The Three Faces of Willy

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men."

-Horace

Last night completed our cinematic trifecta of Willie Wonka movies.

For those unfamiliar with the subject, it all begins with the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, written by Roald Dahl in 1964. The book follows its young protagonist, Charlie Bucket, on an amazing adventure as he and four other children find golden tickets in their Wonka chocolate bars that entitle them to a lifetime supply of chocolate and a tour of the factory. The book and I are the same age, and I read it when I was maybe seven.

The same year I made my way through the book, the first film version arrived in theaters. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory featured Gene Wilder as the eccentric genius Willy Wonka, as well as no-kidding dwarfs as his factory workers, the orange-faced Oompa Loompas.

I recall being enchanted with the movie as a kid, and memes from the film survive to this day.

Fast forward thirty-four years. In 2005 a remake was released, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, featuring Johnny Depp at the apogee of his career as a somewhat more menacing version of Wonka.

And, of course, this being a Tim Burton film, it was all pretty dark, in color and in tone. I watched it with the boys, and recall them loving the film.

Most recently Hollywood gave us a prequel to the first two, Wonka, which follows a young Willy Wonka as he returns from traveling the world to introduce a generic European audience to his magical confectionary products.

For some reason, the other night I got it in my head that it might be fun to watch Wonka, and in one of the miracles of our modern age I pulled the movie up on our television for a mere $3.99. We settled in behind our TV trays hopeful for an uplifting couple hours.

We made it maybe twenty minutes. What was wrong with the film? Nothing I can put my finger on. We noticed right away the politically correct diversity of the population of what purported to be some nineteenth century European village. I get that times change, and this is a fantasy after all, but it felt a little like whitewashing (play on words intended) the past. Plus, there was a saccharine sweetness that was far less engaging than the mirthful menace in the first two movies.

So we gave up, and turned the dial on the time machine back two decades, to the Depp Wonka.

I have to say the 2005 film has aged pretty well, with great special effects and an amazing performance by Depp, who's charming and a little frightening all at the same time. That seems consistent with what I recall from the book. And all of those Tim Burton movies feel like a time and a place, like every day in his world is Halloween and he's letting us in on some sort of great cosmic joke. It was a fun way to spend a couple hours.

But Gene Wilder's performance tops them all. What's different about that old movie? I guess for starters you never quite manage to like Depp's Wonka; he's just too weird. Wilder plays the role of a world-weary wise man, watching the parade of human folly come through his gates with just a hint of wistful sadness. He doesn't particularly enjoy the disastrous ends of most of his guests: in some ways it's almost like a deity who creates a paradise and shakes his head in disappointment, but not surprise, as the folks for whom he created this Eden misuse it and are destroyed (well, no one really dies, but they certainly get hilariously removed from the tour, one-by-one).

The best part of the 1971 movie, which P and I noticed for the first time last night, is that it is filled with allusions and quotations from classical literature, spanning the centuries from Horace through Shakespeare, to Oscar Wilde and Ogden Nash. I found this blog cataloguing the quotes here:

http://www.kentonlarsen.com/2012/08/the-literary-allusions-of-willy-wonka.html

A title character who pulls lines from the Merchant of Venice, lines that fit perfectly in context? It's not something you'd find today, unfortunately. The audience has changed; someone raised on Marvel comic book movies doesn't have much patience for Keats or Coleridge, and likely wouldn't recognize any of it as coming straight from a tenth grade English class. Do they even teach this stuff anymore? Likely not. What a pity, for all involved.

We awoke to 57 degrees this morning, too cool almost to read the paper on the front porch, although I certainly made the effort. The weather folks say it won't break seventy today, which suits this summer weary old Southerner just fine, thank you. I'll smoke a whole chicken today while I churn through work, then go with the beautiful Peggy Wylds to a neighborhood reception at Amo Houghton's old house a block up the hill from here. But for this impending sense of doom I've had hanging over me since the alarm went off, it would be shaping up to be a good day. Maybe that will pass.