There are now countless versions of the Lewis Carroll Alice books, but Svankmajer’s mix of live action and stop-motion animation returns to those elements of the books that have made them so revered by artists and intellectuals. Svankmajer himself described the difference between his version and the family-friendly adaptations: the latter treat the Alice books as a fairy tale, complete with a moral and with good triumphing over evil; Svankmajer considers the books the expression of a dream, in which repressed urges win out over rational thought. Svankmajer’s Alice is both the protagonist and the narrator, in line with the filmmaker’s stated belief that his own childhood thoughts are the source of his creativity.