7-25-05, 10:48 am
The story is familiar. A poor little boy named Charlie Bucket (played by Freddie Highmore) dreams of little else other than what it is like inside Willy Wonka’s fabulous but extremely secret chocolate factory. In this regard, Charlie’s imagination is fueled by the memories of his grandfather, a laid off Wonka worker who holds no grudge, incidentally, against his former boss who fired the entire workforce on the suspicion of industrial espionage.
Tim Burton’s well-crafted film is shot through with his characteristic oddities, dark humor, and perverse narrative elements. As expected, Johnny Depp’s skillful presentation of a weird and disturbed (and disturbing) character will earn him much praise. Viewers are treated to special performances by Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, Christopher Lee as Willy Wonka’s estranged father, and Annasophoia Robb as Violet Beauregarde.
While comparisons of characters and performances to the original version may be unfortunate, they are inevitable. In Burton’s piece, Veruca Salt, who quite literally stole the show in the original version, fell flat. Gene Wilder’s magnificent portrayal of the chocolate capitalist is more poignant but also less odd – character traits out of place in a Burton epic.
What is especially appealing about this version of this classic story, aside from several excellent acting performances, however, is rather on the superficial level. The songs are cute, the set is gorgeous, the tale is unique, and key parts are outrageously funny. This may be worth nine dollars, but I leave that up to you, dear reader.
The subtext of this film – most interesting to me – is the simulation of capitalist society in the era of globalization. I’ve already mentioned that Wonka fired his workers because he believed they had sold his ideas to his competitors. Echoing the anti-labor practices of contemporary capitalists, Wonka’s drive for monopoly leads him to a remote corner of the globe to find replacement workers – the Oompa-loompas.
Believing they live in a wretched country, Wonka offers the Oompa-loompas the comforts of his factory in exchange for their labor. Of course his apparent generosity is undercut by his complete domination of them: they bow when he gives orders and at one point Wonak experimented on 20 of them before deciding that the candy he was testing was too dangerous for general consumption.
What is disturbing about this picture is the complete isolation of the Bucket family in their time of need. Their house, which is literally falling over, is completely segregated from the cookie-cutter homes of the industrial city. When Mr. Bucket is laid off, he has nowhere to turn except the hope of finding a new job – well that and Charlie’s dream of finding a golden ticket.
Further, when Wonka laid off Grandpa Joe 15 years before the action of the movie, his depression and feelings of uselessness pushed him to retire to his bed permanently. Upon his return to the factory with Charlie, he expresses no animosity and only sucks up to Wonka by asking if Wonka remembers him, vigorously denying that Wonka had any reason to mistrust him or think he stole candy recipes to sell to Wonka’s competitors.
So in the end, I really don’t see this as a child’s movie as much as it is a surreal and perverse representation of reality under capitalism. Working people often do, unfortunately, turn inward and blame themselves when their lives and fortunes are threatened by the whims, paranoia, and profit motives of capitalists. They do often rely on whimsical and unrealistic dreams of 'striking it rich' or managing to get into the good graces of the rich in order to pull themselves out of the despair of poverty or the grind of daily life.
But fortunately this isn’t the whole story. Working people can fight back and do have more to hope for than silly dreams of golden tickets and candy-coated fantasies.
--Contact Clara West at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net.
