Alice in Wonderland presented many different themes that relate to religious concepts we have studied. Perhaps my main disappointment with the movie is that it touched on numerous concepts, but deeply explored none.
Like in Otto's description, Alice is faced with something that is 'wholly other.' Nothing in this world is anything like what she has experienced. She chooses to first deal with it by fitting it into her everyday schema as merely a dream. When that approach fails, she still distances herself from the world she finds herself in. By refusing to recognize it as wholly other, Alice cripples herself. Had she recognized it as wholly other immediately, she would have become 'the real Alice' much sooner and much more easily. Similarly, Alice has been rejecting instead of embracing her memories of Wonderland.
The dichotomy of profane versus sacred time is similar to what we discussed in Groundhog Day. Alice's time in the real world has been profane, whereas her time in Wonderland is sacred. Only in Wonderland can she begin to change her character and realize that it is important to take personal control over her life.
The idea of divine madness also runs throughout the film. Alice and other characters keep saying that it is important and good to be a little mad. In this sense they generally mean believing the impossible and breaking boundaries. Again, I felt like there was something lacking here. the movie could have taken this concept one step further by showing more clearly what happens to people who aren't a little mad. This was almost there, but not quite.
This movie also played with the ideas of chaos versus order. What seemed at first to be chaos in the form of Wonderland turned out to be an entirely different kind of order, one that followed different but quite sound rules. It was simply that what matters in Wonderland are not the same things as matter in the 'real world.'
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