Charlie's Garden State

Within the course of a week, I watched two very different movie portraits of alienation and redemption.

Last week I tivo-ed and watched Garden State from cable. GS is a dark, quirky, funny, and often achingly touching independent film, written, directed by and starring Zach Braff (Scrubs.) The movie is about a twenty-something struggling actor living in LA (and, like most struggling actors, waiting tables) when he learns that his paraplegic mother has died. He returns to his small New Jersey hometown to bury his mom. We then learn that he has been (un)comfortably numb on a pharmacopia of heavy-duty antidepressants since he was 16, when he was institutionalized by his psychiatrist -- his own father (a very non-Bilbo-like Ian Holm). He decides to go off the meds during his visit; and spends a few days visiting with his oddball friends, falling in love with the bohemian (and very un-Padme-like) Natalie Portman, and gradually struggling his way back to feeling something.

Although at heart a romance, the movie eschews traditional romantic-comedy tropes and follows its own rhythms. Anybody who's felt numb as he has returned to his hometown after years away can certainly find a little of himself in the movie. And the soundtrack is great.

The previous weekend I saw Tim Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now, I'm a big fan of the 1971 Gene Wilder version, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which I saw as a six-year-old after receiving my own Wonka chocolate bar factory (a bunch of molds and candy-bar wrappers, designed for double-boiler-melted chocolate chips) in the mail from Quaker Oats. I found it freaky then and still do now.

I did not enjoy this version as much as the old film. Wilder was more fun to watch, the kids had much more personality (particularly Julie Cole as Veruca Salt), and the tunes were much more tuneful. That said, I found aspects of this version fascinating. Burton brought the pre-Factory scenes to life much more effectively than the director of the 70's version; you could feel the desperation of Charlie and his family more acutely. The biggest difference was in Wonka himself. Wilder, with his snatches of literary quotes and his shifting languages, was a trickster-god Wonka. He was always in control, and weird because he liked being weird. Johnny Depp's Wonka is Edward Scissorhands with a manicure. He is deeply neurotic, uncomfortable, and weird because he can't help it. He is not in control; in fact, the Oompa Lumpas seem to be the ones in control (which makes it even weirder that he uses them for scientific experiments).

I also found the ending of this movie more interesting than the first one -- and far less conventional. Judge for yourself.