It must have been a very long time since I’ve seen the original version of Charie and the Chocolate Factory, or at least since I’ve seen it all through. I had forgotten a lot of the beginning. I’d remembered that it always makes me cry, though. It’s all right once they get into the factory, but before that..
The family is so heartbreakingly poor, and yet Charlie and Mrs. Bucket are so unfailingly sweet. First there’s the whole bit with the family surviving on cabbage water, and how hard Charlie and his mother work to earn even that starvation diet. It’s that tendency of mine to take things literally, never a safe thing to do with Roald Dahl. I keep thinking, “Well, that’s just an actor playing Charlie. The real Charlie Bucket wouldn”t be that plump and rosy, he’d be gaunt and sad,” or, “The real Charlie wouldn’t be able to run like that. Starving people conserve their energy.”
Then there;s the part where Grandpa Joe gets up. I think it’s supposed to be a miraculous healing shock, but it just seems too easy, even if you take all that dancing around as artistic license. They keep talking about how the grandparents haven’t gotten out of bed for twenty years – which means, if you don’t live in a movie world, that poor Mrs. Bucket has had to deal with bedpans, on top of all those hours slaving over a laundry cauldron. Then a measly tour of a chocolate factory get him out of bed? Looks like malingering to me, as if her life wasn’t hard enough already. At least Grandma Josephine spends her time in bed knitting for the family. (Knitted bedpans? Maybe not.)
Once they get into the factory, all bad consequences are earned, so they don’t bother me then.
(No, I’m only on my second glass of wine. Why do you ask?)