10 Best Ian Holm Performances

Dreamchild sees the actor portray the Reverend Charles L. Dodgson, who may be better known as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The film is told from the perspective of the aging Alice Liddell, and is a fictionalized account of her coming to terms with her memories of Dodgson.

Liddell was the girl that inspired the stories that Carroll published. For years, it has been widely speculated that there was an inappropriate relationship or experience between the two, which the film does not shy away from but reframes it. It is not depicted as a physical relationship, though Dodgson is written as having an underlying sexual longing for Alice.

The film also combines creature effects of the March Hare, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter, created by Jim Henson's workshop. Dodgson is portrayed as a sympathetic character, one maligned in Alice's memories by her own recollections. She is an unreliable narrator, though admits to have been very unkind to him as a child.

Holm's performance had to take in the author's acute sense of shyness and self-consciousness, one thing that was lauded in his performance on the film's admittedly very limited release. Not many people saw this film on its first run, though it has risen in its popularity since.