the wider family unit. There, the issue is the text, not the subtext of the work, which is a significant distinction.
 
Further, the development of the Batman character is generated from grief and the processing of bereavement, but the film doesn't explore the intense and transformative aspect of grief as sufficiently, intelligently or destructively as Carine Adler does in her earlier film, Under the Skin (1997). These films are about serious subjects that genuinely affect us, whereas the modern blockbuster cinema, which, for all intents and purposes, is now the only cinema, aren't.
 
 

A Woman Under the Influence [John Cassavetes, 1974]:

 

Image credit: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare5/womanundertheinfluence.htm

 

 

Bad Lieutenant [Abel Ferrara, 1992]:

 

Image credit: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews52/bad_lieutenant_blu-ray.htm

 

This for me seems part of the crux of what Moore is saying. Superhero movies, no matter how great or terrible they might be, pander to a very thin veneer of profundity, of "themes" that give context to the scenes of action and adventure, but they don't engage with the reality of these issues with any great intellectual or political complexity. Audiences are denied the realities of police brutality, of innocent bystanders being killed by rampaging villains, of property damage, of lost jobs, of war, of surveillance, of the misuse of technology, of eugenics. All of these are plot points across a litany of popular comic book movies, but they represent an ugly reality that the filmmakers don't want to see intruding upon the fantasy they're trying to sell. Batman might question his moral integrity or the ambiguities of vigilantism, but we're hardly going to see an entire film about the character dealing with the real-world ramifications of guilt and grief after an innocent bystander is killed during a hot pursuit.
 
Of course, another aspect of Moore's argument is that we shouldn't ever see that kind of film to begin with. By looking at real world issues through a prism of comic book fantasy, we're only seeking to further dehumanize the issues that affect us, placing them within an imaginary sandbox that is as divorced from the real world and its politics and corruptions as the space battles of Luke Skywalker. This is the problem with a film like Joker (2019), which attempts to present a serious psychological study of the cartoon character made popular in the Batman comics, but ends up merely exploiting themes of abuse and mental illness by applying them to a character with such a loaded history.
 
Attempts to imbue ostensibly "comic book" characters with serious emotion isn't impossible. It's been done with characters that don't carry as strong of a cultural footprint as the Batman villain; for instance films like RoboCop (1987), Big Hero 6 (2014) and Split (2016) do a much better job of exploring ideas of trauma, bereavement and abuse, because their characters have a veneer of being real and identifiable, at least initially. The attempt to approach an understanding of the Joker through a parody of the Paul Schrader/Martin Scorsese films Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1983) can only feel like a post-modern joke. Whatever a film like Joker thinks it's saying about marginalized characters on the fringes of a society worn down by the abuses of the state and the systems that failed them, it still reduces its symbol of humanity, of identification, to an actual clown. Compare and contrast this to a social realist film like Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) by Ken Loach, and see how much more affecting and galvanizing the drama becomes when we recognize actual humanity on screen.
 
 

Joker [Todd Phillips, 2019]:

 
 

Ladybird, Ladybird [Ken Loach, 1994]:

 
Superhero movies, by and large, don't galvanize their audience. They don't inspire audiences to change their own worlds and make the experience of life better for those who are struggling with the world as it is. They provide only escapism, pushing the narrative that the world can only be saved by magical superbeings that stand above humanity and intercede on our behalf. Change won't come from without. We can't be saved by Superman and Captain America, Wonder Woman or Thor. Change comes from within. It comes from us, and the thousand little acts of charity and kindness that real people enact each day. Acts of kindness and charity that have been banished from the contemporary cinema and the presentation of our own humanity, in favor of superheroes locked in a battle with unreal elemental forces that provide no real-world threat.
 
Fundamentally, I don't think Moore is wrong when he links the popularity of the modern superhero cinema with the rise of Trump in America, or Brexit in the UK. Whether the fans of the sub-genre like to admit it or not (and they don't), the machinations of the comic book movie – the politics of them – are deeply conservative, if not genuinely fascistic. They're aimed at a level of populism; of black and white morality; of simplistic notions of good against evil; and the idea that someone outside of our own system and society can fix systemic problems that make the world worse for all but the 1%.
 
At their core, superhero movies promote the notion of the Übermensch: a corruption of a philosophical theory of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term Übermensch was used frequently by Hitler to describe the Fascist idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race. This in turn spawned their idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) who should be dominated and enslaved. Superheroes are, by and large, physically and intellectually superior to the average human. They're often attractive, independently wealthy, charismatic, white, and heterosexual. They stand apart from ordinary humans who are unable to protect themselves from the threat of potential supervillains that are intent on destroying the world.
 
