Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Production Design

This is something a little new, I decided to do a post entirely dedicated to a single aspect of a film – production design – something I don’t think I have done before. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, released in 2005 and directed by Tim Burton, is an adaptation of the novel by the same name, written by Roald Dahl. The book was previously adapted into a 1971 musical with Gene Wilder, named Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Where the production design is first noticed, is when we are first introduced to the five children, the worlds in which they inhabit, charlie’s home is a broken, ramshackle hut, caricatured in its design with a concave roof, and not a straight line in sight. Violet Beauregarde inhabits a boring American house where trophies litter the walls and her tracksuit matches the décor. Mike Teavee has a boring suburban house, the kind that smells faintly of bleach and air freshener and where everything as an inoffensive shade of beige, brown and grey. Finally Veruca Salt lives in a ludicrously large cold grey mansion, looking like something out of the Addams family. Of all the children, Augustus Gloop’s house is the only one we never see, with his interview taking place instead in his fathers butcher’s shop.

As is the case with all Tim Burton movies, there is a huge amount of contrast in this movie, Burton contrasts tha world outside the factory, a world which is grey, cold an uninviting, with the bright colors (and probably delicious smells) to be found inside, Burton also contrasts Wonka himself, who dresses a little like an extra from Sweeney Todd, with the colourful environments of the factory, and the colourful children, with the dark and brooding Wonka. The world outside the factory is also intended to be deliberately ambiguous, as the novel never states where the book is set, and seems at times to be set in America, and other times in England, Burton creates an interesting blend of the two by creating a world which visually in some aspects looks a lot like England, or more specifically London, but having characters talk with vaguely transatlantic accents and cars drive down the middle of the road, and having clearly American money. The factory itself is designed using delectable art deco elements, creating a brooding and ominous atmosphere, a building which looms over the town much in the same way that the mansion in Edward Scissorhands or the windmill in Frankenweenie looms over the town.

The most obvious set in the film is of course the chocolate room, the first room that we encounter upon entering the factory, the room looks like a Tim Burton sketch if it were tinted by hand, and the colors are brighter than life. The first film had a slightly washed out look, and here the room literally looks good enough to eat, the landscape slopes and dips, there is a grass covered bridge and (of course) a chocolate waterfall. The room is actually highly gothic, and all a little weird, the trees jerk out at odd angles and the colours are scarily garish. Also important is the boat and the chocolate river. The boat looks to be made of a giant piece of hard candy, and the river is an oddly appetizing shade of brown.

The second room visited is the inventing room, not much deviation is made from the first film or the source material, and despite being a fascinating and complex space, with machines that would make any child swoon with excitement, there is really little inspiration to be found here, and the room is mostly dark and mysterious, filled with fascinating but mostly indiscernible shapes whizzing and popping.

The next room that Wonka takes us to is the nut room, and here the design is really inspired, like many of the rooms in Wonka’s factory, it is completely circular, and features a blue and white swirl design on the floor, essentially making the room look like a giant boiled lollipop, Burton has succeeded in creating a room that manages at once to be perfectly simple and highly symmetrical, whilst being at the same time deeply fascinating and oddly complex. The room looks enormous from the outside, given that there are thousands of squirrels working here, but seems much smaller after Verruca Salt steps in. There is a sense of pleasing nothingness about this room, and Burton has created a  cold and unfriendly sense of intimacy.

The final room we go to is the TV room, which looks to have been highly inspired by 2001 A Space Oddessy, the room is entirely white and entirely simple, and is built as two intersecting circles, with perfectly white domed ceilings. The room is at once highly futuristic and retro, with it seemingly inspired by 80’s science fiction films, and a perfect view of the future itself. Everything in this room is white, and the characters where white goggles, giving them permanently surprised, bug eyed looks. The TV room, despite being only one color and having no corners, is a deeply complex and fascinating space.

Also a hugely important part of this film is the glass elevator, Burton has taken the concept of a flying elevator, which was barely fleshed out in the original, and turned it into a real machine which could possibly fly. The elevator is entirely transparent, has thousands of buttons, and has a system on top whereby it can not only move up and down, but also across, transported by a system of cables, and can also fly using a quartet of jet packs each releasing a yellow flame. In the first film, the elevator was only used at the very end of the film, for Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe to escape the factory, but here it is used throughout the film, for the remaining two children to go around the factory.

Whilst travelling around the factory, the children encounter a series of rooms, which are not fully explained, but which are either nods to the books, or which can be explained as amusing examples of Tim Burton’s fascinating brand of insanity. The elevator passes an office, featuring thousands of female oompa loompa’s working at typewrighters and a room where oompa loompa’s fling gobstoppers from cannons at targets, for no apparent reason. Also seen from the elevator is a room in which pink sheep are sheared (presumably to make candyfloss), leaving Wonka to say that he’s rather not talk about it, with a sheepish grin, and a mountain made entirely of fudge, in a direct reference to the book. These rooms while perhaps not adding a huge amount to the story in the way of character development or story progression are a nice touch for fans of the book like myself.

Despite being sickly colourful and garishly bright, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of the most Burtonesque of all of Tim Burton’s films, at times oppressively over the top, the color is but a slick veneer hiding a darker and more oppressive truth. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is rich, dark and elegant.

Charlie Bucket: Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy.