Recently Seen: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Based on Roald Dahl's beloved story of the same name, this Tim Burton movie is visually inspired. It is bright candy-coloured rollicking good fun while being rather dark and disturbing at the same time. Standard Tim Burton, one might say.

Charlie Bucket lives with his parents and four grandparents in near-impoverishment in an unnamed town, most Dickensian in look but where people speak in a mix of English and American accents and the currency is apparently dollars. The family lives on cabbage soup and the meagre wages that Charlie's father earns as a cap-screwer in a toothpaste factory. They are poor, but delightfully cheery and loving. The early part of the movie, setting up Charlie's story and the charming dynamics of his family life, is my favourite.

In the same town is the chocolate factory of Willy Wonka, mysterious reclusive millionaire chocolatier. Wonka announces that five lucky children will be invited to tour the factory and one of them will win an extra special prize. The lucky five will be those who find five randomly placed Golden Tickets in Wonka Bars.

One by one, the winners are revealed to us in a series of hilarious media spots. They are the greedy Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, overly competitive Violet Bouregarde and TV-brat Mike Teavee. The fifth, of course, is Charlie.

These ill assortment of children, each with a guardian, gather at the gate of Wonka's factory. Charlie is accompanied by his grandfather, who had years ago worked in the Wonka factory, before it was closed down and later mysteriously reopened and resumed operations without any workers, apparently. From this point, the movie takes on a different tone altogether. We are introduced to Willy Wonka, a strange man in both appearance and behaviour. He brings us into his factory, run by the Oompa-Loompas, where we see many wonderous sights and a few disconcerting ones. The production and set designeers outdo themselves here.

One by one, the children encounter horrible fates until only Charlie is left. In the end, this is a morality fable for children and only Charlie has shown himself deserving of the reward that awaits him.

Roald Dahl was not a fuzzy writer. This story has a very dark edge, what with the rather horrific accidents that befall the four children. Tim Burton does not flinch at these scenes, which is to his credit. When the squirrels set themselves upon Veruca Salt, it was a true horror movie moment, minus the blood and gore. I also loved the scene with the cow being suspended above ground while being whipped by the Oompa-Loompas - to make whipped cream, of course. It is a bravura moment, so unpolitically correct that I half-thought that I had imagined it. I wonder what the animal rights activists have to say about that.

Wonka himself is not a nice character; he is meant to be strange, but surely, even Dahl could not have imagined as odd a creation as Johny Depp's Willy Wonka! Depp is a marvelous actor and an incredibly risk-taking one. Here, he chooses to play Wonka as a deeply weird eccentric who obviously hates children and does not quite know how to deal with people generally. The page-boy hair-cut is reminiscent of Michael Jackson, and some of the mannerisms could even be said to be based on the gloved one. Truth be told, I did not really see much of Michael Jackson in the portrayal; Depp's Wonka is less disingenuous, much more caustic and more genuinely disengaged from people. This performance of Depp's is never less than interesting, altogether unsettling and yet, strangely sympathetic.

As memorable as Depp is, the performance that defines the heart of this movie is young Freddie Highmore, who plays Charlie. Has there ever been a child actor that is more likeable and endearing? His acting is so natural, so honest and unmannered, that Charlie becomes more than a caricature of a good boy with a sweet nature. When Highmore says that he will never give up his family, a scene that could have turned cheesy and over-sentimental in a million ways miraculously becomes genuinely moving and resonant with sincere emotions.

This is a well-made movie and a wonderful treat for the eyes. I felt that the pacing was uneven, with periods of longeur especially during the factory visit. At the start of the movie, we are introduced to the different children and in extended scenes with the Buckets, to root for young Charlie. Once we get to the factory, Charlie and his grandfather take a back-seat to Willy Wonka and the wonders of his factory. There is a discordance here that disrupts the narrative thread and our identification with the protagonist. It does become a different movie once Johny Depp comes into the picture and begins engineering the come-uppance of the more rotten kids. The episodic nature of the children's denouement contributed to the uneven pacing in this second half of the movie.

Suddenly, at the end, we are back in Charlie's world and Charlie's story. There is a tacked-on backstory for Willy Wonka, involving his dentist dad, that is resolved in these last few minutes. It seems unnecessary to me, an attempt at softening a character that is perhaps otherwise too unlikeable. This scripting decision perhaps underlines the main problem that Burton had with this story - to balance his own instincts for the macabre with the need to bring out the positive message of this children's morality tale. We'll never know, of course, but I think he could have succeeded without bringing in Wonka's parental issues. Depp would have brought the macabre in spades and Highmore would have supplied the moral message with aplomb.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Recently Seen: Angels in America

It took two years to get here, but finally HBO Asia has televised Angels In America. This is the long awaited and long-in-making screen adaptation of Tony Kushner's Tony Award winning plays - Angels in America: Millenium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika.

I saw all five hours plus within one day and was rather overwhelmed and initially, a little intimidated. This is fiercely erudite writing, a piece of work that wears its intelligence on its sleeves. Kushner was concerned with big themes and important ideas. As a viewer, one is challenged to look beneath what is said to discern what is meant.

