Edwin Page - Gothic Fantasy: The Films of Tim Burton

Tim Burton is a tall man usually dressed in black. His dark hair is often wild and unruly, Johnny Depp stating that a comb with legs would have outrun Jesse Owens given one look at this guys locks. All his films have been affected by his childhood experiences, experiences which still have a strong resonance with Tim Burton the man. This personal touch has meant that his movies communicate a deep sense of humanity to those that see beyond the stunning visuals and often playful plotlines.

Born on 25th August 1958, Timothy William Burton spent the first ten years of his life living with his parents and younger brother in Burbank, California. Burbank is the location of a number of film and television studios, including Disney, NBC and Warner Brothers, so even as a boy he was close to the industry he would eventually become part of.

He couldnt understand why his parents sent him to Sunday school when they werent really religious or why they had a certain picture hanging on their lounge wall despite the fact they didnt seem to have any real feelings for it. He also couldnt understand why they blocked up the windows of his bedroom, leaving only high slits for the light to shine through. So, distanced from his parents and younger brother due to his perceived difference, Burton moved in with his grandmother at the age of ten and remained with her until leaving high school.

He saw the suburban life as lacking in passion, as a kind of colourless, flat landscape in which no one really knew anyone else beneath the faade of normality. He has said of his experience of living in suburbia that there was no passion for anything, just a quiet, kind of floaty kind of semi-oppressive blank palette that youre living in.

In order to escape these oppressive feelings Burton would indulge in creative and quite ingenious pranks. At one time, with the help of some other children, he distributed debris and stamped footprints around a local park, and then persuaded other kids that aliens had crash-landed there. He also faked fights in the neighbourhood and once convinced another child that a killer had died after falling into a swimming pool, their body having dissolved due to the fact that the pool had recently been cleaned with chloride (the tall tale was supported by some clothes hed thrown into the water).

Due to his suburban upbringing, Burton developed the belief that society tries to suppress any creativity and passion an individual may feel, while at the same time a particular culture is enforced upon us, almost suffocating any creative urges we may possess. Because of this he says that individuals need a certain kind of strength and simplicity in order to break through the enforced, cultural framework. This strength and simplicity is exactly what Burton employed in his passion for drawing, a passion that continues to this day. It is also evident in his films on a visual level, making his movies highly identifiable.

In the same way his films are not trying to assimilate reality, but are highly symbolic and stylised in order to capture and convey the complexity of emotions within the narratives.

Burton finds drawing both satisfying and cathartic, claiming that, I think best when Im drawing.

Burton often uses his drawings to explain certain elements of his films to production designers, directors of photography and even the actors involved. For example, he has made sketches of Edward Scissorhands, the Penguin from Batman Returns and Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow in order to show the kind of look he was seeking from the characters.