This will be a long one. There are three movies Tim Burton directed that I think of as his look into the mind of creatives. Technically, the inventor played by Vincent Price in Edward Scissorhands is a creative, but I’m looking more at the idea of taking a deep depth into the minds of artists. Although, I do appreciate how Burton and I both grew up with a healthy Vincent Price fanaticism. Totally, totally, healthy.
Now, understand that I used to love a good Tim Burton film. Beetlejuice was one of my “happy movies” as a little kid (you know, the ones kids watch on repeat until their parents want to “accidentally” destroy the tape). No one at school knew what I was talking about when I mentioned Frankenweenie (the original live-action short, not the animated remake). I frequently quote Mars Attacks! I was obsessed with Sleepy Hollow when it came out. I even loved the episode of Faerie Tale Theatre Burton directed! However I have been very Burton cautious of late (meaning I’ve seen of all his movies, but also blocked several of them out afterwards). If there is a movie that should have been on this list, let me know. However, if anyone suggest Dark Shadows or the Marky Mark Planet of the Apes, I will block you.
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Big Eyes - This is probably the most difficult of stories Burton attempted to tell as it is about a woman trapped in an abusive relationship. A part of me can’t help feeling like a woman should have been part of the team to tell Margaret Keane’s ordeal. Perhaps that’s close-minded of me, but sometimes men can’t fully fathom how terrifying being a woman is in a situation like that. The isolation, the anxiety, and the worry for one’s child is only at the surface of the film, being portrayed in one nightmarish scene. They did have the real Margaret Keane as a consultant and the amazing Amy Adams in the part, but it might have been a different movie if a woman had more of a hand in the writing.
The movie does do several things very well. Fist of all, in case you don’t know, the movie is based on the true story of Margaret, an artist and single mother who attempts to make money from her art in the 1950s, when women weren’t hired for anything creative. Most animation studios (Disney especially) didn’t even hire women for anything beyond ink and paint. She marries a man named Walter Keene (played by an intense Christoph Waltz) who sells her stylized paintings of children with large eyes as his own and they become mass-produced best sellers. The frustration and pain of not being recognized for one’s own creativity is shown through the amazingly wild visuals of Tim Burton and the excellent expressions on Amy Adams’s face. Margaret Keane says that she draws the eyes so big because eyes are how she shows the inside of person. Burton attempts to show the same by framing many shots directly on Adams’s face.
Walter threatened her and her daughter many times as she started to object to his lies about the artwork. Something they both always wanted was to be able to live off of art without a day job, something all artists and writers dream of. The difference is, Walter Keane wanted to live off someone else’s art. Margaret and Walter also have different views of the commercial aspects of art which is another thing Burton and the screen writers present in a great way throughout the movie. She feels cheapened by his actions and the way he turns her art into postcards and posters. In addition, when critics negatively review the work, Walter takes it personally, when it’s Margaret who feels the most of what is said.
The idea of the sexism in the world is well-portrayed with Margaret worried about having to lie to her own daughter about the artwork. She’s led to believe by the world around her that it’d better for the family if Walter can sell the work for financial stability. When she tries to sell work under her own name in a slightly different style, she is hit on my art collectors who do not take her seriously. When a female friend who can sense the lies, Walter scares her away with male bravado.
Spoiler alert: Eventually, Margaret escapes from Walter and finds support in religion. Her new community gives her the courage to sue Walter and she has to paint in court in order to prove that the art was hers all along. The real Margaret married a third time to a sports journalist who she says helped her find her voice in the public. I just think it’s a shame that she became famous as Keane and had to keep that name on her artwork.
Big Fish - I know that this is not about someone who needs creativity to as a livelihood, but it’s still about how creativity can be a part of survival. I sometimes think that people forget that this was a damn good movie! It’s very much a human study piece, not an adventure film or spooky love story, which might be why it’s often looked over. And everyone in it does such a good job. I once saw Alison Lohman at a convention and told her just how impressed I was with her mimicking the actions of her older counter-part Jessica Lange. I also told her that my friend and I applauded at the end of Drag Me to Hell (apparently, we were the only Sam Raimi fans in the theater).
The movie is about a journalist Will (Billy Crudup) whose constantly trying to find the truth in the tall tales his father Edward Bloom (Albert Finney/Ewan McGregor) always told before his dad passes away. We learn about his dad the same way he did, through fanciful stories where the dad befriends giants, outsmarts school rivals, saves werewolves, and catches the biggest fish you’ve ever seen using just his wedding ring on the day his son was born. Burton uses his signature set dressing and style in when the audience is within one of the father’s stories. When we return to the real world, the colors are muted, not dull, just not as fantastical, and the filming style draws the eye to the human emotion instead of the action.
