Dreamchild

Dreamchild is a beautiful and tender exploration of the (non-sexual) love of children which prompted the Rev. Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) to write _Alice in Wonderland_. The story begins in 1932 as 80 year old Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell, the inspiration for the fictional Alice) and her timid personal maid Lucy reach New York City to participate in a centenary celebration of Dogson's birth. Coral Browne is outstanding as Mrs. Hargreaves and Ian Holm plays Dodgson perfectly. Amelia Shankley is also excellent as the young Alice, seen in flashbacks and "dream" sequences involving characters from the book. The puppets, for lack of a better word, created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop (??), are faithful recreations of the original Tenniel drawings and, for the most part, much of their dialog is adapted from the book and wonderfully integrated into the film.

Besides the main plot there are several sub-plots, and the clashes between the upper class British woman and the rude, intrusive press are quite amusing, especially so when one considers how much worse the "news media" have become. The film touches on the plight of Lucy, a docile servant to Mrs. Hargreaves who worries about her future after Mrs. Hargreaves "meets my maker," as she puts it. Luckily for Lucy there is the American reporter Jack, who falls in love with Lucy and eventually convinces her it is not solely his desire for money ("You can tell when he's talking about money. His lips go all wet.") which draws him to the two women.

Through the flashbacks and dream sequences we see little Alice and Mrs. Hargreaves in various situations which shed more light on her friendship with Mr. Dodgson, whom she has almost completely forgotten as an old woman. Many details of the plot are taken directly from Alice in Wonderland and Dodgson's diaries and letters, making it an even greater pleasure for those familiar with his life. Initially Mrs. Hargreaves is terrified of dredging up long-forgotten memories but slowly comes to understand, accept, and express true appreciation for the love Dodgson felt for her, and many other children throughout his life.

This beautiful and moving film didn't receive the recognition it deserves due to the timing of its release, which unfortunately coincided in the USA with the witch-hunts and hysteria of the baseless "child-care Satanic abuse" cases popping up all over the country. Dodgson was, by most standards, an unusual man whose life-long stutter and natural shyness made him uncomfortable with many adults, but with small children he worked magic. He was one of the first amateur photographers and some have interpreted his penchant for taking pictures of children "au naturel" as an indication of pedophilia. Anyone who has read his diaries or letters knows he was most scrupulous about taking these types of pictures and virtually never did so without receiving parental permission, often having a parent present during the session. Charles Dodgson loved children in a pure and non-sexual way and that love gave us two of the world's classics in children's literature. The film makes this perfectly clear and is a tribute to the genius and gentleness of this kind, loving, and brilliant man.

This is a stunning film, there have been all kinds of rumors and stories about the Rev. Charles Dodgeson and just who he was. This film lovingly and sadly portrays a what-if tale about Alice Liddell, the real Alice, of his famous books and what Victorian society did to her memories of this delightful man. I am not a member of the camp that thinks Dodgeson had a unnatural love for little children I find it preposterous and slanderous to say the least. This movie portrays him brilliantly and Ian Holm is such a superb actor you really feel sad for the lonely man with no wife and children of his own who writes these wonderful tales only to be suspected of unacceptable feelings for the little girl. This movie gives us all that with some wonderfully creepy Wonderland sequences by Hensen's creature shop. Simply marvelous!

In order to fully appreciate this movie a knowledge of both Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll is recommended. For a film associared with Dennis Potter--who'd previously written an Alice in the 60s...you might expect smut but there's none here. Its all done very tastefully so it would disappoint anyone looking for titillation. Jane Asher has a minor role as Mrs.Liddell,shown as a chaperone on the famous river outing.She played Alice herself in the early 60s for a couple of studio casts. Though its artistic license to suggest Mrs.Hargreaves took along her maid in reality there were two others,one of which was her granddaughter. I liked the scene where Mrs.Hargeaves read out a commercial---for which they'd pay her 1000s of dollars: ""once when I was a little girl I fell down a rabbit hole then picked up a bottle with a label on which said DRINK ME.But today I look for a bottle which says CHARDONAY"

Made entirely in England and yet not available in England, this film seems to lead us into dark corners only for the sun to shine brightly at the end, beautifully and carefully paced and with many very talented actors, especially the young Alice. This film predates Labyrinth by only a few months, and we can see in the Mad Hatter an early and successful test piece for Labyrinths Hoddle - even better though we can see the real life actor inspiring Hoddles face, as played by Ken Campbell. A must see companion piece to Labyrinth. Trek fans can note that Cheryl (Gates) McFadden (TNG Dr Crusher) also choreographed puppet movement for this movie.

I don't put much stock in the central conceit shared in "Dreamchild" that Charles Dodgson was a pedophile in love with Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for his Alice books. Regardless, this theory serves the film well--better than it did in Dennis Potter's prior TV "Alice" (1965). It's one of the more disturbing adaptations or reworkings of the famous children's books, and that includes the grotesque puppetry from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which otherwise is best known for kiddie fare such as The Muppets franchise. "Dreamchild" is also one of the more interesting cinematic translations to incorporate the historical background into the telling of parts from the books. Others have tended to limit this to a framing narrative, as in the 1949 and 1972 versions. The "reality" and fantasy in "Dreamchild," however, are comparatively well integrated.

The main narrative has Alice Liddell, now the nearly-80-years-old and widowed Mrs. Hargreaves, traveling to New York to receive an honorary degree to mark the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth. While in the states, she's hounded by the press (the gaggle of fast-talking, cynical Depression-era reporters being an imitation straight out of "The Front Page") and forced to recall her childhood encounters with Mr. Dodgson and selections from the book he wrote for her. Underlying the dreams from book is a competent interpretation of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Beyond the amusing nonsense, the fictional Alice's physical transformations--alternately growing bigger and smaller--is translated as an allegory for aging, with the movie's Alice changing between her as a child and as an old woman in her interactions with Wonderland's inhabitants. These characters remain partially nasty or threatening to Alice, as per the literary source, which likewise is read as representing one's (originally, a child's) struggle to make sense of the adult world, or, in this case, also the Depression-era modernity of the New World and Alice's reckoning with her past relationship with the author.

All of this is reflected in two plotlines involving older men and their advances towards younger females. In the modern timeline, one of the reporters begins a romantic relationship with Alice's travel companion, Lucy, and, in the past, there's Dodgson's questionable intentions towards young Alice. "Dreamchild" largely reduces the author of the greatest books in the history of children's literature to a stuttering girl lover who seems to repress his sexual desires with photography and telling her stories, disregarding much of his other influences and importance of his work, but it's a more sophisticated interpretation of the Alice books than most other movies I've sought out since reading Carroll's stories, and it's certainly one of the more unsettling and mature reimaginings.