Every so often I am reminded of the inadvisability of rushing to judgement on a single viewing. Michael Winterbottom's "Wonderland" is a case in point. I got very little out of this first time round, in fact my reaction was positively antagonistic; characters seemingly as shallow as those in a currently popular BBC soap opera with a similar London setting, but here handled with that clumsy hand held camera cinema verite look, which for me is always a turn-off unless the material itself is brilliant - "The Dream Life of Angels" and "La Promesse" for instance. I suppose it was the rave comments of so many that drew me back for a second viewing. I can see now that the film has a lot going for it. As a study of unfulfilled lives it is never less than perceptive and is often quite touching, the boy at the football match, the childbirth scene, reactions to the son's answerphone message and the death of a dog where our sympathies suddenly shift from the tormented to the neighbours from hell. I can honestly say it is a film I have quite grown to like. Where I would part company with its devotees however is in my degree of admiration. It is certainly not to be compared with the best work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach mainly because it lacks their genius for character development. Unlike the characters in masterworks such as "Secrets and Lies" and "My Name is Joe", those in "Wonderland" are one-dimensional: we know all there is to know about them on their first appearance. And then there is that totally inappropriate score by Michael Nyman swamping scenes of everyday life with a spurious pseudo-classical muzak, banal lyrical lines accompanied by throbbing repeated chords. "Wonderland" would have benefited intrinsically from being without a score. In any case it is a classic example of a film needing to stand on its own feet without the prop of so called "luverly" music. Would it survive so well without in popular esteem is the question!
Review of Wonderland