Spoiler alert: In Will’s search for fact versus fiction, he and his wife (a photojournalist which I thought was a nice touch that she was also an artist) rehear the many stories Edward created about his own life. Will attempts to pick them apart, digging for what pieces were real like any good investigator would. It isn’t until he meets with a woman he thought his father had an affair with. As the woman, Jenny (Helena Bonham Carter) tells yet another tall tale to Will, she gives him two conclusions about his father. Number one: that there was never another woman for Edward Bloom than Will mother (the Lohman/Lange character). Number two: that everything in Edward Bloom’s life is fantasy except for Will. Will is his reality.
As Edward is in the hospital towards the end of his life, the family doctor (Robert Guillaume) tell Will the truth of the day of his birth. Will is hungry for the knowledge which is a very typical birth story other than the fact that Will was born a week early which was why Edward was still on the road at the time and regretted on being there. The doctor adds, “And I suppose if I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving a fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fancy version.” Still, Will counters with, “I kind of liked your version.” When all is said and done, Will does finally understand why the tall tales are so important to his father. Will makes up his own version of his father’s passing, telling it to him on his deathbed, an elaborate story of a hospital escape and a return to the river where all of the most important characters of Edward’s life have come to see him off. And Edward Bloom becomes his own story - he’s released into the river, turning into a big fish.
Edward Bloom tries to tell his son Will that they are both storytellers in different ways. The point of the film is not that the father is a liar or delusional. The point is that, in his creative mind, the world could be so much bigger and more interesting than it really was. And that was something he wanted his son to have - a world where anything could happen. At the end of the film, you find that Will continues his father’s legacy by telling his son all of the tall tales he grew up with.
Ed Wood - One of the greatest Tim Burton films of all time! This is a masterpiece of the artistic mind from the joys to the failures, the moments of genius and the crippling depression. Burton does an excellent job of making his movie look like a cheesy monster movie and everyone in it overacts on purpose. What makes this film really good is not historical accuracy (I’ve been led to understand that much of this is really toned down when it comes to alcoholism and personal relationships), but how it gives the feel of anxiety, failure, and rooting for the little guy. A delusional little guy.
If you are unaware, Johnny Depp plays Edward Wood Jr., the king of bad cinema who develops a friendship with an aging Bela Lugosi played by Martin Landau. Ed desperately wants to be the next Orson Welles, writing, directing, and starring in pictures. However, his slapped together together style and choice to hire actors made up of his friends and financial backers. Ed is optimistic, refusing to believe that his movies are terrible.
Wood’s big break in the story is Glen or Glenda, a movie close to his heart as it’s about a man who dresses as a woman, something that he’s been hiding from his girlfriend Dolores (Sarah Jessica Parker). The movie is filmed over a short period with Wood in the lead and Lugosi as a scientist. Ed uses all first takes, filming in locations where he has no permit, and fills in the in-between shots with random stock footage. He’s disappointed when he’s told it’s the worst film ever made. This does not seem to drag Ed down as he looks for people to invest in his next picture Bride of the Atom and the Bride of the Monster. He, Bela, and his group of friends who Dolores calls abnormal, try to convince the masses that his movies are worth it. Eventually, Dolores leaves him, fed up when he gives a better role in the Bride of the Monster to a woman who gave money to the production. The production suffers many problems like being thrown out a studio and having to steal an octopus prop. The biggest issue is Bela’s morphine addiction, the only thing that keeps him going as an out-of-work actor who feels forgotten by the world. The best scene is when Lugosi is swearing a blue streak about Boris Karloff.
Despite his own issues, Ed tries to save Bela after a suicide attempt, checking him into rehab and visiting every day. This is how he meets Kathy (Patricia Arquette), a young woman who doesn’t mind that Ed is a transvestite obsessed with angora and becomes his biggest cheerleader. Sadly, Bela passes after a final moment of feeling like an amazing actor where people ask for his autograph. There is a true feel of how Hollywood destroys people, leaving them behind as the next big trend comes along.
Spoiler alert: Ed convinces a church to give money for his most famous movie Grave Robbers from Outer Space (later called Plan 9 from Outer Space). He uses his last footage of Bela and tells a story around it, hiring Kathy’s chiropractor as a Bela double. The rest of the cast is made up of his usual friends, wrestler Tor Johnson, and camp TV personality Vampira. The more he films, the more the church leaders object and criticize. They ask him why he allows the cardboard tombstones to fall over on set and demand one of their church members be cast in the film. Ed has a breakdown, donning his favorite sweater and running to famed Hollywood restaurant Musso and Franks. Sitting in a booth is Orson Welles (played by Vincent D’Onofrio, but voiced by Maurice LaMarche). Ed runs over and the pair have a short but meaningful conversation about how studios and producers can destroy an artist’s vision. Welles says, “Visions are worth fighting for.” Emboldened by his hero’s words, Wood returns to set insisting that everything will be done his way.
The movie is not a happy, uplifting story of overcoming the system. Still, Ed Wood is the essence of a creative mind run wild. He’s too busy coming up with ideas and making them come to life in his own unique way to realize that he is not the brilliant man he thinks he is.
