Viewing Through The Looking-Glass (2016)

1. The Movie

Alice Through The Looking-Glass is the 2016 Tim Burton sequel to his 2010 adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Aside from namesake, this film creates an entirely different and new story— a literal reimagining of the Lewis Carroll book that as well continues the story of the young girl; and such would make sense as most of the two books had been combined in the first movie in the duology. This however, is not a dissection of that departure, more rather a retrospective of the artistic liberty venerated in the creation.

Taking place three years after the events of the first film shows Alice arriving back to London after sailing to China and back, having followed in her late father's footseps. Upon this return she comes to learn Hamish— the man whom she had rejected the quite public marriage proposal of in the prior movie— has taken over the company which her father had been apart of, as well as being the owner of what had been 10% of the company given to Alice's mother by Hamish's father, as well as their house. He uses this as a form of leverage in bitterness over the rejection, to try taking Alice's vessel and forcing her into a compensatory position on land, but only in the stripes of typical womanly work in 1875; and even tries to have her institutionalised with a case of 'female hysteria', to which she escapes from and goes back into Wonderland via a(nother) mirror.  

From the onset the line between reality and fantastical dreams are blurred; as Absolem the blue hookah smoking caterpillar turned butterfly is seen fluttering in close proximity to Alice and then making himself known to her when she left the room after learning how Hamish had deviously concocted the current situation of an uncertain future based on a seeming loss of the past. With that she re-enters the magical world of Wonderland (or, Underland) through a mirror (or looking-glass) to find her friends there in a panic as the Mad Hatter has fallen into a depressive state; which she comes to find out is due to his finding of the first hat he had crafted, and through that reminded of the family who (were believed to have) died when the Jabberwocky attacked on behalf of the Red Queen; and due to this state the Hatter has fallen into, he is on the verge of his own death. Alice at firsts tries to reason with Hatter that dead is dead, and having lost her own father she would seemingly know that it is impossible to bring people back just like that; however, part of her touted line and intrinsic to Wonderland itself is the impossible being possible, in some unconventional form. To that point the White Queen makes known that there is in fact a way for this reunion to happen, by having Alice go meet with Time himself from whom she learns that travelling through time to the past is indeed possible with the aid of a powerful device called the Chronosphere; that also serves as a sort of binding source which the reality for all of Underland past and present hinges on.

The meeting with Time is rather brief, and turned into chase with the Red Queen reappearing searching fot the device herself in order to go back in time so as to change it so that she would, as the eldest, remain the heir to Wonderland's throne instead of her younger sister the White Queen. This being born from a childhood incident coinciding with the Hatters, where the younger White Queen stole a tart from the kitchen and ate it near the young Red Queen's bed and so the latter got the blame; then leading to a scene where the Red Queen hit her head, causing it to swell to large proportion; and later at a coronation-style ceremony where she is being given a crown, the headpiece breaks on her head resulting in the Mad Hatter bursting with laughter and followed by the whole audience present, to which she then threatens all them and rages while being sent away by their monarch parents and her younger sister being chosen as next in line instead.

Alice travels through time with the Chronosphere, bearing witness to much of these past happenings. In doing so, she learns that the Hatter's family is in fact still alive and held hostage by the Red Queen. Launching a rescue mission, they do find them shrunken down and captive in an ant habitat, but in the event the Red Queen takes hold of the Chronosphere and with her sister grabbed goes back to prove the younger White Queen as the thief of the tart; however in doing so the older Red Queen and her child self see themself which creates a time paradox that quickly begins engulfing the entire world of Underland, past and present in a freezing rust. Alice however manages to get the Chronosphere back to its holding spot and all is restored.

With all settled between the once rival sisters in hindsight, and the Hatter family reunited Alice returns to the real world in just the nick of Time to prevent her mother from signing over the family vessel, allowing Hamish to keep the 10% stake and house. With that Alice and her mother sail off on the ship to future adventures.

2. Analysis

While the movie obviously and as aforementioned goes into an entirely separate story than the source book, it does not terribly disparage that core motif from Carroll at all. Alice is consistently shown as a defiantly curious force in facing and enacting impossibilities, arguing with the fantastical elements of the dreamworld while simultaneously utilizing them in an unconscious within the unconscious way to come to the end product of the sublimating experience. She doesn't take a simple answer as fulfilling. With that and the recurring symbolism of entering into the dreamscape via a mirror and concocted story: it is one of a fight against the future while trying to hold onto the past in the present, going against Time himself in defiance against the inevitability of loss and potential death of the dream. "Everyone parts with everything eventually, my dear," Time tells Alice early on.

Having the theme of the death of a dream and the cutting of a tether to old memories, this movie can then be compared to another with the same concept mirrored in its own way: the 1980s dark fantasy film The NeverEnding Story, wherein it is depicted that the death of this childlike imagination and belief, or suspension of disbelief, in the impossible results in the crumbling of ones entire world into nothing. Memory, a glorified and polished image is rusted over into a frozen stagnant void, empty of life. Holding on when there's no longer a tether connecting the boat to the ship prevents one from rowing onward into continued living.