Analysis Of The Key Features Of Tim Burton’s Movies

Tim Burton is known for his fascination with the dark aspects of life and the human psyche. In his movies which are appealing to a wide audience, young and adult, one can notice the enormous impact, that his childhood days in suburban Burbank had on his creative imagination. He found that the people around him led an unsettling and superficial life and by ignoring death and the duality of life were unable to live a complex thoughtful life. His way of looking at the world and his gothic approach are fundamental in his movie making as is his struggle to defy the conformist world of his youth, which made him a loner and outsider who is isolated and misunderstood. Very often we find split personalities as characters which, on one hand, lead a normal life but on the other hand also have a weird and twisted side. These queer main characters are never understood by the normal ones and often long for acceptance and understanding but almost always are rejected and misunderstood. Being rejected they create their own world with their own rules to deal with reality. Why is it then, that despite the gloomy atmosphere and the dark monstrous characters we feel a certain attraction and likeability for them.

This notion can be explained on the character of Edward Scissorhands, who is artificially made with human qualities and left unfinished with scissors instead of hands. His whole mysterious appearance is stressed by his black tight leather outfit, his white gothic makeup and messy hair. At first sight one can not but think of an evil, ominous character, but as the story evolves and Peg Boggs tries to integrate Edward as part of the community we start feeling sorry for him. Although it seems that Edward is accepted in the beginning, we soon realize that this is not the case and that they are just taking advantage of his skills. Edward feels ashamed and tears off his new cloths, which also symbolizes the rejection from society. So the first impression is very misleading and one could easily mistake him with a dreadful monster but instead we learn that he is a goodhearted almost childlike guy.

In a similar way all the other characters in Tim Burton’s movies evoke our sympathy and make us realize that being a weird outsider is not necessarily a bad thing.In the beginning of this movie we notice the setting, which plays an important role in emphasizing the contrast between the brightly colored suburban world and Edward’s gothic castle on the hill. The castle is the reflection of its owners life and soul and serves to create a dark, gloomy atmosphere, which is the opposite of the suburb with its citizens all dressed in conforming, pastel cloths. The huge hole in the ceiling symbolizes Edwards great solitude and the lack of love and affection. In this way we learn a lot about the psychological state of the character from the environment he lives in.

In many Burton films the dark element produces a depressive and scary emotion but in fact he does not show anything horrific. It is quite the contrary because his characters are usually really nice and friendly. This inner emotional world and feelings are revealed by the distorted reality we live in. A reality that we can relate to, bringing us closer to his outcast characters. In this segment of his work we can observethe influence of the Expressionists and their love for youth, which is very much present in Burton’s attitude, showing his fascination with death and everything that comes after our passing. In a way we might say, that he is not so much concerned with the horror itself but rather with the emotional state that evolves from some kind of terror. Besides the main character, the rest of the community is shown in male and female stereotypes that underline the conformist society, for example Jim, a spoilt rich kid, Peg Boggs who acts very motherly and Kim, the beautiful, blond who loves Edward the way he is, beyond his physical imperfections.

Another often used gothic element in this movie is the impossible love story between Edward and Kim Boggs, who is torn apart between her boyfriend and Edward her new love. In the end they are separated and Edward returns to his lonely castle never to come back among the community.The appeal of Burton’s movies lies probably in his interest in different art periods which he genuinely mixes together creatinghumorous picturesque scenery. This is evident in his affection for costumes with the 19th century Victorian flair and for the work of Dr. Seuss, as many of his characters wear black and white striped suits. His heroines are often blonde haired with white pale faces like from some ancient times in history. Another very striking combination is the antithesis of the dark gothic atmosphere and architecture and the colorful suburban milieu.

All these features contribute to a very unique style which functions almost as a signature to all of his work, repeating them throughout his movies and revealing the author’s vision of a divers, almost circus like world. Despite the constant use of the same themes and motives we are never bored because Burton awakens the child in us, believing in his heartfelt monsters and the way he deals with the serious matter of death and the unknown. In contrast to the ordinary everyday life he creates a parallel world of afterlife, which to his own words, we should be looking forward to, not in fear but with humor and acceptance: ” …I always responded to characters and monsters, and cultures like Mexico and its Day of the Dead, because I always felt there was more life there… I came from a sort of a puritanical suburban existence where death was looked upon as dark and negative. But it happens to everybody, and I always responded to cultures that made death feel more part of life.”The motive of death is highlighted in his movie The Corpse Bride, where again we have a real gothic feel with very dark scenery, a small town surrounded by forest and woods. The characters wear heavy pale makeup with dark shadows around their eyes, looking tired and dressed in Victorian-era fashion. This movie represents love and life that can go beyond death, showing that love is not about money and status and that true love can survive no matter what. The movie is kind of a mixture of animation and live action, which is also characteristic for Burtons work, as he used animation in several movies. This shows his love for the genre and his childlike vision of things. One would, therefor think of the movie as another love story, but the concept is far more complex and makes us reminisce about what really matters in life and what a possible life after death could look like. Burton does not only repeatedly use the same features in creating his movies but what is also characteristic for his work is the collaboration with the same people which also contributes to a unique style. The list starts with Colleen Atwood, who made the costumes for numerous characters. Her creativity and imagination supports Burton’s ideas and helps in creating and developing the vivid occurrence of the personalities.

