Film Name: 旺卡 / Wonka
I went to see the newly released Wonka today, and I still enjoyed the film: a combination of comedy, fantasy, song and dance, adventure, and many other genres about the origins of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, with Timothee Chalamet in the lead role plus a bunch of familiar faces in the cast, who tell the story in its entirety and don’t drop the ball.
It should be said that this is a relaxing, enjoyable and sweet-smelling journey to the cinema.
Speaking of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ created at the peak of Tim Burton’s career, although it is also a fairy tale shelf, under the joint influence of Burton and Depp, it more or less carries an evil aura of childishness ……
In contrast, the prequel ‘Wonka’ is more like a traditional, classical, warm and beautiful fairy tale, warm and full of healing, soft but not too scattered, in the current world of more and more realistic and cold world, there can still appear such a warm heart of the film, is not easy.
Personally, I love the song-and-dance genre, and Wonka’s fantasy theme of being both real and fake, half-real and half-imaginary, is the most suitable type of story for song-and-dance, so the film’s initial impression on me was very good, and it kept me in a state of lightness and relaxation at all times.
In addition, the visual style of Wonka is also very pleasingly warm, colourful and vibrant, and it’s worth mentioning that the colour saturation is not too high, keeping the image at a ‘sweet but not greasy’ level, so my eyes weren’t tired after watching the whole film.
By the way, I never really got the value of ‘Sweet Tea’ before, but I seem to be able to get it through the naive, silly, optimistic ‘dreamer’ Willy Wonka in ‘Wonka’… …
All in all, Wonka is worth watching just for the eye-pleasing, smooth and loose audio-visual experience.
And then a few more words about the film’s fairy tale attributes.
It’s not hard to see through the clues in the film that Wonka is set during the Great Depression, a time of economic crisis, when ordinary people were poor and struggling, and the three major ‘trusts’ of confectioners monopolised the whole shopping street, and people were used to enjoying themselves, hoping to forget the pain of reality through simple and cheap pleasures. –For example, a piece of sweet, delicious and cheap chocolate, if only it had some additional features.
This sweet and bitter context is the premise on which the film’s story is built, and it is because of this that we are able to accept the innocence of Wonka, who is ‘cheated out of his savings and saddled with debt when he first enters the city, but still looks forward to a better tomorrow with confidence, and ultimately relies on his talent, sincerity, and luck to make a comeback’.
It is also in this context that although Wonka reflects satire and attacks on the dark reality, it is never harsh or bitter, for example, the characters of the three monopoly capitalists and the police chief, as well as the nastiness of their collusion between business and the government, are given clownish jokes, which makes the plot, which is originally hard to laugh out loud, seem less heavy under the banter.
Another example is the priest who accepts a chocolate bribe, which is obviously a satire of the clergy who knowingly commit crimes, but it’s Rowan ‘Mr Bean’ Elkins and a group of clergymen who can harmonise, so it’s hard for the audience to hate them even if they know they’re the villains.
So, of course, this fairy tale can and will only end with a police officer with a sense of justice, good people get rewarded for good deeds, evil people get rewarded for evil deeds, and Wonka eventually builds a chocolate factory like a dreamland.
I’ve always felt that watching a film, especially a commercial film, is all in your mind, and that everything is fine when it feels right – obviously, Wonka was satisfying to me, and I can understand if some people are critical, but that’s a matter of each to their own.
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