If superheroes are beautiful and physically perfect, then supervillains are often alien invaders (frequently a coded shorthand for outsiders, or "foreigners"), or they're people that have been maimed or disfigured by some terrible incident. Again, there are many exceptions to this – some comic book characters are genuinely progressive – however, the notion of the attractive hero versus the scarred villain is a still popular trope that runs throughout fantasy fiction, from comic book movies and James Bond, even to the family films of Walt Disney. Think Scar from The Lion King (1994) for example.
 
 

The Dark Knight [Christopher Nolan, 2008]:

 

In the aforementioned The Dark Knight, crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent turns to criminality after being disfigured in an accident. The "evil" side of his new persona is physically personified by the scars on his face.

 

 

Captain America: The First Avenger [Joe Johnston, 2011]:

 

Heroes and villains: Clean-cut, all-American Steve Rogers, a genetically modified super soldier dressed literally in the stars and stripes, faces off against Red Skull, not only a Nazi, but a disfigured one.

 

 

Wonder Woman [Patty Jenkins, 2017]:

 

Heroes and villains: Wonder Woman demonstrated that female characters can also save the world, as long as they look like aesthetically perfect supermodels. Conversely, Dr. Isabel Maru has a facial difference, so she's obviously a villain.

 

There are countless other ideological problems that a person could have with the superhero subgenre, especially an avowed anarchist like Moore, who has been stung by the industry. Superhero films are increasingly pro-war. They fetishize the military to the point of mimicking the iconography of recruitment videos. They promote Eugenics. They valorize authority figures, police, military, politicians, while demonizing agitators, rebels, and freethinkers. They dehumanize our own civilization, making us background characters in our own apocalypse, just there to be terrorized, enslaved, blown-up, but rarely killed. Our cities might be crushed, our homes and livelihoods destroyed, our economies trashed, but we never see the real-life consequences of these atrocities.
 
Whereas cinema, books, theatre and art once showed us a reflection of ourselves, our suffering, our collaborations, our spirit of perseverance, the modern superhero movie denies us this identification. They refuse to show the real problems faced by the everyday world, they ignore our real-life heroes, our key workers, and they fail to show us an image of humanity banding together, of ordinary people working to create a better world. This is significant to what Moore is saying. Superhero movies to a large extent condition ordinary people to see themselves as powerless.
 
This is why a film like Glass (2019) by M. Night Shyamalan was so remarkable to me, because it presented its superhero characters – previously steeped in the same ableist tropes as the films discussed above – as victims of a corrupt and heartless system that had denied them their true expression and forced them to play the part of freaks and outcasts. Glass shows that the real supervillains that threaten our civil liberties are shadowy corporations that separate us, that work against our best interests, that convince us that we're powerless to stand against them. The final scene showed ordinary people, people bound together by loss, by grief, by the scars of trauma and abuse, make the first step towards revolution.
 
 

Glass [M. Night Shyamalan, 2019]:

 

Image credit: https://sesiondemadrugada.tumblr.com/post/185092367486/glass-m-night-shyamalan-2019

 

While the fallout from Moore's interview will follow the same narrative to that of Martin Scorsese, who incurred the wrath of the popular culture when he said Marvel movies weren't cinema. To clarify, the filmmaker went on to explain: "Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being." Scorsese was attacked for being old and out of touch with the popular cinema, but what he's saying isn't wrong. No matter how much we might enjoy a film like The Avengers (2012) or Black Panther (2018), they're not films that comment on life and the human condition. There is a world of difference between a film like Late Spring (1949), I Vitelloni (1953), Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Wanda (1970) or The Godfather (1972) and a film like Batman Begins (2005) and Watchman (2008).
 
Escapism is fine and should always be encouraged. Life can be difficult, and we all need a release from the pressures and anxieties of modern existence, whether its movies, video games, books, or sport. But escapism without respite or alternative is a distraction. It's a snare and a delusion. We learn so much about ourselves, our humanity, our civilization, by seeing it reflected in media, art, and drama. Superhero movies, by their very nature, deny us this reflection. By allowing comic book movies to dominate the cinema, its discourse, and our conception of the medium, we've effectively created a culture that can no longer recognize real heroes and villains. A culture that has become unable to see itself and its own power and potential reflected on screen. A culture that is poorer, more divided, more deceived, and more consumed by hate and anxiety than it was twenty years ago.
 
