How many filmmakers have truly cut a lasting, individual swathe through modern cinemas? Tarantino, Scorsese, Campion, Lynch, Allen, Craven and of course Spielberg are among the most notable ones (even if in Lynch's and Allen's cases, admittedly I don't even respect their work). But maybe the most surprising case of all is an oddball genius, born in Burbank, California in 1958, whose films have nourished and inspired emos, Goths and assorted other misfits for nearly 30 years: Timothy Walter Burton.
After a rather lonely, impoverished childhood, Burton's first job in Hollywood was as an animator with Walt Disney Studios, working on The Fox and the Hound (1982) and The Black Cauldron (1985). However, Burton grew to hate working for Disney because his macabre visual style didn't sit well with them, and they refused to theatrically release his second directorial effort, the black-and-white short Frankenweenie (1984, after his '82 short Vincent, a semi-autobiographical tale of a boy who idolises Vincent Price, who even narrated it).
He then quit Disney and landed his first feature directorial job, with Warner Bros.: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), which follows Paul Reubens' man-child title character trekking across America to find his stolen bicycle. It was critically trashed but grossed twenty times its budget, and marked his first collaboration with his usual composer, the remarkable Danny Elfman. Now with a box office hit to his name, he was able to direct Beetlejuice (1988) and Batman (1989), which made him even commercially hotter still.
But then, in 1990, Burton released what remains his favourite and most personal work: Edward Scissorhands. There is no way I can even describe this movie objectively so I won't even bother trying. No movie has ever resonated with me more than this one; just listening to Elfman's magical score makes me dance around and then well up. And of course, this was Tim' first collaboration with star Johnny Depp, who has never given a better performance.
Then, from Batman Returns in '92, to the stop-motion animation holiday classic The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood (his biopic of notorious director Edward D. Wood, Jr., with an Oscar-winning Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi), the hilarious piss-take of pro-American Hollywood sci-fi movies that is Mars Attacks! and then 1999's breathtaking period horror Sleepy Hollow, he came through the '90s flawlessly.
Entering the new century, though, Burton made his first turkey: 2001's Planet of the Apes (he was hitherto enduring a mid-life crisis and it shows). But that was the film through which he met Helena Bonham Carter, by whom he would have two children (and who starred in all his later films before they split in 2014). Next, however, came the powerful family saga Big Fish (2003) before a double dose of wonderful weirdness in 2005 with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride, and then the spellbinding adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007, and JFTR I usually HATE musicals).
Into the new decade, Burton then brought his own flavour to Alice in Wonderland (2010), and while not as resonant as it could've been, it still brought Lewis Carroll's iconic world leaping back to life. Then in 2012 came two remakes: of the '60s supernatural TV soap Dark Shadows, hilarious and daring; then of his 1984 short Frankenweenie, this time animated and with a very sincere fear-of-the-unknown allegorical side. 2014's Big Eyes found Burton's visuals actually feeling more reminiscent of Jane Campion or Gus Van Sant, but his connection with the narrative is thoroughly evident as he follows the life of artist Margaret Keane (a luminous Amy Adams), whose husband Walter found fame by taking credit for her paintings of large-eyed waifs. And now, his latest film is Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and while it falls short of Ransom Riggs' extraordinary novel, that's not by much.
Burton also in 1997 published a stunning children's book titled The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories, and 2011 a book called The Art of Tim Burton (he paints and draws literally everywhere he goes). He also has officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, perhaps unsurprisingly. But through channelling his demons into his unashamedly crazy and macabre but resonant directorial style, Tim Burton has helped himself, and moviegoers worldwide who feel marginalised and ignored, to instead feel loved, noticed, and understood. And he will keep working that magic on us for many years to come.
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