Willy
Wonka: Stop,
don’t, come back
It’s
a slight, seemingly empty bit of dialogue, isn’t it? Yet imbued
with Gene Wilder’s sarcastic intonation the dialogue expresses that
he actually couldn’t care less if the kid to whom he’s speaking
comes back or not. He speaks the ostensibly dull sentence in an
unflappable, flat tone such that it becomes richly, perversely,
funny. It is is also, oh, just a teensy bit mean. As is our Mr.
Wonka himself.
Indeed,
this is the key to Wonka’s character: we love his subtle, light as
a feather barbs, even if they are at the expense of children. We
love that he stands by looking bored and doesn’t seem to care one
whit when Augustus Gloop is near drowning in a gelatinous river of
chocolate. Nor does he care when Violet is turning into a blueberry.
Nor when Mike Teavee’s physical body is being pixelated and
transmogrified into a 2 dimensional tv image. And certainly not when
our howlingly spoiled and appallingly unpleasant Veruca Salt is
falling down that garbage shoot to be destroyed with all the other
bad eggs. Nope, Mr. Wonka does not care a whit about a single one of
them. Hell, he even rather enjoys looking on while the rotten kids,
one by one by get their comeuppances.
It
takes a special kind of actor to break one of life’s cardinal rules
(thou shall not be mean to children), and have it come off as funny.
Wilder pulls it off, in part, because of that gentle, soothingly
cooing voice of of his. Recently, I was reminded of his voice while
watching an interview that TCM sponsored between Gene Wilder and Alec
Baldwin in 2008. During a ninety minute interview Wilder was
charming, funny, smart and humble. It was clear that he had enjoyed
making some films more than others, based not merely on what he said
about them, but also on the way his eyes lit up.
When
talking about "Willie Wonka" he looked as happy as a kid
in, well, a candy factory. He gave more time and thought to his
replies about Wonka than any other film he'd discussed throughout the
interview. And he seemed delightfully proud of the things that he,
himself, had contributed to the film -- things that the writer and
director had not thought of, such as the particular perversity of his
reason for giving his character, Mr. Wonka, a limp when he meets the
children for the first time at the factory gates.
Mr.
Wonka limps down a cobblestone walkway with a cane looking frail and
lame, and presumably a disappointing figure to the children.
Suddenly, his cane gets stuck between the stones, which causes him to
fall to the ground -- whereupon he leaps up into a gymnastic
somersault! He is not lame at all! To the contrary, quite spry. "So,"
asks Baldwin, "Why the charade?" Wilder looks at Baldwin
with a wickedly (rather Wonka-ish), gleam in his eye and says,
“Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or
telling the truth.”
The
whole movie is about deceptions, fantasy, charades and honesty;
Charlie's honesty in particular. Wilder was so joyful talking about
this film that he took the time to recount the final scene with
Charlie returning the Everlasting Gobstopper in detail, including the
splendid piece of dialogue that Wonka gives to Charlie right then.
Charlie places the Gobstopper on the table -- that same Gobstopper
that the evil Mr. Slugworth had offered all the kids a fortune to
sneak out of the factory to sell to him -- and Willie Wonka, furious
a mere moment ago, now smiles and tenderly puts his hand over
Charlie's, saying, "So shines a good deed in a weary world."
Wilder
described the scene to Baldwin and finishes his description by
quoting that line. Then he paused, smiled, and repeated the line
with an even deeper affection for its meaning, "So shines a good
deed in a weary world." Yes, it does indeed.
By
Margaret C Laureys
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