Alice in Excess

I went to the Berlin premiere of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland when it came out—back when 3D screenings still felt like cultural events, cinemas showing premiere broadcasts as if they mattered. I’d grown up with the Disney version from 1951, that cartoon with the Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, and it had become one of those reference points you used without examining. Weird. Strange. A template.

Burton’s version doesn’t know restraint. Johnny Depp completely unhinged as the Hatter, Mia Wasikowska doing this deliberately awkward physicality, every frame so saturated with color and architectural detail you can barely breathe. The 3D is just a delivery system for maximum volume. The story is straightforward—girl comes of age, refuses to let others orchestrate her life, picks the strange path—nothing revolutionary. Burton isn’t interested in the psychological strangeness of Carroll; he builds an absurdly detailed world and watches someone move through it.

What sticks is the commitment. You can feel how much pleasure went into that excess. It’s not profound or subtle, but it’s completely itself. The story about writing your own life hits differently when you’re watching it actually happen—a girl following a white rabbit into something she can’t predict. Not because the message is complex, but because the image carries weight.