And Very Gladly Will I Drink Your Honour's Noble Health

I saw Alice in Wonderland this past weekend.

I generally avoid movies in Japan because they tend to be expensive and a bit of a hassle. The standard price is close to twenty dollars per ticket unless you want to see a showing after 8 PM. Which I don't particularly mind, and at times prefer, but the drawback is that there usually only one or two movies playing after 8. So if you don't catch it by 9, you won't be seeing a movie that night.

The land of midnight movies it is not.

And if you do manage to get a showing after 8, though the tickets are cheaper, you have to pick your seat as you buy your ticket. Because of this practice of assigned seats, they don't let people into the movie until 10 minutes before.

But where, you say, is the problem in that? Well, if you want a decent seat not in the very back or the very front, you have to come quite a bit early to reserve said seat. But since you can't go into the theater, that leaves you way too much time with nowhere to sit. Hence the problem.

And watching movies in English with Japanese subtitles is a very odd experience. It's true that things are lost in translation, and humor is probably one of the biggest causalities.

I went to see Sherlock Holmes a few months ago. Not the best of films, but enjoyable and funny in a pulpy sort of way. Yet it was unnerving at times to watch in a theater full of non-English speakers, for there were parts that had my friends and I laughing like maniacs as the rest of the theater remained silent. As in, did not even crack a smile.

It's weird to be the only one in the room who understands the humor. It makes you question if maybe your the one who misunderstood.

I remember going to the theater in Italy a few years ago and laughing at the inefficiencies of the the Italian theater. The Japanese system is nothing if not efficient. As well as annoying. And overpriced. And unnecessarily complicated.

So needless to say, with this lovely combination of factors, I reserve movie viewing for movies I deem worthy of both my time and effort. I believe I have seen exactly 4 movies since I arrived in Japan a year and three months ago. A pitiful number, to be honest.

But despite all this working against her, Alice made the cut. And how could it not? Despite a few poor films in the last few years (Planet of the Apes and Sweeny Todd, I'm looking at you), a still inextinguishable love for Tim Burton will take me out to see his films every time. He's like the weird kid who sat in the back of the class and wouldn't talk to anyone but drew cool cartoons on his desk and in every corner of his notebook that were dark and twisted but in a whimsical way. How can you not like that kid?

That, and my utter love for the source material, got me there. I've already dedicated a post to Lewis Carroll, and I have an unhealthy fascination with his nonsense poetry. Nonsense verse is beautiful, as we all know semantics is highly overrated. And the poems littered throughout the narrative are what make it truly special.

So did I fall in love with it? No, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was visually stunning, and true to the nature and tone of the the story. There were cute homages to the original work, things only someone as geeky as me might have picked up, which I appreciated. I would have liked a more gripping plot, but at the same time something about that seems dishonest to the nonsense and tepid philosophy which the original is all about.

And if you want to put Alice in armor and have her fight the Jabberwocky? Believe me, you will get no complaints from me.

If nothing else, it renewed my interest in how much the story has become such a part of our cultural identity. Few are not familiar with the characters, and many phrases, words, and even theories are drawn from the story. Not bad for a children's book.

For example, sticking solely to cinematic adaptions, Alice in Wonderland has been adapted directly to film 44 times, while about 50 other titles either refashion or draw inspiration from the tale. They span the entire history of film, with the first one being a silent film from 1903 directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow. It is 8 minutes and 19 seconds in length, and only one copy of the original still exists.

Alice in film has been around almost as long as film has.

I'm not so much a purist that I dislike anything that deviates, but there are times I want to see Carroll done truly right. So to fulfill that need, I didn't need to look any further than this clip from a 1998 BBC production. It was a weird and trippy version that I didn't completely love, but one of the highlights of the film is a weird sequence in which the poem Haddock's Eyes is related by the White Knight to Alice.

If not just a how-to guide from Ian Holm on how to do a dramatic reading correctly, it is presented with the melancholy dreaminess and touch of deeper meaning with which I think every Lewis Carroll poem should be enjoyed.