Through the Looking Glass

Yesterday while idly clicking through the cable channels on a hot afternoon, I stumbled across the BBC's 1998 made-for-television version of "Alice Through the Looking Glass." I was fortunate enough to see most of this 86-minute masterpiece (accompanied by at least 86 minutes of commercials) which I had not previously known about.

This "Alice" uses lots of computer-driven special effects, some animation, a platoon of wonderfully crisp, classically-trained British actors, and a script which religiously follows the original (someone named Nick Vivian shares screenwriting credit with Lewis Carroll, but what we get is the undiluted original). "Looking Glass" is, I believe, superior to "Underground," and no previous adaptation of either of the Alice books that I've seen is anywhere near this good.

Of course, some will take issue with the casting of Kate Beckinsale as Alice (this was back before her big breakthrough in "Pearl Harbor," when she was still an artist). At age twenty-five, Beckinsale was so ridiculously beautiful she could probably induce heart attacks in more than a few of us mouth breathers lucky enough to catch sight of her. This is decidedly not a child-Alice, but she still manages to impart a childlike aura to the role, albeit in precise, graceful, elegant and educated British diction. Heartbreak city.

Clean, beautifully enunciated, carefully articulated language is one of the distinguishing characteristics of this production, honored even by the Cockney twins Tweedledum (Gary Olsen) and Tweedledee (Marc Warren). Besides Beckinsale who appears in every scene and carries most of the film, other notable performances are rendered by Ian Holm as the White Knight, who delivers an inspired rendition of the poem "A-Sitting on a Gate," Desmond Barritt as Humpty-Dumpty, and the incredibly charismatic Sian Phillips (she played Augustus's wife Livia in PBS's "I, Claudius" series) as the Red Queen.

Many reputable people don't like the Alice books. Flannery O'Connor, someone I really admire, called them "regrettable" or "unfortunate" or something like that. Some, I suppose are offended by the puns and the sometimes childish word play and non-sequiturs. But there's more to this nonsense than juvenile whimsy, and if a reader delves deeply enough to break through the patina of silliness, he or she will find that Carroll, outwardly careful and conventional, secretly harbored tremendous rage and resentment against the mores -- moral, philosophical, and theological -- of polite, proper, and repressed Victorian society. Innocuous-seeming humor was the only means he had of expressing it.