Tim burton’s source of impression: hurt childhood

In Holly Wood, there is a great artist of fantasy movie, who transcend time and space in his world by his highly individual style; His name is Tim Burton. He is well-known for his dark, Gothic, and depressive style formed by traumatic experiences from his childhood. Now, he is one of the most influential masters in Holly Wood. His typical works are Batman, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, although there are lots of the best movies, many film reviewers say in chorus that “ All of Burton’s movies can be explained as one film, Edwood Scissor hands.” For that reason, I assumed that Tim Burton’s film style, as in Edwood Scissor hands, draws from his childhood years as alone who experienced sadness and isolation.

In an interview, he said his childhood was a kind of surreal and bright depression. He was interiorized, always felt kind of sad, and spent time in imagining something. He once disbosomed that he was treated as an outcast in the high school and concentrated on collecting figures; furthermore, as Burton’s autographic movie, Vincent, although he acknowledged his identity as lonely person and enjoy thinking about gloomy and weird imaginations, his parents didn’t understand why he isn’t like other children and even forced him to go outside for stopping him kept in a room. Even worse, he had experienced discord with his father. He imposed his son to be normal, but Burton couldn’t accept his father. That’s the why he always has been living with depression and skepticism about life. Thus, he started to have been thinking reflections like “ Who we are? How we created? What happens when we die?” Finally, he found out that fairy tales acknowledge the absurdity and reality of existence; in other words, fairy tales are under the umbrella of life, death, and the unknown. Furthermore, he thought fairy tales are violent, symbolic and disturbing, which is fairly similar to monster movies. Therefore, monster movies became his own interpretation of fairy tales that have more meaning than reality.

In his movies, there are common features. One of them is to represent Burton’s life philosophy. For example, although the characters of the movies including monsters, villain and clumsy boys often behave bizarrely and strangely in contrast to normal people, they don’t struggle to be normal beings, which shows Burton’s resistant spirit to “ the ordinary” or “ normality”. Rather, Burton even clarify why the main characters became so abnormal, which shows the inner side of outsiders with sincere sympathy. Also, he set society as a negative community which hurts the main character and make the character suffer from hard time. This shows his pessimistic view points toward society. In addition, all of his movies are visually pleasant. Burton often depicts opposition of place by opposition colors and harmonize them perfectly. For example, he set lonely castle as dark colors and lively village as pastel tones, which distinguish the main characters from society completely. Plus, Burton depicts relationship with father as negative, which is influenced by his childhood experience. Furthermore, the main characters return to their own places after they suffered hardship from society or external environments. Often, the characters accept their limitations and choose to back again.

Those features are all observable in Edwood Scissorhands; that’s the reason why so many critics argue this is the most typical Tim Burton’s movie. Also, he draws the movie from his childhood depressive experience. Edwood is created by a scientist living in Gothic castle. Unfortunately the scientist died before he completed Edwood; therefore, his hands are still scissors, which became the biggest misfortune to him. This implies that Buton’s attitude towards father is negative. In addition, when Edowood comes to village, everything seems good for him. All the houses in villages looks bright and beautiful. The people approach to him by simple curiosity and treat him nicely. However, soon, they misunderstand him and talk behind his back, and just exclude him easily. This situation may be reflected Burton’s own experience. He tried to go outside and form connection with others. At first, the outside world seemed full of warmness, however, they didn’t accept Burton’s difference and exclude him. Therefore, at the end of the movie, Edwood decides to back again to his castle because of misconception and prejudice from people. In there, he makes snow for his lover in every winter time, which is better for him. The village seems very lively and beautiful, but the people lack communication of each other; Burton set the houses of villages with small windows. Also, although Edwood seems easy to hurt people, he becomes wounded by other villagers.