As sweet as chocolate

The author is an AB Journalism graduate from the University of Santo Tomas. An indie documentary filmmaker and art film enthusiast, she works as a public relations consultant for a pro-life program.

One ordinary day, I walked into a Radio City store in Shangri-La Plaza, penniless, without any intentions but to kill time. I was running my fingers through the closely-packed bundles of the VCDs on sale when surprisingly, I found the store’s sole copy of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The original 1970 version of the Mel Stuart movie which inspired the remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory features vaudeville actor Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. The video copy is the only one I’ve seen in my lifetime (not even in a Beta or VHS copy elsewhere) and the experience is equally sensational as the poor boy Charlie’s discovery of the last unfound golden ticket in a Wonka bar. So even if I didn’t have enough money left, I gathered all the coins and bills from my pockets and bag just to be able to buy the VCD.

Back in elementary, my tears fell like drooling chocolate from a boiling pot when I saw the film on TV for the first time. I shared the experience with my siblings and together, our memories of the movie lingered on like confectionery that left its sugary aftertaste in our tongues.

Here’s a tang of the sweetness that stayed in my memory:

For years, the famous Willy Wonka Chocolate factory has made the world wonder how its favorite sweets are manufactured. Until one day, the ascetic Willy Wonka decided to open his factory to the lucky children who’ll be able to find the five golden tickets among the millions of Wonka chocolate bars distributed for sale worldwide.

This sparked a craze among chocoholics. But of all those fortunate ones who find one of the tickets, Charlie Bucket is considered the poorest. Nevertheless, the boy’s fate changed when the factory owner found something golden in the kid – his heart.

Though simple and juvenile in plot, this ‘70s technicolor film effectively blended theatrical music, creative editing and whimsical production design to awaken the child in everyone. Truly, it is a "world of pure imagination," presumably a dream production at that time, but timeless enough to bring into reality the present audience’s wishful thinking about a Hansel-and-Gretel world where everything that could be seen and touched is edible and delicious.

The movie also hails Charlie as Cinderella’s male counterpart whose poverty did not hinder him from dreaming and eventually finding luck in honesty. These values – hopefulness and honesty – are the film’s "nutrients" that the viewers’ souls should absorb.

With the opening of the latest Wonka version, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I felt like the factory’s gates also reopened, but this time, to the kids of this generation. What’s more saccharine about this remake is that it added another ingredient to make it more enjoyable for moviegoers. Johnny Depp stars as Willy Wonka.

At first, I was expecting that the film’s revival will have a different twist from the original, with the grown-up Charlie as the heir-searcher. Though it didn’t turn out to be what I expected, I hope kids nowadays will also find the remake worthy of lingering in their memory so that after 10 or more years, in case they become a penniless window-shopper like I was, they will be willing to let go of their last coin just to own a copy of Charlie.