World Where Muchiness Is Left Untouched

I watched Alice in Wonderland again a few hours ago, the Tim Burton one, and I think I finally understood why I love this movie so much, or maybe why Alice in Wonderland feels different every single time. The feeling it leaves behind is slightly crooked but somehow warm and settling. There is this idea of muchiness that everyone talks about, but it’s not loud or forced in the film, it just exists. Everything is a little too much and yet exactly right.

The world is dark but not scary, gothic but soft, strange but familiar. Not horror-horror. More like a beautiful dark. A dark that feels alive. A dark that does not want to frighten you, just sit beside you. That’s why I watch Alice in Wonderland even on Christmas. It’s not everyone’s first choice on Christmas night, but for me it feels right. Like candlelight instead of fairy lights.

What I love is that the people in the film are not trying to prove anything. They are not trying to show the world that being weird is okay, or justify why they are the way they are. They do not want approval. They just live inside their own muchiness, fully, unapologetically. They do not worry to explain themselves.

There is something comforting about that. The characters are kind but mad, gentle but broken, never fully good or fully bad. They have flaws and instead of fixing them, they live with them, almost lovingly. Even sadness feels aesthetic in this world. Even loneliness feels soft. It’s not sugar-sweet like a fairytale, but it’s not cruel either (maybe a little bit… but who doesn’t like a pinch of salt in a chocolate cake, right?). It’s somewhere in between, where things are imperfect and still beautiful.

I think that’s why Alice in Wonderland stays with me. It just lets people exist in their own strange, dark, vintage, quirky spaces, loving what they love, not asking for anything in return. And maybe that’s what muchiness really is, not excess, not chaos, just the freedom to be exactly as you are, without sanding down the edges.