Book Movies

We had an open house this afternoon from 1:00 to 5:30, so, since I have been unable to get a hold of Julie since she went to Alabama for Mike's grandma's funeral, I decided to take myself out to a movie. Or rather, two movies.

First I went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I had dimly been enthusiastic to see this when it first came out, because I am one of those few souls that encountered Roald Dahl's book before I had ever seen the original movie, and the inconsistencies in that movie (foaming engines? Charlie and Grandpa Joe having to burp to stay alive? the golden geese?) always bugged the hell out of me, as did the simpering Anthony Newley music. And if anybody could get a decent version of a Roald Dahl book on the screen, surely that person would be Tim Burton? He had already done a credible if uneven job with James and the Giant Peach (the book that I point to for when I became, what is called, a reader. I actually made my grandfather get a library card, which cost six dollars since he lived outside the town limits, just so I could borrow and read that book for the umpteenth time. I still own a copy of it, and it still holds up as one of my very favorites.), so I had some hope that he would manage to do this book justice.

That hope turned out to be misplaced. It isn't that he didn't get the look right: certainly the factory is absolutely spot on, and the Buckets' shack has a sort of timeless, surreal decrepitude that corresponds pretty well to what I remember the book depicting. Charlie and Grandpa Joe are perfect, as well -- I always thought that the Joe in the first movie always looked a tad bit too robust for barely being able to leave the bed. Not so in this version.

Where the entire thing breaks down, unfortunately, is right with Willie Wonka himself. I know a lot of folks have never read the book, but Wonka in the book was much closer to Gene Wilder, even down to the illustrations. He was amiable and pleasant, weird but very much human, and always, it seemed, in control. I don't recall him as being emotionally stunted, an idiot savant seemingly completely incapable of sympathizing with anyone else. He was always slightly sadistic in a lazy sort of way, typified by Gene Wilder's delivery in the first movie of a wholly unconvincing plea for one of the kids to not do whatever it is they do: "No. Stop. Don't." But I always got the impression that he knew exactly what was going on, that he was three steps ahead of everyone else. I didn't feel like he was a maladjusted nitwit.

The Wonka family issues were also not in the book. This is the sort of syrupy, pseudo-psychological drivel that Dahl had little time for: he famously killed off the parents in James and the Giant Peach on the first page, and didn't really look back to that incident for the rest of that book. The fact that James eventually finds a new family for himself, and makes a new home for himself out of the giant peach pit in Central Park, is not emphasized in the book in the patronizing, up-with-people way that it might be played now. In the book, Dahl didn't care about Wonka's backstory, or about explaining away his peculiarities with dime-store psychodrama. He knew that to explain Wonka was to diminish the power, the mysteriousness of his figure. When Wonka has his flashbacks, the film gets derailed: Charlie's still the name in the title, but it suddenly becomes Willie's movie. As such, it becomes a lot less engaging: Charlie is portrayed with some reality and depth, the perfect vehicle to explore the cartoonish chocolate factory.

That said, I really didn't see Michael Jackson in Johnny Depp's performance. In some of the goofy spectacles, maybe, including the pyrotechnic animatronic puppet show that introduces him to his visitors, but that has as much to do with Tim Burton's imagination as it does with Michael Jackson's weirdness. But even the Tim Burton imagination that is on display is on auto-pilot: it's all stuff we've seen before in his other, better movies. It is stuff that he can do with his eyes closed, and sometimes that's exactly what it feels like. I watched Ed Wood the other day, and where the comparison is striking: that movie had something unique, something deeply felt, at its core. This movie, ultimately, did not. This has been a complaint of mine about most of the movies he's directed since Ed Wood, but I had hoped this time would be different. Alas, it proved not to be.

I think I'm just going to read the book again.

* * * * *

The other movie I saw was War of the Worlds. I went into this movie slightly against my will; I only decided to see it because the only other movie starting at that time was The Dukes of Hazzard. I didn't really expect much, and just figured it would kill a couple hours.

I really liked this movie. Maybe this as much a result of low expectations as it is any other cause, but I really enjoyed it. And I actually enjoyed Tom Cruise, as loony as he seems to be whenever he's off the silver screen, attacking Oprah and Brooke Shields or Joey Potter or whatever. Every so often, you are reminded that yes, the man can act when called upon. Well, OK, not that often. But I did like Eyes Wide Shut.

Some of the scenes were honestly harrowing. The stuff when the tripod first appears, vaporizing people as Cruise is running madly through the cloud of dust that are their only remains, is packed full of 9/11 resonance. The flaming train barreling in front of our heroes as they walk into a town. Certainly the scene of Dakota Fanning at the river. The blood-webbing draped across the landscape like so much garland on a dead Christmas tree. They have the surreal clarity, and the powerlessness, of a nightmare. I found it rather powerful. A little relentless, too.

The only problems I had are pretty minor. Well, except for the ending, (not the end of the tripods, which is reasonably famous, and I'm not worries about spoiling that so much) but of the final fate of the protagonists. I also found myself wondering about the aftermath, the survivors living on with the infrastructure of their cities destroyed, presumably the government in Washington destroyed. How do they create new lives for themselves? Not to mention the psychological toll: I imagine Dakota Fanning's character being plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of her life. Hell, I imagine everybody dealing with that. The happy ending is happy only when one is faced with the alternative.

I plan to read this book, too: I have the hardcover edition with illustrations by Edward Gorey. Bonus! I'm curious to know how much of the book (aside from the basic structure, the beginning and end, and the tripods themselves) made it into the movie. I get the impression, between what I know of the book, the movie, the radio production, and the second League of Extraordinary Gentleman series, that people tend to adapt it pretty freely. We'll see.