‘You just believe’: why Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is my feelgood movie

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There are some days when the only thing that can lift your mood is seeing a man in a top hat play the flute to summon a jodhpur-wearing Oompa-Loompa. Luckily, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has plenty of that and a lot more besides. I don’t care if you’ve just received a terminal diagnosis or found out your wife’s been having an affair with Chris Martin, you stick this film on and you’ll smile.

The last time I watched it, before rewatching for this article, was with my wife and infant son in the week after his birth. He was too busy crapping himself to understand what was going on so the film was obviously just for us. Why would two thirtysomethings choose to watch a children’s film from the 1970s? Perhaps we were nostalgic for our own lost childhoods of watching it every Christmas and bank holiday, perhaps we were excited for the near future of a new childhood, or perhaps because this is a film where a man eats a microphone instead of answering a reporter’s question. No hands. Just eats it and goes back to his meal like it was nothing. Silly, odd and utterly joyous. And the silliest, oddest and most joyous thing of all is Wonka himself.

No one has ever been better cast than Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. And yet it almost didn’t happen. Wilder told the director that he would only take the part if he let him introduce the character as having a limp in the now iconic scene where Wonka emerges from his factory. It was a complete deal-breaker. An incredulous Mel Stuart, the director, asked him why the hell he wanted to do that, to which Wilder replied: because “from that point on, no one will know whether I’m telling the truth or lying.” The level of thought, dedication and detail Wilder obviously put into his performance shines through in every scene and makes you believe that this strange man really exists somewhere and can perform miracles. The Pure Imagination song/scene where he shows the children the factory for the first time is a case in point. Look (not very) closely and you can see how ropey the set and props really are but Wilder conjures magic, turning the polystyrene mushrooms into an edible wonderland. There’s no suspending of disbelief, you just believe.

Wilder’s Wonka is an excitable, irascible, funny, odd, unpredictable and philosophical creation with a penchant for quoting poetry and Shakespeare. I’m sorry, Chalamet, but no one will ever better it. No one will ever again be sampled by Aphex Twin into the hit song We Are the Music Makers. Wilder is Wonka, Wonka is Wilder.

Beyond the inspirational genius and deeper meanings, the film is also just very funny. It has a bone-dry, almost macabre, sense of humour and tone that you nearly forget until you watch it again. From Charlie’s schoolteacher screaming “class dismissed” immediately on hearing about the Golden Ticket competition, to Veruca Salt and her father’s interplay, Charlie complaining of yet another dinner of “cabbage water” and Wonka seemingly completely indifferent to the mortal danger he’s put the other children in, it makes you laugh. Laugh like you did before you got old. Even the dreaded boat scene has the same brio and unbridled zest for life that runs throughout. This is a world we should aspire to live in, where the colours are brighter and the chocolate sweeter.

Watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is like stepping through a door back into childhood, not just for nostalgic reasons but because it reminds you that anything is possible with a little imagination. As adults we are often prisoners of our own lack of imagination and the idea of playing around or being silly is too quickly dismissed. But what is life really about if not to imagine and be as silly as possible whenever you get the chance because the truth is your chances are running out. As Wonka himself says “a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men”.

Decades after the film came out, Wilder was speaking about what it still means to people. He said: “Every four and a half years I get a new generation [of children] and I see when I’m walking down the street, their eyes light up, they saw Willy Wonka! It’s funny, it’s good.” Like when he finally hugs Charlie at the end of the film, if that doesn’t make you feel good, nothing will.