Perhaps the one thing that comes to mind when I watched Jan Švankmajer’s 'Alice' was uncomfortable. Despite the artistic and creative nature of which the film brought Alice to life, the whole experience of watching this movie felt like a horror flick, uncomfortable but hypnotising.
The use of sound effects aided the character's freaky nature, to the sound of their footsteps, to them eating or just the clattering of their teeth, it felt like uncomfortable silences being filled with disgusting human noises, combine that with the surreal nature each character and you have something that's more of a nightmare than a wonderland.
I felt like the whole purpose of this film WAS to make it a sort of nightmare, a child's dream inspired and brought to life from the objects in their life. Looking at the first scene with Alice in her bedroom, you can see the objects and items that are repeated in 'wonderland', I couldn't help but think that all the rooms, the scenes in this escapist world were just a dream. I think to my own dreams, where everything is familiar but also twisted, wrong in a way, something isn't quite right and in that sense, Jan captures this sense perfectly in his film.
Would I recommend this film? Maybe not to the everyday person, but for someone who is interested in surrealistic nature, or perhaps horror and the feeling of being unsettled, yes. But I feel that this version of Alice is not for the faint hearted.
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