Apart from his love of sweet temptation, there’s a sense of dread that permeates Roald Dahl’s stories for adults. And, while he waters this down in the children’s books, it’s still lurking just below the surface. He creates fantastic villains, but somehow his role models don’t seem to quite fit the mould. All of which sounds a bit like director Tim Burton, who likewise prefers to tell his story from the shadows.
His new movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is the story of a small boy (Freddie Highmore) who finds a golden ticket to visit the world’s greatest chocolate factory. The factory’s chocolatier, Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp), is secretly on the verge of a nervous breakdown and has decided to hold a competition to choose a successor.
Burton’s film succeeds Mel Stuart’s 1971 sugar-coated attempt with Gene Wilder as the bug-eyed chocolatier. In that movie, Wilder seems to be on the verge of apoplexy as he tries to outdo the tacky special effects, but he does claim the role as his own, which is more than can be said of Depp in Burton’s version.
Depp always plays Johnny Depp playing a role — there is an element of caricature and ironic distance in his portrayals, which can work exceptionally well, as in his Pirates of the Caribbean turn, which he admitted was an impersonation of The Rolling Stones’s piratical guitarist Keith Richards. Depp works less well when his role is not quite so overtly performative, as in Chocolat, where he’s just required to be sultry.
It’s not clear who he’s impersonating in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — some have claimed it’s Marilyn Manson, others that it’s Michael Jackson. He seems closer to the latter, with the whiff of twistedness intact. This extreme stylisation may irk some, but the real star of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is its look and its special effects, and the movie is intoxicating.
The design is breathtaking — the town looks like it’s a part of a giant machine connected to Wonka’s factory, which looms above it. There are wonderfully choreographed dance sequences of Wonka’s employees, the Oompa Loompas (all played by a man called Deep Roy who, incidentally, is in Return of the Jedi as an uncredited character called Droopy McCool).
Dahl’s neat denouement isn’t good enough for Burton, who can’t resist tinkering with the story. There are the flashbacks to Wonka’s childhood with his mad dentist father (Christopher Lee) — a very Burton touch. But then again, these stark fictional characters need a little filling out.