Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser review – a stupendous wonderland

Carroll’s polymathic mind finds its emblem in a carousel of Victorian novelties: theodolite, kaleidoscope, daguerreotype, dodo. His heroine debates concepts about logic and language like a junior Wittgenstein. Matter, space and time are all explored as the rabbit tries to catch up with himself and Alice alternately shrinks and grows. A film by the German artist Mariele Neudecker centres on the so-called Alice experiment at Cern, where the tiniest particles in the universe are studied with the largest machines.