Tim Burton
La Fabbrica Di Cioccolato

Disrespectfully mistreated, despite good box-office success, the Burtonian remake of the old Willie Wonka by Mel Stuart from 1971 is a remarkable film, perhaps one of the most beautiful of the Burton post-2003 (that is, after the masterpiece "Big Fish - The Stories of a Lifetime")- Needless to say, everything starts from Roald Dahl's literary work published in 1964.

"La fabbrica di cioccolato" is, after years, it must be said, better than the '70s film, which had Gene Wilder as the lifeblood, but suffered from an overly evident prolixity, bland and unengaging songs and, above all, a flat and anonymous, predictably TV-like direction that, fortunately, Tim Burton has never had, so much so that this remake is much more crafted in every single sequence, much more ambitious and, surely, much more accurate in details and camera movements (the first minutes in which the genesis of the popular chocolate factory is narrated, with the excursus of the sultan who had a chocolate-palace built by Willy Wonka himself, is a spectacle, the 1971 film could only dream of something like this).

Tim Burton immerses us in a typically magical and color-rich world, even where winter colors prevail, and he isn't afraid to make the viewer wait. Willy Wonka appears on the scene after a good half-hour. But he knows how to balance his characters gracefully, and gives ample space to the world beyond Wonka: the five pesky little kids (except one, the winner) who win the golden tickets to attend the factory tour (with some venomous strokes on the greed of the rich and the goodness of the less fortunate), their respective parents, be they fathers, mothers, or grandparents, and, with the help of technology, he multiplies at will the Indian actor Deep Roy, having him portray all the Oompa Loompas.

The journey in the factory is delightful and hilarious, accompanied by the music of Burton's longtime companion Danny Elfman, and contains some sequences to memorize. Chief among them is the end of the petulant Veruca Salt, attacked by some creepy squirrels, and the retribution awaiting the boastful Mike Teavee. A relentless citationist, Burton doesn't miss a thing, so his kaleidoscopic cauldron includes "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Psycho." In addition to recounting certain episodes of Willy Wonka's childhood, with the Mephistophelean dentist father Christopher Lee (who else?) in some successful flashbacks.

Well, what can I say, Johnny Depp. Alright: he is brilliant (he almost always is), here, and with Burton in general, he is particularly so, and, by his own volition, he stays as far away as possible from what Gene Wilder was, indeed, he mirrors himself, in the ways and attitudes, on Michael Jackson (perhaps even Jackson's Neverland was a sort of chocolate factory, judicial matters aside), although good Wilder did not take it so well. Just a few months before the film's release in 2005, Wilder stated: "They are just a bunch of people sitting around thinking 'How can we make more money?'. Why else would you remake Willy Wonka? I don't see the point of going back and redoing it all over again." Depp responded, "When have they ever done anything not for money? No one has ever made a film in the history of cinema where they didn’t expect some return on their investment." Hard to argue with him. I mean Depp.

Scenography of the highest level (let's say futuristic), costumes by the Italian Gabriella Pescucci worthy of applause (Willy Wonka's outfit is kitschy just enough) and a frenzied pace from start to finish, with a total Burtonian visionariness from all angles (the flying elevator scene is a blast). To cut a long story short (so to speak), a great film.