Further reading at Lights in the Dusk: Superheroes - Or: why no one is waiting for The Avengers to save the day [18^th April, 2020], The Politics of Hope: Glass vs Joker [7^th January, 2020], The Popular Cinema: A Question of Aesthetics [22^nd June, 2019]

The Journey of a Life

Thoughts on a film: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

The iconography is significant from the outset.  A young woman, approaching adulthood; her attitude defiant, even insolent.  She refuses to conform to social conventions; questions the 'status quo'; longs to dream and to be moved by dreams as an alternative to the dreary life, with its loneliness and routines.  The loss of her father hangs heavy.  His influence, as a dreamer (like herself), is in part responsible for her refusal to placate her mother's wishes and to play the part of the elegant young belle.  These characters - both mother and daughter - are on their way to a marvellous party, itself a signifier of a celebration of some personal milestone (birthdays, anniversaries, etc), though at this stage the young Alice is still oblivious to her mother's true intentions.

As the carriage makes its way down the woodland road, the journey of the vehicle becomes almost momentous.  Though she doesn't yet know it, this Alice is on the way to meet her potential future husband; the son of a neighbouring Lord.  Therefore the journey, as often in such films, becomes a literal passage between worlds.  The world of class and privilege - a better life, a more secure life - and her own world of comfortable-enough middle-class affluence; an existence, but one with uncertain possibilities.  It's also, more importantly, the journey between the worlds of childhood - or late adolescence - and her own burgeoning adult life.

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]:

The deconstruction of the iconography continues from this point on.  Alice, still seeing things with the matter-of-fact practicality of a child, is shocked by the compromise and the sobriety of this adult world.  Her would-be suitor sees her as a commodity and little else; her brother-in-law is caught cavorting with another woman while her sister defends his honour; her spinster aunt becomes a chilling warning against her own capricious ways and of where this life of celibacy might lead her in a society fuelled as it is by barriers of gender and a barely disguised misogyny and chauvinistic contempt.  Overwhelmed by these betrayals and demands, she falls through a hole in the narrative, into a dream that acts as an imaginary psychodrama; a means of making sense.  Here she must drink a potion that will make her small, so as to enter into the memory that holds the key to a possible future...

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]:

Again, the symbolism of this is palpable.  Before she can become a "grown-up", she must deem to be little; to be a child again.  She leaves through a doorway into a landscape, both vivid and surreal.  A land beyond reality, or at least beyond the reality we know.  The character has been here before, she's told, though she doesn't remember it; but there is something at the back of her mind that suggests the contrary.  An inkling, or the recollection of a dream?

From this point on, the story - for the most part - continues in a fairly perfunctory manner.  Foes are introduced; characters speak in terms of exposition; the action draws us in.  However, there is something else, more remarkable around the corner.  A revelation towards the end of the second act - a "twist" perhaps - in which a flashback deconstructs the unreality of the film, showing it to be a façade; a delusion.  The entire memory - this dream of "Underland" as "Wonderland" fantasia - has been built upon a misinterpretation.  This is the reason why Alice has repressed the memory of her earlier encounters, convincing herself that it was all a dream; even a nightmare.  As ever, the reality is at odds with the fantasy, at least as far as the individual can recall it.

The child Alice saw this world from her own perspective as both vast and wondrous.  The people, strange and colourful; the activities fun and enchanting.  It was all so different to her own world - the reality, with its strict schooling, family and commitments, bereavement and disillusion - where only the bedtime stories and the dreams that they inspired could provide an escape.  But the reality of this place is essentially that of a world marked by tragedy and unrest; a world of violence and civil war.  The people are impoverished, enslaved, driven mad by their own suffering and persecution.  Their activities, though engaging and wonderful to the child, were sad and dehumanising; enforced labour; painting the flowers red to announce the reign of an evil queen.

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]:

This is how the child survives; by transforming the atrocity through the power of imagination, convincing herself that it's all a dream, a fantasy.  The power of Burton's film is therefore in this idea that the action and excitement of the narrative - as it is presented via the typical 'Burtonequse' stylisations - is really a mask to hide the more painful reality.  This chimera - this abstract reimagining of life itself - is how a child in Nazi Germany might have perceived the Night of Broken Glass, or how the children of Northern Ireland, who lived through the turbulence of The Troubles, might have interpreted the destruction that was left as piles of rubble on the roadside.

Here, as in life, the gaze of the child succeeds in turning the horror and the violence into something beyond reality.  Atrocity as a scene of children playing soldiers; bombs becoming fireworks; the war itself personified as a black-winged creature; a monster, literally breathing fire.  All these things are attempts to rationalise through the power of imagination, if only as a way to survive.

