Image provided by Fantasia Festival
Keiichi Hara has a very impressive resume, with his previous three animated features being a delightful mix. Summer Days with Coo, Colourful, and Miss Hokusai all had their own unique voices and style. This would bode well for the director, who has managed to avoid comparisons to the work of Studio Ghibli by taking a slightly more adult stance in his exploration of subject matter. This all changes with his latest, The Wonderland. On the surface The Wonderland is a charming and magical fantasy yarn about somebody from our world whisked away to a place of magic, strange creatures, and so forth. Based on the work of Sachiko Kashiwaba, the similarities with Miyazaki’s work is hardly surprising, as her work reportedly inspired Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Unlike Hara’s previous films where fantasy crept into the real world, here he goes all out to create fantastical visions and lore, but ends up drowning the viewer in details.
Akane (Mayu Matsuoka) longs for an easy life, looking on with jealousy towards her cat and her housewife mother. Her current state of lethargy is spurred on by a conflict at school, where one friend forgot to wear specific hair clips on a specific day. Not wanting to be caught in the middle of this, Akane pretends to be ill. Once she is confident in acting well again her mother sends her to a family friend Chii (An) to pick up her own birthday present. Once at Chii’s shop of odds and ends, Akane accidentally activates a magic handprint which sees Mr. Hippocrates (Masachika Ichimura) and his diminutive assistant Pipo (Nao Toyama) arise from the basement. They quickly whisk Akane and Chii to a magical land with fantastical creatures, where a prince has been transformed into a toy robot and the evil industrialist Zan Gu (Keiji Fujiwara) looks set to leave a path of destruction.
Although quite similar to many fantasy adventures, The Wonderland tries to do far too much too quickly. Within the first 15 minutes we’re travelling down Spider’s Web Road, woven by a spider that controls time, before landing on top of a giant tower where a huge pink bird lives. Later there are anthropomorphic cats, a house that levitates at an angle on the edge of a cliff, a musical interlude with giant fish, and villages each with their own rules and history that doesn’t really contribute to the main story. It’s hard to become settled into any of these environments, and we never get to truly know the protagonists as they simply move forward and learn new things about this world. The film only truly engages during the final act, where the villain becomes the most interesting aspect of the film, and finally the story gains focus.
This is such a shame considering the beautiful artistry on display in almost every aspect. The animation is stunning, as are the designs of the world. Most interesting though is the attention to detail. As the film opens the sound design of an iPhone is very impressive, and in Chii’s shop there are spoof mock-ups of famous comics, that you will only see if you are looking for them. There’s one for Sin City, one for a Sherlock Holmes/ Tintin hybrid, and a twist on Hellboy called Mad Boy. This paired with the gorgeous lighting, music and vocal performances makes for a beautifully produced film.
The Wonderland is one of those unfortunate films where all the talent, dedication, and hard work, just can’t overcome the lack of narrative cohesion. Almost every scene could be heralded as art, and probably expanded upon to make a film of itself. The Wonderland feels like a rushed tour of an extensive series of novels, with a very loose story stitching vignettes together. There’s joy to be had here, but probably best digested in smaller chunks.
The Wonderland was reviewed at the 2019 Fantasia Festival.
