Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)

I honestly thought that a looking glass would play a major role in this film; instead, clocks. The looking glass was just Alice's way to travel between her world and Underland. And for me, the looking-glass successfully blurred the lines of red and white. Characters are all carrying a tinge of pink.

Time. I had thought that its embodiment was the enemy. Particularly because it demands patience. Apparently, Alice was the antagonist after all. She went to the past to save the Mad Hatter's family but she ended up destroying the fabric of life in Underland. Time warned her of this, by the way, and tried to stop her. But hard-headed Alice just had to do her own thing without thinking of the consequences.

... And consequences she did realise. With the clock ticking, she learned that her meddling wouldn't have much of an impact because of the invisible but omnipresent character, Fate. She had hoped to stop an accident, which she did; and then a second accident happened. Hello, Princess (Queen) Big-Head. She also witnessed why the two princesses (now queens) had a rift that led to much sorrow in Underland. What we thought was the picture of perfection (white) wasn't perfect after all. And the anger (red)? It wasn't plain evil; its roots stemmed from betrayal that wasn't addressed properly for years... Even decades.

Time. It is said to be a healer of all wounds. And indeed it was. Alice chose to run away as a mourning mechanism after her father died. She had become a stronger woman who could face the world when the movie opened. But through the lessons that only Time could bestow, she earned wisdom and catharsis. The Mad Hatter was a depressed bloke who felt his father thought poorly of him. Through Time, he realised that his father was actually proud, but demanded quality work and perfection of his craft. The two queens had the most at stake. They tore down Underland with wars and Jabawockees, and other monsters only because of a quarrel caused by cookies. Consequences of Time forced them to forgive each other; after all, they're sisters.

But the most acute of all lessons was that Time is limited. As I watched the movie, I felt it was almost a waste of time—I remembered the White Rabbit rushing back and forth, going nowhere, from the animated movie—because I didn't get the treatment of Time. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban did a better job at showing the consequences of altering the space-time continuum, in my opinion. 

... And then I remembered Absolem, the caterpillar. In the crazy, hectic, frenetic world that Alice found herself in, Absolem was the source of wisdom and good ol' common sense. But being a caterpillar, he'd have to metamorphose soon in his cocoon to become a butterfly. Those changes take Time. And they are most certainly not wasted. Just the same way that resting, sleeping, and vacationing aren't a waste of time. Sorry, workaholics. You're motto: "I'll sleep when I'm dead" isn't correct.

Absolem was not a major character in this movie. The actor who used to portray him, Alan Rickman, had left the world, succumbing to cancer. I would like to think that he'd gone into his own cocoon to metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly.

Time. A most non-renewable resource. Use it well.