Breathing Pure Imagination - RIP Mr Wilder

I'm sitting on a train with tears in my eyes. Gene Wilder died. I didn't know him. I believe he was a good man. He was old and unwell, now he's at peace. He's passing is therefore sad but well earned. Not enough for me to be near tears for a stranger. So why am I?

While he was brilliant in all the roles I've seen him in, I think my grief stems from Willy Wonka. Gene Wilder was not Willy Wonka, he didn't write his dialogue, and through technology Willy Wonka will always roam the chocolate factory, but Gene breathed life into the character. He took the words on the page and made them live. That breath is gone. Perhaps it is that I mourn.

I don't remember when I first saw the movie. Its images and scenes have always floated in my mind. I didn't really remember the kids or the sentimentality of Charlie and his family. I remembered the man in the purple suit with the top hat. He was wise, he knew how things worked. And he lived in a factory where things were not as they are in the rest of the world. He walked corridors that shrank without appearing to, had wallpaper you could taste, and there was magic at every turn. And all with the underwritten air of menace.

Later, in my 20s, when in one of my darker periods, there were two parts of the movie that meant so much to me. The first and most important was the song Pure Imagination. I knew there was no life like it, and I clung to the idea that my imagination was something important. If you listen closely to the tune, there is that tinge of melancholy, or maybe that's just for me. But under the wonder is the reality that it is lost on so many people. Willy knows the children will fail, that they do not understand what he is singing about.

The second part is one line of dialogue which to me is a reminder, not only of the power of the message of the song, but of our responsibility to live it. 'We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.'

Gene Wilder understood that. He lived it. And he breathed in the words and exhaled the vision. It will last, but there is one less dreamer of dreams in this world. May you view paradise Mr Wilder. And you, whoever you are reading this, whatever you do in life, always -

Keep dreaming!