Then, there is Danny Elfman, the musical master, who also worked on several movies including Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, where his music plays an important part in creating the atmosphere, performing great emotional impact on the viewer and establishing a powerful, melodramatic background for the scenery. Of course the most outstanding members of his team are the actors Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp. Helena B. Carter was also his wife and impersonated numerous female characters in Burton movies. The quirkiness in their art was supposedly also present in their private life and relationship.

The collaboration with Johnny Depp is also based on their friendship in real life. They have made eight successful films together and Depp seems to have the required ability to capture all the strangeness and weirdness of Burton’s outcasts. He transfers their psychological and physiological properties to an extent where he functions as Burtons alter-ego on screen. Another quality ofDepp is his understanding of the sadness of being misperceived due to his role as a teenage idol with a pretty face. In that sense the characters in Burton’s movies are exactly the total opposite of like he was perceived and through which he could manifest his ability to step into quirky, dark roles making them appear true, emphatic and plausible. One of his outstanding performances was the one of the Hatter in Alice in Wonderland where he first appears as a crazy person, supporting the saying “mad as a hat”, but apart from a few insane outbursts, he is very selfless and loyal and shows his love for Alice in a weird sort of way. The character thus being extraordinary colorful with green eyes and orange hair, Depp again showed us another example of his versatility.

Tim Burtons gothic sensibility is very much present in all his movies, which have the ability to make us lough and scream at the same time. One of his very dark movies, Sleepy Hollow is not only dark in its content but also in pictures and shots. In most of the scenes dark and grey colors prevail from the cloths the characters wear to the whole environment, with the exception of some happy events that are underlined by bright colors. For example when Ichabod dreams of his mother and especially when they are together. The bright color is used to point out two things, the good and noble character of Katrina van Tassel opposed to the evil in the movie, as white is related to pureness and something positive. The other aspect is her appearance through the eyes of Ichabod Crane who expresses his love for her. The artistic use of color and painting a picture within the movie are some of the qualities of Burton’s movies that give us the impression of the visual being on a higher level than the story-telling, which in a way makes them less horrific. What makes it so acceptable is the tragedy, that is used as a thematic element and that makes us relate to the story in aspect to our own lives. The horror characters are usually victims and their tragedy evolves from common emotional fears. Burton often uses wide angle shots and close-ups because he wants the viewer to identify with the frightening of the character, who is suffering from some kind of injustice and we have, once more the classic outlaw seeking for justice.

One of the gothic element and themes present in Burtons work is the struggle between the phantasy world and the world of reason, which is a key element in gothic literature. The preoccupation with it shows in the short animation Vincent. In the animation, the main character leads a conventional family life on the outside but he has also created a more dramatic life inside his head. His vivid imagination runs wild under the influence of Vincent Price and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. He sinks more an more in his imaginative world from which his mother tries to free him and pull him back to the everyday world that he detests. The confrontation with the fear of death is placed within the persons imagination. The preoccupation and influence of Poe and Vincent Price is key to Burtons movie making style as he once said: “Embracing death and the catharsis of ‘Oh my God I’m going to die’ and The Fall of The House of Usher and The Raven and Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price helped me to live."Another inspiration for his work was the Mary Shelly classic Frankenstein. The story of an overreaching person fascinated with boundaries and the borderline between death and life that can also be applied to Burton himself and his work, which has the capacity to transfer us to another world that is so different from our everyday life. He tries to reconnect with the dark side of life an the human nature, offering us a wide range of extreme emotions and a chance to experience the thrill of horror. He makes advantage of the terrifying but in a very acceptable and loveable, quirky way, so we don’t feel really scared in dealing with the serious matters of death and isolation.

To fully understand the work and artistic concepts of Tim Burton it is very important to take in consideration his early life and family background. Burton was born in the city of Burbank to Jean and Bill Burton. His father was a former minor league baseball player who worked for the Burbank Park Department and his mother was the owner of a cat-themed gift shop. He attained the Burbank high school and was only fourteen when his sketches caught attention of a local garbage company. He won the first prize of a contest and his posters appeared in an anti-litter campaign for the next year. The Disney Studios sponsored his attendance of the California Institute of the Arts, from which he graduated in 1979. He then became an animator at Disney’s and worked on The Fox and The Hound and the Black Cauldron. Reflecting on his childhood days, Burton recalls being a loner who spend a lot of time by himself strolling around the nearby cemetery. He never really hung out with other kids and defined his solitude as scary, not being able to connect with people, especially to girls. In an interview he described his childhood as a ‘private hell’, stating that the feeling of being an outsider never leaves you. In his movies he, kind of, tries to work out his issues, but the traumatic issues always stayed with him, no matter how happy or successful he was. It is therefor no wonder that the strange movie maker has always been drawn to the dark and gothic vision of the world. As a child who felt that his parents don’t understand him, he found some solace with his dog to whom he established a better connection than to people around him. In his adult years he is committed to the actress Helena Bonham Carter an has adopted London as his second home. He enjoys London being the opposite to sunny California, with all its history and museum culture. His newfound English sensibilities have also been a part of some of his recent movies like Sweeney Todd an Alice in Wonderland.