#jan svankmajer

“Unless we again begin to tell fairy tales and ghost stories before going to sleep and recount our dreams upon waking, nothing more is to be expected of our Western civilisation.”

—Jan Svankmajer

“You must close your eyes, otherwise you won’t see anything”

Alice in Wonderland is often considered a story for children, especially considering its most famous film adaptation was made at the height of Disney’s powers. Czech animator Jan Svankmajer’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice, however, is far from child friendly.

Alice isn’t a by-the-numbers adaptation of Carroll’s novel; far from it. What it is, however, is Carroll’s world painted in Svankmajer’s sinister way, and what it lacks in faithfulness, it more than makes up for in inventiveness. Alice is a radically different take on the source material, with Svankmajer instead using the novel as a springboard to explore the nightmarish world contained within its pages. He focuses on developing scenes rather than narrative drive and imagery instead of dialogue, leaving Alice’s wonderland as something far more interesting than previous adaptations; a world of explicit chaos, illogicality, and fear - evocative of Alice’s own mind while she’s trapped in wonderland. 

Svankmajer’sAlice is the most substantial adaptation of Carroll’s story yet.