Untitled image of 'The Troubles' [Source BBC/Getty Images]:

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]:

As ever with Burton, the film presents a variety of conflicting layers.  There is the standard surface of ornate stylisation, decadence, fairy tale whimsy and comic imagination full of references to other things.  However, beneath this surface there is a story with a very real and very relevant subtext.  Strip away the multi-coloured veneer and we're left with a film closer to the work of the Dardenne brothers or Ken Loach.  A subject matter with more in common with a film like Land and Freedom (1995) or The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) than the colourful phantasmagoria of Disney's earlier adaptation of the same text.

Alice in Wonderland [Geronimi, Jackson & Luske, 1951]:

Land and Freedom [Ken Loach, 1995]:

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]:

Although initially as beautiful and pastoral in presentation as that earlier animated version, Burton's own impression of this Wonderland environment is eventually revealed to be one both physically and emotionally transformed by the ravages of war.  Its characters are as such broken and embittered, unable to fight back.  This subverts the intention of the earlier, animated film - which is almost presented as a flashback, rather than a prequel - by showing it to be nothing more than an illusion; a child's misconception of the real.

In this respect, the film is less an adaptation of Carroll than a deconstruction of the idea of childhood wonder, in which this Alice - the one on the cusp of emotional maturity - must face the reality of a place in an effort to confront the responsibilities of her own adult life.  Through this, Burton and his screenwriter Linda Woolverton are able to create a fairly remarkable treatise on the idea of accepting the often cruel practicalities of life - which are here exposed to the eyes of the growing adult, no longer shielded by childhood escapism - but also of refusing to be worn down by them.

However, the darkly subversive implication of the final scenes - following the inevitable liberation of this Underland/Wonderland as third world 'red zone' - goes even further than that.  At the end of the film, the Alice of Burton's vision is independent enough to take charge of her own existence, rejecting the conventions of an outdated society as more than just an adult rebellion, but daring to express herself; to stand out.  As a denunciation of the standard "Disney princess" monomyth - wherein the character shockingly discards the conventional love and commitment in the arms of the dashing and wealthy prince in order to find her own way in life, independently - the outcome of the drama is almost audacious.

The character doesn't so much develop through the course of this narrative as find a way to exist.  She doesn't need the charming prince - here stripped of all positive attributes - but instead becomes her own woman; entirely in control of her destiny.  Burton illustrates this transformation visually, ending his narrative with another close-up of the young Alice, no longer the innocent child with the golden ringlets seen earlier in the film (again looking off into the middle-distance, into the face of an uncertain future), but visibly hardened, even scarred, by the experiences of war.

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]:

Earlier in his career, Burton was in many ways the natural heir to the throne of Joe Dante.  He made Hollywood movies that were imbued with a B-movie sensibility and which revelled in the deconstruction of genre conventions, conservative politics and even good taste.  His work was 'termite art' on the most profound and imaginative level - darkly satirical, sometimes even disturbing - but along the way this anarchic personality seemed to stray.

However, with this particular riposte to Carroll and the characters of his enduring masterwork, Burton has once again created one of his most radical and rebellious films.  The implications of the ending - which, without wishing to soil the character's progression, finds Alice becoming a kind of "colonialist entrepreneur"; setting sail for China in the hope of exploiting affordable labour against a backdrop of the infamous Opium Wars - seems to suggest that her own Wonderland adventure has seen her influenced more by the exploitation of The Red Queen (and her own terrible dictatorship) than the well meaning revolution of the markedly more positive Mirana of Marmoreal.

That Burton suggests this ending in a work primarily aimed at children is an example of the same anarchic spirit once found in films as varied as Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988) and the masterpiece Batman Returns (1992).  Films in which the director was able to work within the confines of the Hollywood system, but still created personal portraits of sympathetic monsters, the malice of contemporary society and the suffering of the tortured grotesque (usually while rejecting the conventional narrative structure in favour of a more loose and disorganised approach).

The ending of 'Alice' is consistent with this same ideology, but also with the subtext of civil war and the corruption of innocence, as well as the subtle implications of that aforementioned final shot.  The weight of this image illustrates the effect that this battle has had on the still young protagonist.  Like the citizens of Wonderland, Alice herself has been transformed by the atrocity of war and the abuse of The Red Queen.  Her defiance and independence (so obvious in those opening scenes) may have found a usable outlet to free her from a potential future of domestic servitude as Ascot's trophy wife, but it has also left her both cruel and cold.  The journey, in this sense, is not only one of accepting the brutal reality of the world for what it is, but a story of tragedy and of innocence lost.