Sweet and Sour

Movies are getting better, every day, in every way, and if you want proof, look at the differences between the 1971 version of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and the 2005 Tim Burton version, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That’s not a long time for movies to change — it’s just a few years short of my own lifetime as I write this — but look how different things are!

I could go on and on about how different the Bucket house looks in Burton’s world, how the costumes are better, how the Great Glass Elevator is more impressive, stuff like that. I could even go on about how the Mixing Room — where the chocolate is mixed by waterfall, don’t you know — looks so much better than in 1971, while looking almost the same. And the Oompa-Loompas — but more about them later. I want to focus on one scene.

It is, really, the initial scene in the movie, Where Things Start, and in both movies it comes later than you might think. It is the scene where the five children enter the Wonka factory for the first time. These are, of course, five children who have gotten — by hook or by crook, or just by Providence — their Golden Tickets, with the right to tour the legendary Wonka factory, and an ultimate prize for the final Lucky Winner, whoever that may be. Nobody, we are told with utmost sincerity, has been inside the Wonka factory for years on end. No one has seen Willy Wonka, that maestro of the chocolate bar, since the factory closed. All eyes are on the iron gates of the factory, waiting for Willy Wonka to make his grand and glorious appearance.

In the 2005 movie, what happens? Well, what happens is that there is a distraction, a grand and glorious musical tribute to the greatness of Willy Wonka, performed by a chorus of clockwork puppets. (This sets up one of the great funny lines of the movie later on, watch for it.) They sing a charming little Danny Elfman ditty:

Willy Wonka
Willy Wonka
The amazing chocolatier
Willy Wonka
Willy Wonka
Everybody give a cheer

And then, once the show is over, with fireworks going off, and with the smell of singed puppet everywhere, Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp, of course) appears from behind the children, startling them, and then they enter the factory. A nice scene, and the puppets alone must have eaten into the movie’s colossal stupendous $150 million dollar budget.

Now, the 1971 version had that exact same scene, and what did it use to start off the movie? How did it introduce Willy Wonka? Did it have, in its modest $3 million budget, the means to scorch puppets? No. All that the 1971 version had going for it was acting. And that’s what happened. Gene Wilder, playing Willy Wonka, improvised a scene where he walked out of the factory’s door with a limp, leaning heavily on his cane, with all the audience watching, thinking that he had a disability or something. Then, suddenly, Wilder somersaulted right in front of the children. A tease, that Willy Wonka.

Now, what do you think says more about the character? What do you think is the better scene? What does a better job of setting up a sense of wonder and whimsy? If you said the 1971 version, you’d be right.

Movies are better now. There is no doubt about that. But acting is the same as it has always been. In fact, what makes today’s movies so much better is that they have eliminated a lot of what used to be done just by acting. And special effects, as expensive as they are, are cheap compared to what a Type-A actor would get you in Hollywood. If you don’t have acting, you have to make do with special effects. Lots of movies do this every day, it’s just that it’s surprising that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of them.

This is not to say that Johnny Depp is a better actor than Gene Wilder. Not at all. Depp is the better actor, but in this particular situation Wilder made the better choice. And that’s significant. Wonka, as played by Depp, is supposedly (and famously) inspired by Michael Jackson. Depp denies this, but since his Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean was equally famously inspired by Keith Richards, it’s an intriguing supposition. Anyway, Depp is not being “himself” here, whatever that is. Instead, he is being a freak. (Depp does have a pair of scissors in his hand early on, cutting a ribbon at the factory gate; it’s a reference to his similarly freaky ride as Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.)

Depp’s choice of freakiness is not wrong, necessarily. It probably is exactly within the parameters of what Tim Burton was trying to do. It may be exactly how Roald Dahl pictured the character. I cannot say. But it is… I don’t know. It’s a bit off. More than that, it’s intentionally off-putting; Depp’s Wonka is always insulting and belittling the children, and taking glee in the fate of the bad little boys and girls. And while Depp and Burton are entitled to their view of how the character should be played, it’s an odd choice.

I titled this review “Sweet and Sour”, which is to say that I had Chinese food for dinner. But that’s not my point. The whole idea of a movie like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not to give into sweetness, not to let the wonderful sweetness of the chocolate (and the beautiful interiors of the factory) win out over the sour real-world aspects of the movie. But largely, that should be done through the specific vices of the childish characters (and of course their parents) and the grisly fates to which their vices lead them. Moving the Willy Wonka character from the sweet category into the sour category — not to say the indefinably freaky part of the movie — is a mistake, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory pays for it.

However, focusing on the Depp character is not only beside the point but takes the focus off the other pieces of great acting. The child actors, of course, are perfectly convincing and wonderful (especially young Jordan Fry, in his first role as Mike Teavee). The Bucket family is especially well-done. David Kelly (Waking Ned Devine) and David Morris are nothing short of splendid as the grandparents, and Noah Taylor is sweet and soulful as Charlie’s hollow-cheeked father.

And then… then there is Deep Roy, who himself is worth the price of admission. I have a terrible record of Oscar prediction, especially this early in the season, but if Deep Roy isn’t at least considered, to whatever degree, for Best Supporting Actor for playing the part of every Oompa Loompa, well, there isn’t any justice in the world. In its use of Deep Roy, if nowhere else, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shows all of the virtues of modern moviemaking. That he is able to play so many roles, so well, with absolutely zero lines, is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Danny Elfman’s settings of the original Roald Dahl songs set this movie apart, give it its magic, and a little much-needed soul.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.