I grew up loving Alice in Wonderland, both the story and the animated movie by Disney. I believe the movie even got a sequel (perhaps even several) but I've only seen the first one. That happened a long time ago too, as I barely remember the plot. It's even harder to remember it as some media, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, invaded my mind over the years. That includes the point & click detective flash game series "Alice is Dead" and the psychological horror hack and slash game Alice: Madness Returns. Both of these installations paint Alice's world in a darker tone, so it's not surprising that I stumbled upon this dark fantasy Czechoslovakian production and ended up liking it.
Stop motion production is hard. I mean, really hard - just 3 seconds of live footage can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours of work. That includes the time you mess up and have to restart the shot from scratch. So seeing how they make a movie with multiple long and short takes of stop motion is nothing less than impressive. Reversed shots, speed manipulation, and other techniques that I haven't recognized were used to great effect. Some of those shots looked so clear that I'm scared to imagine how many shots per second they actually used. 30? 60?? 120?!? I don't know the answer to that but the work put into the productions has been noticed and appreciated.
Another thing that really caught my eye, or rather - my ear, was the lack of audio used. I noticed that the majority of the movie is really quiet or at parts completely silent. It's not until our little protagonist encounters another habitant or another miscellaneous noisy event that happens. The only voice we hear is the little girl's as she narrates every sentence, even her own. On one hand, a movie without a score is harder to digest as other senses are used to create a memorable experience but on the other hand, when we actually hear a sound in the movie, it has a bigger impact, even if it's an insignificant one. I'm the kind of person that finds it better to remember information when it is presented audibly, and as a result, the moments that I remember most vividly are the ones that involved unconventional sounds - dishes being smashed, Alice filling the whole room with tears (side note - this was an amazing surreal moment that the movie provided, it was the breaking point where I actually started to like the movie), the mechanic dialogues of the marionettes and so on. In a sense, it was the opposite of Black Sunday (1980), which created an eerie atmosphere throughout the sound that cast a musical shadow and made every scene memorable. I'd say Alice lacked that "oopth" by allowing too much silence. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess, so every line and every sound here did have a bigger impact. In a way, Alice, the movie, played by different game rules when it comes to audio design and still manages to come up above average in this aspect.
This movie raised a big question in my head - is it enough to be impressed b a movie for it to be good? In this case, I wouldn't say so. Even though I respect this form of art, I just can't force myself to see the result as eye-catching. It's charming, quirky in some ways but never... "beautiful" for me. I guess. I was terrified of some claymation shorts, mostly on Nickelodeon, when I was a kid. That fear translated into me feeling slightly uncomfortable with stop motion pictures in my adulthood. I'm not going to go as far as saying this movie is bad, as it's far from being bad, but I'm not willing to rank it as anything more than above average either. I'm really happy that I watched it, as it made me want to dive deeper into cinema again after a long absence. It's different from what I'm used to watching in the most literal sense and it's just another reminder that there's a world of media out there that I'm yet to explore and there are still stories and approaches to the said stories that can give me a unique and genuine experience.
Stop motion production is hard. I mean, really hard - just 3 seconds of live footage can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours of work. That includes the time you mess up and have to restart the shot from scratch. So seeing how they make a movie with multiple long and short takes of stop motion is nothing less than impressive. Reversed shots, speed manipulation, and other techniques that I haven't recognized were used to great effect. Some of those shots looked so clear that I'm scared to imagine how many shots per second they actually used. 30? 60?? 120?!? I don't know the answer to that but the work put into the productions has been noticed and appreciated.
Another thing that really caught my eye, or rather - my ear, was the lack of audio used. I noticed that the majority of the movie is really quiet or at parts completely silent. It's not until our little protagonist encounters another habitant or another miscellaneous noisy event that happens. The only voice we hear is the little girl's as she narrates every sentence, even her own. On one hand, a movie without a score is harder to digest as other senses are used to create a memorable experience but on the other hand, when we actually hear a sound in the movie, it has a bigger impact, even if it's an insignificant one. I'm the kind of person that finds it better to remember information when it is presented audibly, and as a result, the moments that I remember most vividly are the ones that involved unconventional sounds - dishes being smashed, Alice filling the whole room with tears (side note - this was an amazing surreal moment that the movie provided, it was the breaking point where I actually started to like the movie), the mechanic dialogues of the marionettes and so on. In a sense, it was the opposite of Black Sunday (1980), which created an eerie atmosphere throughout the sound that cast a musical shadow and made every scene memorable. I'd say Alice lacked that "oopth" by allowing too much silence. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess, so every line and every sound here did have a bigger impact. In a way, Alice, the movie, played by different game rules when it comes to audio design and still manages to come up above average in this aspect.
This movie raised a big question in my head - is it enough to be impressed b a movie for it to be good? In this case, I wouldn't say so. Even though I respect this form of art, I just can't force myself to see the result as eye-catching. It's charming, quirky in some ways but never... "beautiful" for me. I guess. I was terrified of some claymation shorts, mostly on Nickelodeon, when I was a kid. That fear translated into me feeling slightly uncomfortable with stop motion pictures in my adulthood. I'm not going to go as far as saying this movie is bad, as it's far from being bad, but I'm not willing to rank it as anything more than above average either. I'm really happy that I watched it, as it made me want to dive deeper into cinema again after a long absence. It's different from what I'm used to watching in the most literal sense and it's just another reminder that there's a world of media out there that I'm yet to explore and there are still stories and approaches to the said stories that can give me a unique and genuine experience.