Willy Loves Himself

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2005)

Willy Wonka, a disturbed, man-child genius, creates magic with (chocolate) candy. At the story's beginning, sublime sweets are his compensation for a sad childhood that was ruined by a scientific father who puts ideas over and above affection (see "Peeping Tom" for a parallel).
At the start of the famous tour of Wonka's human-devoid factory, which introduces five "lucky" children to the surpassing creativity of imagination-in-isolation, we meet a disturbingly strange individual. Willy doesn't know how to be with people because, strictly speaking, he is not himself a human -- at least not in the social sense. Such has been the extremity of his isolation that his links to other persons are strictly biological.
Without knowing it, the Burton-Depp Willy throws open the doors to the factory in order for Willy to start becoming human. His public desire to find an heir is just a cover for his deeper desire to enter the fellowship of social humanity before it's too late.
The cautionary tale dimensions of the story, wherein the movie fails most blatantly, depend upon the garish, one-dimensional vices of four of the children tourists and their culpable parents. Both Willy and the movie fail to identify the cold perfectionism of Willy's upbringing as the source of the heartless critique of gluttony, arrogance, egotism and aggression that send the four to their comeuppance. Since Willy is nearly a monster himself -- albeit a subtle, clever one -- it's only fitting that his tour group be peopled by monsters. Therefore, the humanity of the film and Willy's humanization, until the very end, lack the warmth of understanding and tolerance for human frailty that would put charm and goodness into creative counterbalance with the cautionary elements.
Charlie Bucket, a Dickensian good fellow and the fifth tourist, who is free of any discernible flaws, via staunch family values, delivers Willy's comeuppance, which disgraces his exquisite narcissism while humbling him into a reconciliation with father and, beyond that, introduces him into human fellowship.
This fairy tale, by merely upbraiding bratty children while sanctifying the everyman golden boy, plays out as a cold, intellectual exercise. What's needed is dramatic examination of fallible flesh and blood handled with knowing affection (see "Shrek").