Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) - Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka gives Missi Pyle, James Fox, David Kelly, Freddie Highmore, et al. the guided tour.
One man’s cliché is another man’s archetype. Tim Burton’s version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, like most of Burton’s work, is filled with clever ideas, but they are predominantly visual ideas, the kind of ideas one might see in the work of Frank Tashlin, Alfred Hitchcock, or Chuck Jones. In my last post, a tribute to Christopher Lee, I praised Burton’s film for a plot idea, the creation of a backstory for eccentric chocolate manufacturer Willy Wonka (Depp) involving a stern dentist father (Lee) who wouldn’t let young Wonka eat candy. I was immediately flamed by a commenter who considered the idea stupid, pointless, and “utterly unnecessary.”
I’ll concede the daddy idea is a simple one, simple enough for even children (one of the film’s target audiences) to understand. But I also believe Wonka’s “daddy issues,” clichéd as they might seem, work on the level of archetype, the level from which most narrative works derive their power. (Hamlet, Oedipus, anyone?) Ideas are only that – ideas – abstract vessels into which artists (actors, directors, designers) pour the wine of their personal expression. Daddy issues are, in fact, common in Burton’s movies – see, for example, Edward Scissorhands or Big Fish (the latter scripted by John August, who also adapted Charlie) – and they move us in Charlie due to the genuine emotional investment of Burton, Depp, and Lee in the underlying archetype.
A Children's HellFrom an even more archetypal point of view, Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory is a children's version of Hell in which sinners are first tempted, and then grotesquely punished for yielding to temptation. If the chocolate factory is Hell, then Willy Wonka is the Prince of Hell, aka Lucifer, aka Satan, and the diminutive Oompa Loompas are his demon servants. In Dante’s Inferno, sinners were buried up to their necks in shit. One doesn’t have to be a confirmed Freudian to see the parallel to gluttonous Augustus Gloop being drowned in a river of chocolate (above).
Instead of being tempted, little Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) acts as Wonka’s Redeemer, teaching him the value of familial love which Wonka had previously rejected. Most significantly, Charlie mediates the reconciliation between Wonka, i.e., the Fallen Angel Lucifer, with his dad, who in this reading of the film would obviously be God the Father.
A delicious, if somewhat subversive, Christian parable. What more could one want from a kiddie movie?
6 comments:
Great point on calling out this film as a children's version of hell - spot on! Your screen shot is perfect as well.
Appropos of the other commentator, I found the movie itself cloying and unwatchable, like all of Burton's stuff since "Ed Wood".
My kids loved it, though, and hate the older version, which I loved as a kid but now also find creepy and dreary as an adult.
Oh well. There's no accounting for taste.
I think your idea of the children's hell is very good too. I disagree with Erik H, however, and really liked the film a lot. For me it was mostly an excuse to gather up a group of entertaingly awful children and give them excuses to act out in fabulously self-absorbed ways, like everyone in the audience has at one time or another (is there anyone who could in truth ever identify with a pure putz like Charlie?). They were so wonderful that in the end I just hated to see the little nasty creatures get their comeuppance. Even thinking about Veruka Salt standing outside Willie Wonka's factory, bored, saying, "Make time go faster daddy!" In her fake upper-class accent brings on a good giggle. When Wonka shows one of the boys--the violent destructive kid who does nothing all day long but play bloody video games--a wonderous device he can use to teleport candy, the kid rightly points out that this is a truly stuipid use for such a marvelous invention! I find it sad that the film feels it necessary to punish the honesty, curiosity, and individual assertiveness of the kids in favor of Charlie (though at least he plays it wihout being too cloying, I thought, despite the phony virtuosity) who struck me as being so squashed by his circumstances that he wasn't even capable of expressing a mean opinion, or one note of self-pity. He's always ever so polite, and it's creepy. As a former, self-indulgent, gluttonous layabout, I say bad children of the world unite; take down the system! Therefore, I suppose that for me the father/son issues, while elegantly constructed, drolly acted and filmed, didn't mean much.
Interesting analysis. I've never liked Tim Burton's work since "Ed Wood." Just a personal taste thing - I don't like his visual style at all. The father/son representations in Burton's plots are something I've never thought about before...thanks for the insight.
I grew up with Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka. My sisters and I saw it every year on TV. To me, that film was about learning how to restrain your appetites lest gluttony get the best of you. Was that version further from the book than Burton's?
Thanks for the comments, Erik, Joseph, and GLI.
Re Burton's work since Ed Wood - I also found Big Fish to be cloying and overly sentimental - same father and son issues as Charlie, except the father and son pair played by Albert Finney and Billy Crudup weren't nearly as interesting and compelling as Lee and Depp in Charlie. Which just goes to show what I was saying before - that what's important isn't the idea so much as how it is realized.
Burton's Planet of the Apes remake was nearly a total disaster - except for some of the Ape City sequences. Significantly, one of the sequences in Apes that did work was a scene between Charlton Heston and Tim Roth - both in ape makeup - as a father and son.
You're right, Joseph, about Burton's irrepresible sympathy for the sociopathic. That's one of the reasons why Sweeney Todd is good, and why Mars Attacks! - my favorite of the post-Ed Wood Burtons - is even better.
Aak! Aak!
Sorry, I didn't mean to flame you in my first post.
What you say about the children's version of Hell is quite appropriate, certainly. In the original film the point was made better, I feel, in that Charlie was definitely tempted (by Fizzy Lifting Drinks) but repented and made amends (by giving back his Gobstopper rather than hand it over to Slugworth) and was forgiven. He wasn't such an insufferably goody, in other words, but more like an actual kid.
You know, the original film re-worked the material to fit a "daddy issues" theme that worked better, IMO. Namely, the character of Charlie's dad was left out of the film, thus to strengthen the bond between Wonka and Charlie.
I need to watch this movie again, perhaps my opinion will change. But it was extremely disheartening to me that Burton couldn't let Wonka be the sui generis madman/magician he was supposed to be. Burton couldn't believe in Wonka, couldn't just let him BE...Burton needed to pathologize, deconstruct and explain him away, and thus rob him of his allure. Cynical and sad.
No need to apologize, Seeing I. Your comments were and are thought-provoking, and resulted in the post above.
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