A Pilgrim’s Digression

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I surprise even myself when I write that the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie is better than the original, high praise considering how beloved is the original among adults of my generation.

I should quickly add that both films are good films. In the first half-hour or so, the more recent of the two films seemed like a mere updating of its predecessor, but as the movie progressed its differences made it stand out clearly from the 1971 version. Its differences are actually what make it superior.

Whether these differences are the result of Tim Burton sticking closely to the book, I don’t know; I haven’t read the book. I suspect that Burton does in fact stick close to the book, however, because the added depth is so reminiscent of Dahl’s work, in which parents are often seen as cruel or foreboding, or else dead and thus appropriate for idealization.

In short, what Burton’s film brings us that is left out of the 1971 film is an explanation for Wonka’s sociopathic behavior. Wonka had an oppressive father who was a dentist (portrayed by Christopher Lee). These glimpses into Wonka’s past are depicted in flashback, usually stirred by something Charlie has said or asked.

At one point, coming out of one of these reveries, Wonka says, “Sorry, I was having a flashback.” Mike Teavee’s father says, “Do you have those often?” The comment is both a double entendre, since “flashback” can refer to drug use, and an acknowledgement of the artificiality of the use of flashback in film. Burton hints at a consciousness of the medium in which he works, even at the risk of destroying the illusion created for the viewer. He does so even more strongly in the Mike Teavee scene, in which Mike is teleported not onto a blank TV screen, as in the original, but onto various television shows, films (including the ape scene in Kubrick’s 2001), and commercials, until finally plucked from limbo by his father.

Besides what is added�including a more complex ending�there are also several things missing from this film that may or may not irritate the lover of the original. Gone is the scene in which Charlie and Grandpa drink the fizzy drink and float up to the fan. In the original, this is initially used as an excuse by Wonka not to give Charlie his prize. Since the ending of the new film is different, the scene was extraneous.

Also gone is the subplot with Slugworth. Grandpa Joe worked for Wonka before the factory closed due to industrial espionage by Slugworth and others; this is the only mention of Wonka’s competitors.

Gone are the old Oompa Loompa songs. This might be the most drastic change in the entire film. However, I think the new songs are just as good as the old. Stylistically, the songs change from character to character; e.g., Augustus Gloop’s song is more like the Oompa Loompa songs we expect, while Veruca Salt’s theme song is a Beatles-inspired song about making new friends in the garbage chute into which she is unceremoniously dumped. The song lyrics were written by Dahl himself, so that may assuage any grief one feels for the absence of the music we know and love.

The Oompa Loompas themselves are all played by the same actor, Deep Roy, and one of the treats of the film is a flashback in which we learn how Wonka discovered Loompa Land and brought the Oompa Loompas back to England to work for him.

Other differences: instead of a golden egg-laying goose, Veruca wants (now!) a squirrel from Wonka’s nut-sorting room. As she runs down to the work floor where squirrels are sorting nuts, Wonka delivers the funniest line of the film: “Don’t touch their nuts! It makes them crazy.”

Further, rather than the mind-numbed, violent little boy of the original, Mike Teavee is portrayed as a superior-acting genius addicted to violent video games. Through mathematics, he figures out a way to win a Golden Ticket by buying only one candy bar, but despite his abilities, he is incapable of expressing any positive feelings whatsoever. In the end, Wonka lets him choose the next stop on the tour, and thus to choose his own fate. Unlike the original, in which Mike’s addiction to TV was his undoing, it is the new Mike’s interest in science that leads him to the teleporter. However, his survival almost to the end of the factory tour suggests that Dahl and Burton may have intended him, more than any of the other children, to be perhaps the true Doppelganger for today’s generation of youths. He is more a counterpoint to Charlie’s goodness and love of family than any of the other children.

Depp’s Wonka is if anything more twisted than Wilder’s. Wilder’s Wonka had this evil twinkle in his eye which betrayed the contempt in which he held the children and their parents. Depp’s Wonka sneers as he sarcastically replies to comments the ungrateful children are making, and he looks as if he will vomit when he has to say the word “parent.” Rather than a hatred of children, which is what comes through in the original film, Wonka’s pathological dislike of families and adults is what becomes most apparent in the new film.

As a lesson in the ill effects of both overindulgence and (in the case of Wonka’s own childhood) a strict Puritanism, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is as good as the original film. The society depicted in the film is one in which poverty, such as that in which Charlie lives, cohabits with lavish wealth and rampant consumerism. The suggestion of the film is that only hardship can breed a child of strong moral character. It makes one wonder. If the underlying message is true, what hope is there for the children of America, who hardly know what it is to be denied something they desire?