Ian Nathan - Tim Burton: The iconic filmmaker and his work

Gotham city in all its wintery glory. This second version of the city, built for the sequel, Batman Returns, was much more what Tim Burton had in mind. Its mix of comic-book, fairy-tale and dream-like imagery are unique to the director.

Once upon a time in Burbank, Tim Burton gathered together a rabble of local kids in a park and instructed them to make piles of debris and dig weird footprints in the ground. There they waited for some other kids to show up, and convinced them that an alien ship had crash-landed.

T he callow Burton also once convinced the boy next door that a killer on the run had tripped and fallen into a neighbours pool that had only recently been doused with acid and chlorine. I threw some clothes in there, he remembered, and told this kid the guy had dissolved.

Long before he realized it, Burton was a director. Here is the preoccupation with death, the talent for thinking up extraordinary scenes, and an imagination rife with invaders from space ready to rain destruction upon suburbia.

The look, feel and subject matter of Burtons films are so distinctive they have become an adjective Burtonesque. Describing what that word means is, I suppose, partly the endeavour of this book. Although, Im not sure Burton himself entirely knows. Much of the time he isnt even clear why he does things it just felt right, he often says. Thus logic can be of secondary importance. Where do those horses come from in Planet of the Apes? And yet if you use the word Burtonesque, any film fan will know exactly what you are saying.

Youre talking about the imagery. Such imagery! You could take any frame from any of his films and know that it came from his singular mind: gothic, whimsical, eerie, strange, haunting, and bursting with detail. Like animated films, only real or real films, only animated.

Criticizing Burton for a lack of versatility is like criticizing Charles Dickens for being Dickensian. Burton and his films are extensions of one another he could no more direct a generic high school comedy than take up the shot put.

There are so many images impossible to forget. Winona Ryder dancing in the snow in Edward Scissorhands; the woebegone expression on the shrunken face of the hunter in Beetlejuices waiting room to the afterlife; just about anything in The Nightmare Before Christmas. And in Mars Attacks!, that Martian habit of rolling their eyeballs heavenward at Earthling idiocy is distinctively human. However outlandish his worlds, they harbour something real.

But Burtonesque is far more than just a matter of a unifying style; it is as much about character. Not for nothing do so many of his films use the name of the lead character as the title: Batman, Ed Wood, Alice in Wonderland His films, it was once said, are full of wacko individualists. Which is another way of saying they are full of life even if they happen to be dead.

The director Tim Burton has arguably the most autobiographical canon in Hollywood history. In fact, his style is so distinctive it is has become an adjective Burtonesque.

To get psychoanalytical for a moment, your classic Burton wacko cleaves into two types. Duality is the word Burton often uses. There are those wackos who reflect the man he is the outsiders like Edward Scissorhands, concealing great talent and feeling misunderstood. And there are those with the personality he desires extroverted and fearless like the Joker. In Johnny Depp, his great alter ego, both sides are explored.

Burtonesque also speaks of a tone. Burtons films might be distinctive, but they are almost impossible to categorize. Batman might appear to be a superhero movie, Sleepy Hollow a horror film. But they slip the bounds of their elected genre to become something else entirely. His films are often very funny without quite being comedies, sad without quite being tragic.

Whats surprised me most in taking a magnifying glass to Burtons work is how much he has to say. Age, family, art, death, and even Hollywood figure as themes. Satire is one of many traits. Burtonesque can be very political, revealing a director infuriated by authority and class distinctions. American small-mindedness, as embodied by suburbia, is never far away.

This is arguably the most autobiographical canon in modern cinema, certainly in todays Hollywood. Tim Burton makes films about Tim Burton to please the Tim Burton trapped inside. In the man you will discover the inspiration for the films. Despite an aversion to interviews, he readily speaks about how films are like therapy, a way of working through the issues of his youth.

Everyone seems grateful to him, particularly young people, Helena Bonham Carter has said. He understands everyones separateness and isolation, that feeling that you dont fit in or that youre different.

In other words, he speaks to all of us.

Tim Burton (right) discusses the finer points of superhero etiquette with Catwoman (Michelle Pfieffer) and Batman (Michael Keaton) on the steamy set of Batman Returns. While not easy to make, the sequel remains one of his finest films.

Partners in sublime Burton (right) confers with an angora-clad Johnny Depp during the making of Ed Wood. Depp would, of course, become the directors great alter ego.