The plays deal with gritty reality using the language of the theatre. It is ostensibly about AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. But Kushner was also exploring larger ideas of a world (and a Heaven) which has been abandoned by God, and our resilience in surviving this abandonment. There is an actual Heaven in Angels in America, and actual angels, as conceived by Kushner. The flights of fantasy (or at least what is fantasy to us, but is supposed to be as good as reality in the world of the plays) are plentiful and frequent.

I think Angels in America is a brilliant piece of work and a masterpiece of late 20th century American theatre. I also think it is probably a work that is best seen on stage. Because it is concerned with such large themes, it sacrifices nuanced characterisation for concepts, metaphors and symbolism. Characters in the play represent ideas, rather than being individual personalities. On television, this sort of stylisation is not 100% successful.

This TV version, directed by Mike Nichols, is as bold and audacious as Kushner's plays. It is a significant achievement and compulsively watchable, fully deserving of its multiple Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. But the medium of television focuses our attention differently and we find ourselves sympathising with the characters as people, rather than what they represent. It is here that I think Kushner's personal biases were revealed and this weakens Angels in America as a story about people and personal growth (of course, it could be said that Kushner was not telling that story, but these plays are about America; and what makes America what it is, if not its people?)

This review in the New York Review of Books says it better, more eloquently and more coherently than I ever could.

I can only say this. I found myself not reacting to the characters the way I think Kushner wanted me to.

The characters I find myself most interested in are Pryor, Joe and Roy Conn. Pryor is probably the central character in Angels in America, notwithstanding top billing going to the Roy Conn character. The writing makes sure that Pryor is always sympathetic; reminding us every so often of how he is coping with AIDS. We are obviously supposed to like Pryor and he gets a happy ending of sorts. I am glad that Pryor got his happy ending and I like Pryor as a character for his complexity and his genuine pathos. But Pryor the person was not always likeable and after the burden of prophetdom, has a creepy edge. I sensed I am supposed to like him, I don't actually like him, but I want him to be well.

Joe is a rather different prospect. Poor closeted Joe is left with no closure at all and in pretty bad shape when we last see him. Kushner does not mean for us to like Joe; he is closeted, he is repressed, he voted for Reagan and he likes Roy Conn. We are pointedly directed to blame Joe for the breakdown in his relationship with his wife Harper. And yet, in this TV version, I find Harper severely unsympathetic, whiny and unreasonable. Joe, despite his many flaws, is almost admirable in his struggle to reconcile his conservative value systems with the truth of his sexuality.

Roy Conn is of course the representative of all things evil in the Angels in America world. He says outrageous, terrible, insensitive things. He is a bigot, a homophone, a racist, a hypocrite, a liar and pretty much a murderer. For all that, I find Roy entertaining rather than evil. Ultimately, his character is just very, very sad. His death is not a comeuppance to me, but a tragedy of a life gone badly wrong.

How much of this is in the acting?

Jefferey Wright played Pryor on Broadway and interprets the role with care. He knows better than to portray Pryor as a martyr (and the writing would have easily allowed for this). Because he chooses this difficult and more honest route, I find myself becoming less irritated with Kushner's manipulation of his characters, and able to care for Pryor as a very real person.

Patrick Wilson (unrecognisable from his Raoul in the Phantom of the Opera) plays Joe with heartbreaking honesty and vulnerability. In this role, his face has a clear-eyed purity and innocence that contrasts so startlingly with his internal demons; the struggle within him is palpable every time we see him on screen. Mary Louise Parker, on the other hand, is somewhat mannered and makes Harper annoying rather than a tragic figure. When she is stoned on valium, she is manic in a way that reminds me of a whiny teenager having her period. We are supposed to sympathise with Harper when Joe leaves, and to blame him for his heartless abandonment. The way these roles are played, Joe's leaving seems an act of courage while Harper's reaction is that of an ungrateful and self-centred brat.

Al Pacino is Roy Conn. But of course, Al Pacino is always also Al Pacino. He does a remarkable job in this role, almost entirely escaping hamminess. I have learnt to forgive hamminess in Al Pacino because he has such an incredible ability to tailor a role to his own persona and strengths as an actor. As he spits out Roy Conn's vitriol, I get a sense of a man who says outrageous things partly for the effect of it. This reading makes Roy Conn seem more human, and I have no doubt that he must have been at least somewhat less of a beast than some writers would have us think. Roy Conn was no doubt a nasty piece of work, but Al Pacino plays him as more than just a caricature of evil.

In other roles, Meryl Streep is her usual terrific self as Joe's mother. Emma Thomson (whom I have said before is one of my favourite people in the world whom I don't actually know) is unfortunately miscast as Pryor's Italian nurse, and somewhat better cast as the Angel. As a classically trained actress, she pulls off the Angel's bombast and verbosity with aplomb, but the special effects rendered these scenes somewhat comical, rather than terrifying. Justin Kirk plays Louis, Pryor's lover who leaves after learning about Pryor having AIDS. Kirk makes Louis a lot more likeable than we are supposed to think, because he conveys such a genuine sense of self loathing even while Louis is being a complete bastard.

On the whole, this is a superlative production of a massive work. Mike Nichols has drawn wonderful performances from his cast and structured the movie (or mini-series or whatever) meticulously, playing up the advantages of the TV medium in choosing effects and locations. The issues, though, seem somewhat dated in light of what has happened in the world since the 1980s.