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Cinema star Chalamet in »Wonka«: Charming Luftikus
Photo: Jaap Buittendijk / Warner Bros.
First of all, you see the guy high up on the lookout of a sailing ship singing a tender song. After seven years at sea as a ship's cook, the young hero Willy Wonka, played by Timothée Chalamet, looks to the nearby mainland and sings himself warmly for the departure to the big city on the shore.
The city is lightly snow-covered and looks as if Paris and London had been merged into a world metropolis by a confectioner a good 100 years ago. In a magnificent shopping arcade, the hero wants to set up a shop, "the greatest chocolate shop the world has ever seen".
The actor Chalamet is currently a prodigy of world cinema adored by many people. He is 27 years old and has flaunted his rather delicate facial features and cheeky smile in such diverse hit films as »Call Me by Your Name« and »Dune«. In »Wonka« he now embodies an impetuous airhead and jack-of-all-trades. His hero sings and dances and strolls full of innocence and confidence into the hustle and bustle of the big city – and first comes across people who want to resent him.
The film tells the story of villains loitering around in the Charles Dickens book »Oliver Twist«, but their vocabulary sounds contemporary. At one point, they talk about an impending "chocolate calypse." This isn't just a nice joke, but it probably expresses the worst fears of the creators of »Wonka«. Director Paul King and his assistants have taken on the modern fairy tale classic »Charlie and the Chocolate Factory« by Roald Dahl and reinvented an entire film story in the spirit of the original book published in 1964 and the poet who died in 1990.
Johnny Depp played Willy Wonka as a middle-aged factory owner
This could have gone wrong. But the film »Wonka«, which was awaited with skepticism by many Dahl enthusiasts, proves to be a marvel of poetic magic, wit and elegance – and the most beautiful cinema musical since »La La Land«.
Dahl's original chocolate factory fairy tale is about the child hero Charlie Bucket, who comes from a poor background and finds his way into the realm of the fabulously tasteful, bizarre-talking, slightly creepy chocolate tycoon Willy Wonka together with a few other children. King's film now portrays Wonka – who was brilliantly portrayed by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp respectively in two "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" film adaptations from 1971 and 2005 – as a young man.
Chalamet's hero may be equipped with a magic case full of instruments and ingredients for making chocolates, but he is practically penniless. With the promise of a place to sleep, he is lured into the horror cabinet of the landlady Mrs. Scrubbit (Olivia Colman) and locked up as a work slave in the basement laundry. With the help of the smart Cinderella girl Noodle (Calah Lane), Wonka is able to escape for a short time. In the gallery where he wants to open his shop, he distributes his confectionery creations to passers-by.
The rehearsal audience is immediately in love with chocolate shock. The three bigwigs who run the city's chocolate cartel are not amused. And they decide to kill their rival Wonka with the help of the nasty Mrs. Scrubbit.
The writer Roald Dahl is controversial
In »Wonka« we see people addicted to sweets lifting off the ground with the help of the magic of brightly painted confectionery. You can see how a huge chocolate scrambled pot is used as an instrument of murder. There are impeccably choreographed dance scenes, brightly colored costumes, and a few charming songs, the best of which were composed by Neil Hannon, who rose to fame with the band The Divine Comedy.
The writer Dahl is famous for his grim humor and a bit controversial, among other things, because of fantasies of corporal punishment that are perceived as brutal today. Director King and his co-writer Simon Farnaby have already demonstrated intelligence and cheerful cunning in two »Paddington« films. And yet there will probably be people for whom they are too warm-hearted and excited about their work in »Wonka«.
However, the art of King and Farnaby is particularly evident when they continue to spin the Dahlian universe of myths and turn it upside down. The greatest character in »Wonka« is a little man with green hair and orange skin, a so-called Umpa-Lumpa, played by Hugh Grant.
In »Charlie and the Chocolate Factory«, the Umpa-Lumpas, imported from a distant land, are still the company's little men and worker bees bossed around by the entrepreneur Wonka, the proletarian foot soldiers of the confectionery universe. In »Wonka«, on the other hand, Grant's umpa-lumpa is a tricky, funny, mischievous star.
Actually, the super-clever troll has only traveled to the cosmopolitan city because he wants to take revenge on Willy Wonka because of a debt from his ship's cooking days. But then it becomes more and more apparent that the short-sighted green man is the only one who can really help the young hero against his enemies. The joker in Schoko-La-La-Land, so to speak.