Tim Burton: The Twisted Story of the Eccentric Filmmaker
Since breaking into film in 1985 with his feature debut, The Adventures of Pee Wee, director Tim Burton has earned a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most unique and inventive visual artists. In this documentary, Screen Rant attempts to analyze the influences that helped shape Burton’s unusual vision, as well as the ups and downs that shaped his career.
Over the course of a breathless 30-minute presentation, the filmmaker recounts the echoes of Burton’s childhood that you can already feel in his work, including his sense of alienation, his icy distance from his parents, And the classic monster movies that kept him going since childhood. After finding his first means of expression as an innovative artist, he continued to develop his skills and began his transition to film form while studying at CalArts. He soon found a job as an animator at Disney, even though Burton’s creepy vision wasn’t a good fit for the company at the time.
The film contains a large selection of indelible images and film clips, fully depicting the various stages of Burton’s illustrious career. Many of these images left lasting impressions in popular culture. We witness visual evidence linking Batman’s Gotham City to a German Expressionist masterpiece. We appreciate the contrast between the unique worlds Burton created for films like Planet of the Apes, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Sleepy Hollow. We learn of Burton’s reliance on anthropomorphism, the process of giving human characteristics to animals or objects in his stop-motion work.
Finally, the film examines how Burton’s career came to a happy end, as he achieved unprecedented success adapting Disney classics such as Dumbo into live-action adaptations. Along the way, the film introduces us to Burton’s most frequent collaborators who helped him realize his decades-long artistic vision.
Tim Burton: The Twisted Tale of an Eccentric Filmmaker, beautifully crafted and well-observed, is a brief but satisfying look at the work of a unique filmmaker.
