Dreamchild / Сказочный ребенок (1985)

This 1985 film from Britain offers up the only possible reason the extraordinary British writer Dennis Potter could be involved with a project also featuring the talents of Jim Henson's Muppets. The subject is the awkward relationship between Charles Dodgson (Ian Holm), better known to the world as Lewis Carroll, and Alice Liddell (played by Coral Browne as an adult), as it was in the 19th century when Liddell inspired Carroll to create Alice In Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. The full account of that bond is finally told by Alice in 1932, as she arrives in New York City to participate in the 100th anniversary of Dodgson's birth. Flustered by press and public attention, Alice releases her repressed memories from that time, and Henson's factory does a wonderful job creating bold realizations of the author's characters and settings. Both dark and light, Dreamchild is a mesmerizing spectacle with inner portraits of two quite dissimilar but equally vulnerable people. Holm is excellent as the stammering, often ridiculed Dodgson.