Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Tim Burton: Once Upon a Nightmare
The New Wave Cinema 2.0
In The New Wave 2.0 series, The Pen in Hand Blog will be examining the work of today’s most provocative and influential filmmakers, artists whose singular styles and visionary genius have stretched the boundaries of cinema. Drawing upon Francois Truffaut’s definition of an auteur, these pieces will be looking at writer/directors whose movies have transcended the art of filmmaking and moved it into the realm of genius. This week, The Pen in Blog will be looking at the peculiar and macabre worlds of Tim Burton.
It’s a little surprising—and maybe a little frightening—to think that Tim Burton originally started out in the film business as an apprentice animator at Disney Studios, working on such films as The Black Cauldron and The Fox and the Hound. Surely the mind that brought us Jack Skellington, Frankenweenie, and Emily the Corpse Bride would not have been knowingly let loose on our children’s tender sensibilities, would it? (A situation not unlike Skellington’s Santa dropping down chimneys in The Nightmare Before Christmas).
After the original Frankenweenie, a short film about how a boy uses scientific know-how to resurrect his dog, Disney released Burton under the pretext that the film was too scary. (Tim Burton: How Disney fired Me: yahoo!movies), an interesting move for a studio that brought us the terrifying images of the wicked queen in Snow White, Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, and the traumatic climax of Bambi. Truth be told, much of Burton’s work echoes the feel of the classic fairy tale, where a loving grandmother might unexpectedly transform into a ravenous wolf, or lost children stumble across a candy house housing a great (and hungry) evil.
The juxtaposition of the horrible and the beautiful, the evil and the good, is part of the cultural work these fables do as cautionary tales for youngsters. Don’t stray off the path, don’t talk to strangers, and mind your parents are dictums illustrated with horrifying detail in these tales. Tim Burton also uses these contradictory juxtapositions, but for entirely different purposes.
Part of Burton’s singular vision is the art and production design in his films. His distinctive styling, especially in his animations, are his and his alone. A Tim Burton production always looks like a Tim Burton production. The sandworms in Beetlejuice bear a striking resemblance to some of the ghastly gifts in The Nightmare Before Christmas and there are decided similarities between character renditions in Corpse Bride and the animated Frankenweenie.
Visual stylings aside, Burton’s movies tiptoe a fine line between horror and humor. The underlying conceit of Beetlejuice, that the main characters are attempting to cope with being newly deceased, seems horrifying on the surface, but Burton’s deft handling of the story takes the edge off the dark side of the plot: the Maitlands (the dead couple) don’t look dead, and the family they’re trying to frighten from their house (the Deetzes) are too goofy to hate.
When the Maitlands (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) go into the underworld to find help because they’re so bad at being ghosts, Burton’s macabre humor shines through. The newly dead, including a choking victim, a fire casualty, and a suicide, are not portrayed as horrifying specters but bewildered victims of a monstrous bureaucracy. And Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) himself is terrifying only when working; most of the time he’s like an obnoxious party guest. On another level, it might be argued that Beetlejuice is a story about dealing with change, the ultimate change in particular, and that it is necessary to acknowledge death in order to truly live.
Edward Scissorhands is a film that also tiptoes the line between good and evil, although Burton blurs that line by casting the mad scientist (Vincent Price—in his last role) and his unholy creation Edward (Johnny Depp) as gentle and kindly people. When Edward, a boy with scissors for hands, is taken from the dark and evil-looking castle on the hill by Avon lady Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest) and taken to a pastel-coated suburban ranch house wonderland, it seems as if he is being rescued. However, the gossip, lasciviousness, greed, and suspicions of Peg’s neighbors threaten to subsume the innocence and kindness of Edward, who cannot fit into “civilization”. Edward uses his mechanical hands to create magnificent topiaries, avant-garde hairdos, and beautiful ice sculptures in his new world; he is an artist and an outsider.
Burton has succeeded, much as he did in Beetlejuice, in turning audience expectations on its head—the dead are nicer than the living and the monster is more of a human than the humans around him. The same sort of twist is evident in The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie, films in which the monsters are truly not monstrous.
During his long and storied career, Burton has sometimes veered from his macabre fascinations to make science fiction (Mars Attacks and Planet of the Apes), superhero flicks (Batman and Batman Returns), biopics (Ed Wood and Big Eyes), as well as—what?—remakes of Disney movies (Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo). But for all the variety, there can be no doubt after viewing the first few frames, that these films are the work of Tim Burton. The pitiful but disgusting Penguin (Danny DeVito) in Batman Returns and the supporting characters in Alice (especially the remarkably dense Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas) as well as Helena Bonham Carter’s capricious and murderous Queen of Hearts are pure Burton.
While Burton’s work is filled with unexpected ironies and unexpected twists, surely the greatest irony is that Disney, the studio that gave us some of the most traumatic moments in our collective boomer childhood, let go of an artist whose dark vision both superseded and subverted those traumatic moments. Beetlejuice, Frankenweenie, and Corpse Bride took sidelong looks at death; The Nightmare Before Christmas was a cautionary tale about blind ambition; and Edward Scissorhands was a movie about monsters, not the ones in the castle, but the ones next door.
Tim Burton is a visual genius whose vision is equaled only by his success. His films have played an integral part in the cultural work films do for our society. To this day, Disney still probably regrets that he was the one who got away.