How Sweet it Is
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is a sublime, bittersweet confection. (Film Review)
by Michael Sean McGowan
The Upside: A perfect example of Burton storytelling magic.
The Downside: Like gum, it kind of loses its flavor before its done.
I think one of the great mysteries of the cinema in fifty years will be: what was it like to see the world through the eyes of someone like Tim Burton? To simply label Burton as a "dark" or "gothic" filmmaker leaves way, way too much out. I have seen countless Tim Burton films and I'm still at a loss to describe his style. It isn't surprising that he used to work for Disney under the old guard before the Michael Eisner machine showed up- he has always been kind of a tactile animator of the joyously macabre. And his latest treat, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, shows Burton at full blast. It is a strange and wondrous collusion of the innocent and the grotesque, the dreamlike and the nightmarish. The first go-around at adapting Roald Dahl's book was the 1971 Gene Wilder vehicle (with, oddly, the name altered to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and was a product far more nominal, far more friendly to the general family palate. This time the result is darker, stranger, and yet definitively under the tutelage of Dahl's sprit while also being a Burton original creation.
The place Burton creates is one where a mechanical puppet song and dance routine ends in the puppets catching on fire and exploding- and still seems perfectly normal. It is a place where one house, where young Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) lives, is painfully crocked, yet in Burton's view it is the most normal place on the landscape. You see, here Charlie lives with his parents (Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor) and both sets of his grandparents (they all occupy a single bed they never seem to move from). The family represents pure love and goodness- they are poor, but never hesitate to give to each other, as when Charlie's parents give him a single Willy Wonka chocolate bar for his birthday. The Bucket's house may be slanted, but for Burton it is the result of the world that is really off-kilter.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory arrives in a season that is already crammed with countless sequels and remakes, but special reserve must be given here. This is a story so on Tim Burton's wavelength, it would have to be remade just to see him do it. Yet, there is also something a little frightening about this. Charlie is fanciful children's' literature, but it was also intended as something of a cautionary tale. The horror of it is that it could be remade every 30 years and each time will seem more and more relevant.
What do I mean? Well, take the story. Young Charlie's house lives in the shadow of the enormous factory of Willy Wonka, the world's most famous chocolateer. One day Wonka announces a contest- five golden tickets sent out in five Wonka bars. Whoever finds a ticket will be allowed to tour Wonka's factory, which no one has seen the inside of in years. The winners, with the exception of Charlie, are specific biological specimens of how child-rearing can go oh-so disastrously wrong. Violet Beauregarde (Annasophia Robb) is an ultra-competitive minx who doesn't see other people, but rather meat sticks for her to conquer and crush. Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) is an arrogant smart-a** whose shameless self-superiority neurosis is only matched by the Columbine-like vibes we get hearing him shout "Die, die, die!" while playing a violent video game. Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) stuffs his face with chocolate until it is coming out of his ears, and Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) is a glass princess who develops a J-Lo complex whenever she doesn't get her way. Collectively, they represent the sins of pride, arrogance, and gluttony that we allow in our children when we're not careful and, ominously, we actually seem to be encouraging in this day and age.
The five children are given a grand tour through the factory, guided by Willy Wonka himself (Johnny Depp). And it is a wondrous place. Waterfalls of chocolate spill out over meadows with lollipop trees. Super-intelligent squirrels shell nuts and chuck rotten ones. Armies of Oompah Loompas (through the magic of CGI, all played by Deep Roy) toil on fudge mountains. But the factory also represents the dichotomy of childhood; it is a thing of great loveliness and innocence, but it also holds a dangerous dark side when mistreated. The inherent nastiness of the kids becomes their downfall as each meets a poetic comeuppance inside the factory when they step out of bounds and try to use it for their own ends (Gloop nearly drowns in a river of chocolate, Veruca gets a nice little beat-down by those squirrels).
Does this all sound unsettling? Probably, as it was meant to. But there is a wonderful tapestry of humor and visual joy to sample here. Burton and his set team have simply done a magnificent job in creating Wonka's factory- a mesh of nonsensical industrial excess and Candyland visions. Burton clicks it all together in his own peculiar pace and beat (I especially liked the moment in which all of the factory workers working for the father of the spoiled brat Veruca open candy bar wrappers in perfect rhythm). A lot of the credit goes to Depp who goes for Wonka as kind of a New Age mime rather than the crusty old dandy of the Wilder version. He captures the goofy, secluded nature of Wonka perfectly, particularly the child-like way the first words in his head are the first words out of his mouth. Freddie Highmore (who played next to Depp in last year's dark horse surprise Finding Neverland) nearly manages to steal the movie away from Depp. He's one to look for in the future.
So much of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory runs without a hitch, it is a little jarring when it seems to lose focus in its last fifteen minutes. The biggest blame is an addition by screenwriter John August of back story about Wonka's childhood. It seems Willy grew up alone with his father, an obsessive dentist played by Christopher Lee (he officially makes Sauraman look meek in comparison) who locks Willy's mouth in a pair nightmarish braces and bans candy from the house. This all isn't a bad idea in and of itself, but when we get to the end it needs to be resolved, and the movie doesn't feel like it has the energy to do it. For as energetic as Charlie is, it kinds of limps across the finish line in the end.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is very much a work of eye candy- but I can't use that term as faint praise, because so much of it feels stolen right from the vaults of inner-child marvel we didn't know we still had. Since it is a Burton movie, though, you have to take the darkness with the light and in this case (unlike last year's Big Fish) that is what resonates the deepest. A week ago, I wrote that I actually enjoyed Fantastic Four despite its rampant stupidity, but it was also "pure fluff." Charlie may be set in a world of Oompah Loompas, where chocolate birds hatch from chocolate eggs, but it feels far grander, more real, and at times more tragically trenchant. At one point, Charlie tells someone that parents tell kids what to do to protect them, because they truly do love them. Political commentator Bill Maher once said that we are living in an age where entitlement, not terrorism, is the greatest threat to our safety. When we are so used to demanding and getting our way, we become vulnerable. This is, no doubt, something that Dahl foresaw- a society of children becoming so spoiled, so groomed on instant gratification, that they would exist in a world without boundaries and borders. And when you don't have a guardrail, you're all the more likely to fall off the cliff.
Don't let me fool you into thinking this is a sad movie. It isn't- it is quite the opposite. It is a grand celebration of the very reasons we love stories of flights of fancy in the first place. However, there is depth here, there is meaning. I can wager there are plenty of kids, and adults, who will sit through it and find it uncomfortable and disturbing. I'd also wager these are the people who need to see it, and pay attention, the most. A-
Note: Okay, let's put one rumor to rest. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a victim of some pretty lousy timing, arriving in the wake of Michael Jackson's "not guilty" verdict. The natural thing to do would be associate a movie about a confectioner inviting children into his "wonderland" with the whole psychotic Jack-O mess, but don't. While Depp's portrayal of Wonka is kind of flighty (he even goes for the throaty, high-pitched voice), it bears no resemblance to Jackson. In fact, the character of Wonka seems to be repulsed be children (when one latches onto him, he looks like he'd like nothing more than a giant can of Raid). In interviews, Depp has claimed that his performance was- in part- inspired by shock (and schlock) rocker Marlyn Manson, who at one point so desperately wanted the role he even issued press releases stating he had gotten it.
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