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Gooey chocolate goodness! *

Writer's picture: Nicholas HodgsonNicholas Hodgson

 

Once in a blue moon a writer stumbles upon such a good idea for a story that it keeps resonating through the pop-culture ether-verse, even long after they are dead.

Romeo and Juliet’s star-crossed lovers – doomed to fall in love and then just doomed.

King Arthur rising from poverty to regal power by pulling a sword from a stone (the original ‘the chosen one’ story).

And a chocolate maker who sends out five golden tickets – in order that he might find the right child to inherit his kingdom of sweetness.

 

Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964. Next year the story will be sixty years old!

That’s as old as The Beatles.

Doctor Who.

And colour television.

 

And yet this story… whimsically told in a charming children’s book, continues to captivate generations of children for years to come.

 

And inspire big screen adaptations.

 

Like the new movie WONKA, out in cinemas now (not a paid promotion) which tells the story of Willy Wonka and how he became the legendary chocolate mogul.

Of course, WONKA is not the first time the famous candy man has appeared on screen. The first – Willy Wonka the Chocolate Factory was released over fifty years ago in 1971! A remake from acclaimed director Tim Burton was released in 2005 – renamed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This year’s Wonka features Timothee Chalamet as a younger version of the fabled chocolatier, the 1971 version features Gene Wilder playing the same part and in 2004 it was Johnny Depp’s turn.

 

So what is it about this story of golden tickets and dreams coming true that keeps film-makers (and audiences) coming back again and again?

 

I believe it comes down to one crucial element. The heart of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the evolving and fascinating relationship between Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket.

And how it neatly serves as an inverse of the usual ‘student/ master’ relationship in classic fables.

You see Willy Wonka is your classic man-child. Willy Wonka is shown as a man who has never really grown up and instead devotes his life to becoming something a child would dream of – being a magical chocolate maker in a land of candy and sweetness.

His refusal to take on adult responsibilities or even adult roles – such as marrying, having a family or even taking care of the workers in his factory. He is selfish to the extreme – remember this is a man of immense wealth and success who fired every worker at his factory and replaced them with what looks uncomfortably like slave laborers.

 

Willy Wonka is a spoiled child who has gotten everything he wanted and yet it is never enough.

 

Whereas Charlie Bucket, while a child, is actually more adult than Willy.

Think about it. Charlie goes out to work to earn money for his family. He is constantly thinking of others and his devotion to his family and loved ones is fierce and unwavering. Roald Dahl sets up the other four children who find the golden tickets as deeply flawed in their own ways, and as thoroughly nasty children who deserve their comeuppance. But they also serve to contrast with selfless, kind-hearted, decent and utterly deserving Charlie Bucket.

Which is why for the first part of the story we root for Charlie to find a golden ticket and to have a chance at not only fame and fortune – but to have a childhood.

 


But once Charlie and Willy Wonka meet – the dynamic shifts. Charlie has a serious case of hero worship of Willy and when the tour starts, he is dazzled by everything Willy shows them. But as the children drop off one by one, and Willy is cruelly indifferent to it, Charlie begins to see a different side to Willy.

And this is something I believe the film versions succeed in illustrating more than Dahl’s original children’s novel (yes I know – I write children’s books too and I am a champion for Dahls work but I’m not wrong).

Willy Wonka is a damaged, traumatised man and it takes Charlie’s maturity and steadfast kindness to bring the story to a natural conclusion.

 

Each of the film versions offers something new to say about Charlie and Willy.

In the 1971 film version one of my favourite scenes from early in the film demonstrates exactly what I was saying – Charlie is trying to be an adult and temper his own expectations about finding a golden ticket. There’s a short scene in the laundrette where his mother works which illustrates this perfectly.



CHARLIE: Well in case you're wondering if it'll be me, it won't be. Just in case you're wondering, you can count me out.

MRS. BUCKET: Charlie . . . there are a hundred billion people in this world, and only five of them will find Golden Tickets. Even if you had a sackful of money you probably wouldn't find one. And after this contest is over, you'll be no different from the billions of others who didn't find one.

 

What eleven-year-old kid tempers his own expectations like that?

The answer can only be Charlie because he is the most adult person in the whole film (even Grandpa Joe makes some questionable decisions early on).

 

(It’s a pity that Peter Ostrom who played Charlie chose not to pursue an acting career. This scene in particular is a good illustration of his natural skill)

 

Likewise at the end of the film it is Charlie’s inherent moral certainty which wins the day. When he puts the everlasting gobstopper back, despite Grandpa Joe’s angry declaration that he is going to ruin Willy Wonka, (“you’re an inhuman monster!” – Grandpa’s not wrong in that respect) it proves once more that Charlie alone is the right person upon which to bet the future.



(Take note of the décor in Wonka’s office – all the furnishings are cut in half because Willy is only half a man).

 

The 2005 Tim Burton version, Johnny Depp’s performance makes it even clear that Wonka is a damaged man. We see flashbacks of his childhood with his overbearing, worlds best dentist, father and he has an almost psychopathic lack of empathy for the children as they fall into the various traps he set for them through the factory and certainly appears he doesn’t even like children.



And Charlie, again the voice of reason and maturity, starts to see Wonka for who he really is.

 

CHARLIE: Mr Wonka, why would Augustus’s name already be in the Oompa Lompa song? Unless they were…

 

WILLY: Improvision is a parlour trick. Anyone can do it.

 

Of course, the Tim Burton version inverses the traditional ending as well – by having Charlie turn down the offer to inherit the factory because it would mean having to leave his family. Charlie once again proving that he has the moral certainty of a fully functioning adult – something that completely blindsides Willy Wonka who couldn’t conceive of Charlie making such a choice.

 


Of course in Tim Burton’s film we do find our way to a happy ending – but it’s Willy Wonka who has to evolve and mature, not Charlie, in order to get there.

 


In this year’s Wonka, there is no Charlie – of course, because the story it tells is a prequel which gives us the origin of the much-loved chocolate factory. And here’s where it gets really interesting – because in Paul King’s version (and Chalamet’s wonderful performance), Wonka IS Charlie.

 

At least he has the same inherent goodness and moral certainty that Charlie demonstrates in the original story and the adaptations.

 

Willy Wonka in this origin story comes to an unnamed city to make his fortune as a chocolate maker. Right from the opening number we are presented with Willy as a fundamentally good person.



Even when Willy is trapped in indentured servitude by an unscrupulous laundry lady (the polar opposite of Charlies sweet mother from the 1971 film and wonderfully wicked performance by Olivia Coleman), he does not lose his optimism and decency, instead inventing machines to make everyone’s lives better and to enable him to still sell chocolate.

 


And of course in a neat reversal of the original film, there is a young orphan girl in this film who Wonka befriends and of course changes her life for the better (through chocolate).



The real question at the end of Wonka is how does Willy go from being deeply optimistic, kind, caring and empathic to the needs of others to being the selfish recluse of the original story?

From Chalamet’s sunny performance to Johnny Depp’s wickedly disturbed and damaged individual?

Wonka offers no answer to that question but were they to make a sequel showing that transformation (in some ways on a par with Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark-side of the force in Star Wars) - I’m there for that.


And of course the redemption story too. Because in this day and age the idea of a billionaire man-child being taught a moral lesson by a child and becoming a better person because of it would be absolutely strumdidilyumptiously wonkaful.

 

So long as there's lots more catchy songs!


*I was contemplating titling this blog entry 'The Three Willies". For what I hope are obvious reasons, I chose not to.

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