The red queen told me to.

"Phoebe in wonderland" is one of the best progeny of the looking glass novels I've ever come across, and I've experienced many different takes on lewis carrol's lovely outre pipe dream.

I queued it up on netflix in a spree of cinema frenzied clicking, and watched it this afternoon because I have very little else to do. It was something, I thought, that would be on in the background while I wrote or drew or what ever came 'round. Instead Phoebe surprised me.

First I'm going to give you a quick synopsis of what I think the movie is about, and I'll try not to give too many spoilers.

At the outset you meet Phoebe, a nine year old girl with a younger sister and their mother and father. Phoebe has a disregard from the rules from the very beginning, and quite frankly this is a theme that is the first of many parallels to the immortal Alice, so when the new drama teacher comes into the room quoting Carrol's sensible nonsense the connections are almost too easy. Soon you find that both her parents are academics, her mother is working on her dissertation (big surprise: is about the looking glass land novels and 'perversion') while balancing being a full time mother, obviously she doesn't have much time to do either occupation fully. The father is also writing full time as a professor of we-don't-know-what.

We see phoebe's rituals and how it affects her relationships both with adults and her peers, her sister and her friends, setting her apart and she longs for Wonderland with the fervor that comes with being bright, sensitive, and nine. This duality, the rituals and disregard for rules becomes a theme. Especially when Phoebe's only friend tells her that to have something she wants she has to "do something you hate, so that God will know you deserve it."

Now I don't think I can write much more about the plot without giving it away, and as thrilled as I am with the experience of this movie I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. So, just watch it.

Let's talk, instead, about the names of the characters, before we go into themes and specifics, because names are the first symbols we are given to understand characters both as people and as the larger symbols they become. Phoebe, for instance, shares her name with the Greek goddess of he moon. But i don't think this was the namesake of this character. Because Phoebe's sister's name is Hilary, an Anglicization of "Hilaeria" or the other sister born of Leucippus and Philodice. Theses sisters were priestesses of the moon who were stolen away to another land.

Another land, wait... you mean like wonderland?
yes. Yes I do.

And the moon, like lunacy?
Hey, you're catching on! Well done.

So now we get to themes, of which there are many, and I'm just going to not talk about the cliched "just be yourself" motif except to say the following. This film doesn't make it saccharine, it acknowledges that being one's self is to be vulnerable to scorn and derision but, and I have to quote here because it's the best line if not the best delivered one, in the entire screen play:

"at a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you really are. Especially for all the things that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself: but I am this person. And in that statement, that correction there will be a kind of love."

I don't know about you, but I got goose bumps from that when I saw it for the first time. It's beautiful and honest, and cuts to the quick those of us who grew up being different, longing for Wonderland.

But that longing for a place that doesn't exist can be a dangerous thing. Want it so desperately can make you believe it is true for just a moment, at the wrong moment.

So let me say this: who ever did the casting was absolutely brilliant. I've never seen felicity huffman do a better job. Ellie fanning is incredible. I believed her, every line was delivered not like a very talented child actor but as the character herself. The panic in the rituals, the desperate need for hope, the night and day change between the wonderland scenes and the real world scenes was just impeccable.

But the real triumph in her acting was this line: "I can see myself wrecking and ruining and I can't stop myself." It's heart wrenching.

Pullman did a great job, too. But it's not his best work.

So go watch it. It's worth the hour and a half.