Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)★ 8.1/10

This is an enjoyable one, though I prefer Tim Burton’s version. It’s interesting when I watch this one because the style and atmosphere is much lighter than the 2005 remake and has a completely different proposal when it gives a more charming 70s feel musical piece.

Charlie's mother's song is the worst song in the movie, but I don't agree with people who claim it's unnecessary or adds nothing. This movie is all about the influence parents have on kids. Understanding Charlie's mom even though she only shares a slightly different outlook from Grandpa Joe, helps to understand Charlie more.

In the song, his mother, encourages him not to lose his specific brand of optimism. This is something Grandpa Joe doesn't really show he has a fondness for that goes beyond the idea that children have an innate positivity. This song is the only time where it is implied Charlie has recently become more negative. His mother addresses how he is at an age where he's starting to understand the world and his place in it. She fears him becoming disillusioned with kindness for kindness' sake (a trait the movie shows adults are not reliable to show). The only other time the concept of aging is mentioned is in the final scene where Willy Wonka reveals he's looking for a protege. The idea that getting old kills imagination and altruism is set up by this song and paid off in the glass elevator scene. This song arguably gives us insight into Wonka's truth.

His mother sings out to the night instead of to Charlie directly. We're seeing her dream and what inspires her, but also the reluctance to tell all this to his face. The movie spends so much time with children, that I feel like any look at the adult world is important. Poverty can make you treat everything in life as an investment or a bet. She and Grandpa Joe are treating Charlie like the lottery. This manifests in how Grandpa Joe treats the golden ticket situation, but Charlie's mother's withdrawn reaction to it, suggests she's less indoctrinated into this idea of luck than her father. Maybe she has to get older to understand.

People also say the song is jarring, which it is, but this Carpenters-ass song in the first act adds to the movie sonically for me. Non-Wonka or Oompa Loompa songs, invoke radio hits from the time, contrasted with how spare and unorthodox a song like Pure Imagination is. This technique is used visually all the time in the movie, like when all the kids and parents go into a room just barely big enough to hold all of them, before they're unleashed into the huge chocolate river room. You need to be squished in order for the expanse of the world to mean something.

These were my thoughts from my most recent viewing. had to go high school essay film analysis mode. I should have used the word "furthermore" more. I'm not looking forward to actually researching the song's origins and finding out it was a shoehorned contractual thing for the actor or something. Idk if that's the case, then they stuck the landing with it for me

Merida24

O insuperável Gene Wilder e a trilha sonora dos Oompa-Loompas originais, de cabelo verde e macacão, o QUE mais a pessoa quer da vida? Minha infância (adolescência, vida adulta, velhice...) absolutamente inteira. Nem sou "dessa época", e por que careceria de ser? Absolutamente mágico.

Freddie Highmore é um exímio ator desde pequenininho e nós podemos provar!