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September 9, 2005
menace recontextualised
i didn't want to add to the extant glut of noise on the latest whiz-bang tim burton eye-popper, but my love of the original and mix of +ive and -ive emotions at the new interpretation have got the better of me.
to my eye, the poster above owes a fairly obvious debt to 'a clockwork orange' - i hadn't noticed before sitting on the tram today, looking across bourke street in the city centre thinking 'shit, that looks far more confronting from a distance ...'. and, true enough, when you get up close to it, depp's wonka wears a far more congenial expression than the one that's eerily similar from a distance to little alex's mug on the kubrick poster.
but that's where i think the new version of CATCF actually fails - it's far too *nice*, and glosses over the very eccentricities that make the characters in Dahl's story burn so brightly in the imagination.
it's worth a look for the sheer cinematic glory of it all anyway, but as an exercise in story-telling? nup.
i went to a midnight screening in a beautiful art deco cinema in a cute melbourne suburb (yarraville) and stuffed myself on lollies and ice-cream; couldn't have hoped for a more romantic setting, or a viewer more ready to be swept away ...
but it didn't happen. depp is, i think, a vastly under-rated comic actor, but the attempt to humanise and psychologise wonka by creating a back-story for him that isn't in dahl's original falls well wide of the directorial mark, skill or no skill: we don't need - or, more importantly *want* - to understand wonka. he doesn't have to be *like us*, he's a candy magician! we're intrigued by him and want to get inside his factory precisely so we can see how the genius operates - we don't need a lame, half-baked and simplistic post-freudian explanation of an all-too predictable childhood trauma!
the script adaptors should have taken their own aphorism a little further: at one point charlie explains to one of the Bad Kids (a sort of candy Muggle, to borrow an ironically handy metaphor from an inferior kids author...) that "candy doesn't have to make sense/have a point, that's why it's candy". to wit: eccentric candy magicians don't need to be explained or humanised, just do their odd/incomprehensible/beautiful/frustrating thang.
wonka's mad edge is never even touched upon, much less explored - the boat scene from the 34 year old original canes the newie for shock value, and there are no psychotic outbursts that border on aggressive from burton's sugary svengali. no last-minute test of a small child's mettle, no leering, noirish, genuinely creepy slugworth possibly lurking around the next/any darkened corner, a wondrously malevolent personification of corporate conspiracies and cold war angst, that, while locking the '71 film in its era, also conveniently added to the weight of a delightfully off-kilter good-guys vs bad guys subtext - the cornerstone of many a fine children's narrative.
also, there is utterly NO group dynamic amongst the factory tourists. in the original flick, however hideous the Bad Kids and their Shoddy Parenting Parents were, there was still some sense that our protagonist, Charlie, and they were All In This Together. not so this time 'round. the bad kids mouth their lines, look aesthetically perfect as any burton castings normally do, and are ultimately, utterly forgettable.
but the hallucinogenic art direction, fluid pacing and the pyrotechnic exuberance of the whole thing do astound. maybe not enough to distract from the superior 'vibe' of its predecessor. the jury's out on the oompa-loompas; the current film uses dahl's original poems/text, but mostly set to over-choreographed and cacophonously mixed doof that, while amusing, make said verse barely intelligible, despite the natural charisma of actor deep roy (as the entire tribe of oompa-loompas).
so. not a bad movie at all, just lacking in the exact areas the original shined, allowing both films a certain space to be valued in context.
watch the current version to pop your eyes, and the first to warm your heart.
Posted by reuben at September 9, 2005 6:33 PM