Alice

You must close your eyes. Otherwise, you won't see anything.This is and will most likely forever be the most faithful production of Alice through the eyes of the mature consumer. No childlike dreamy-ish adaptation of the oddness and bizarre nature of growing into your own skin could ever come close to achieve the powerful and raw portrayal that Svankmajer envisioned and crafted into this piece. The reason why most Alice in Wonderland’s adaptations haven’t turned out this great is exactly because none of them were able to truly grasp the essence of the work. For me, the thing that stuck out the most and that allowed me to immerse myself into the film all throughout, was the eagerness to embrace the weariness and creepiness of the world that surrounds us. Instead of taking a fantasy-ish illusory approach for the storytelling of a piece that portrays exactly the maturing journey of one who is losing their innocent and colorful view of the world, it went straight into the bare and harsh reality of all that surrounds us. That, paired with each and every small movement and object that creates sounds and takes a life of its own, makes everything come together in a peculiarly maddening and penetrating way.  It was truly engaging to see how much control she had over all the events that played out throughout the picture — contrary to what we’ve seen before on previous and even later adaptations of this Carroll’s piece, where each step Alice takes forward is consequential to whatever is thrown her way. Being your own force and making stuff happen for yourself is maybe the most important aspect that’s supposed to be taken into account when digesting the literary material, and as far as I was able to tell, until now, this is the only production that has been able to convey precisely that.