**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear, Julie Dawn Cole, and Leonard Stone
Directed by Mel Stuart & written for the screen by Roald Dahl, from his novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”
1981
98 min G
I remember in elementary school sitting in a big circle on the floor and having “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” read to us by the teacher. It took days. Then she read “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,” the sequel. That also took days. Then one day the entire grade got together and it took us an entire day to watch the Gene Wilder version of “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Asexual, poofy-haired teachers hovered over us with arms crossed. We still had recess and lunch, and more time was eaten up by class-by-class roll calls and seating arrangements on the floor. And maybe a little bit of the “quiet game” was played. But it still amazes me that the better part of a six-hour school day could be consumed by a 98 minute feature. I’m sure the teachers loved it.
I mention all this because, while many other former children have fond memories of “Willie Wonka,” my fondness ends with the warm, “passed-over-by-the-angel-of-death” feeling that came with every blow-off day at school. I still get that feeling when I discover I’ll have a blow-off day at work. I can feel the tension going out of my arms and legs. Anyway, the movie left me confused when I was little. I think I now understand some of the concepts at work behind “Willie Wonka,” such as the idea that good children’s stuff shouldn’t just be sugary, but it should be challenging, a little confusing, and creepy. A prime example is the island of lost donkey boys in “Pinnochio.” So, with the forthcoming remake, I decided to give the movie another try.
Is this a beloved children’s classic or an utter train wreck? We might imagine that children would welcome the character of Willie Wonka after having to tolerate so many bland platitudes in the family films that lazy parents stick in the VCR when they can’t find a baby sitter. To wit, Willie is childish, lies, hates children, hates parents, owns piles of cool stuff, and provides sugar. But I remember thinking he was a prick when I was a kid. I played that my GI Joes and Transformers stormed his stupid factory and showed him what they thought of his smug “I-know-something-you-don’t” attitude. They wasted his ass.
Played by Gene Wilder, in one of the most intriguing performances ever given in a children’s movie, Willie also says some of the most subversive things in the history of cinema: “I didn’t want to leave my factory to a grown-up because he would do it his way. I wanted to leave my factory to a child, so he would do it MY way.” “Do you know the story of the man who got everything he always wanted? He lived happily ever after!” The platitudes children are accustomed to hearing contradict these two statements. They’re used to hearing “be yourself and don’t try to be anyone else” and “the grass is always greener.” Is “Willie” sincere, or is it a “SouthPark”-style reversal, in which we laugh not because we agree with Willie but because he is saying the opposite of what we usually hear?
In brief summary, the movie follows a group of children who win a worldwide contest to tour the factory of the world’s greatest candymaker, who is the creepy recluse of the title. The film’s budget is a little more apparent now than when you were seven-years-old, but it is still a fine production. The Wonka Factory is as much funhouse as a place of business, rendered in the same unsettling colors as a clown. The highpoint is the chocolate waterfall, surrounded by a candy-filled garden that would get Bosch’s seal of approval.
By leading the children to traps one-by-one and only warning them too late, Willie is more of a Satan figure than a hero. Incidentally, “Willie” is one of Marilyn Manson’s favorite films; I read that in a magazine before the pop culture machine got tired of Manson and discarded him. Then there’s the garden where Willie tells the children they can eat almost anything. He doesn’t specify what that “almost” entails until it’s too late. Another supernatural figure is at least sporting enough to tell us exactly what we can and can’t eat when we’re in his garden.
And then there’s the spooky guy whispering in the children’s ears, who turns out to be in Willie’s employ. This character—one of Willie’s thugs disguised as Slugworth, a competing candy maker—was created for the film because director Mel Stuart felt there was no villain. But, in many ways, isn’t Willie the villain, only he’s not acknowledged as one? Yet, for all his villainy and moral reverse action, Willie is surrounded by the Oompah-Lompahs, freakish little orange-skinned dudes who sing about the moral messages obvious in the failings of one child after another. Children who lack discipline suffer fates appropriate to their brattiness.
Based on the book by the notoriously dirty-minded satirist Roald Dahl, “Willie Wonka” almost plays like a satire on consumerism. (I’ve read Roald Dahl’s “Switch Bitch” and I can say with absolute certainty that “Willie” is not a coincidental name.) The reclusive candy manufacturer is credited early on, in song, as making life worthwhile, and when he announces that five lucky children will visit his factory, all other news and world events are blotted out like an eclipse. Dickensian poverty row lad Charlie (Peter Ostrum) wishes and hopes and prays for Willie, and when his prayers are answered his crippled grandfather (Albertson) can suddenly walk again.
I qualify this satire with “almost” because there’s hardly a second in the movie that doesn’t seem sincere: happy music plays when our poor Charlie is lifted into the heavens by the consumer gods to have his own dreams stamped out and replaced by Willie’s. Yikes. If not for the happy music, you could very well think that the movie ends with a crazy middle-aged pedophile, after successfully murdering four children, will now seek immortality by turning his newly-adopted prodigy into his clone. Double yikes.
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