Film Auteur Theory in Tim Burton's Cinema

Introduction to Film Auteur Theory

Film auteur theory arose as a concept between the 1950s and the early 1960s as an evaluative process placing film directors in a hierarchical genre perspective (Caughie, 1982, 62). It is the basis of film critique — the framework that formulates the ideas and constructive (or destructive) criticism offered by film experts such as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, whose film critique television show coined the "two thumbs up, two thumbs down" phraseology still widely used to describe films today. What Ebert and Siskel helped demonstrate was that the public is as interested in film analysis and genre as it is in storylines. They helped reveal a large contemporary film audience receptive to auteur theory — that which Dudley Andrew (1984), in his book Concepts in Film Theory, describes as "a criticism ready to uphold the failures and aborted projects of certain directors as more valuable than the greatest successes of metteurs-en-scène" (115). It is a criticism of consciousness, one that explores authorship — the director as the film's author (727) — in greater depth than biographical criticism (115). In other words, Andrew explains, it is not about the adaptation of a film from story to screen, but rather an exploration of the interpretation that yields the adaptation from the director's perspective (104). It is a depiction of the psychic complexities of the director made manifest in the final product of his work (735).

Andrew's thoughts on auteur theory run concurrent with those of Peter Wollen in his book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (74). Wollen and Andrew both cite Andrew Sarris, explaining the history of auteur theory as beginning with a "loosely knit group of critics who wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma" (Wollen, 74), who made the magazine a success by looking beyond commercial successes to works previously dismissed (Wollen, 74; Andrew, 115).

This essay examines, from the auteur perspective, the work of director Tim Burton, whose many films include the hugely successful Edward Scissorhands (1990), Big Fish, Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Beetlejuice(1988), Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Ed Wood (based on the life of the eccentric director Ed Wood). Burton is a compelling character study for the complexities of the director's psyche, because his film imprint is easily recognizable through the tools he employs: casting, lighting, camera angles, sound, costume, and staging. His is not, as was perhaps realized by the directors who followed him in the Batman film franchise, an easy director's chair to occupy. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher must have discovered this when his finished film failed to earn the high praise given to Burton's first two entries. Even with more big-name stars than the first two films, Batman Forever demonstrated that Schumacher was, if nothing else, out of his genre and unable to convey to the audience that sense of "Gotham" which had strongly permeated the first two Burton films. If it had been the goal of the producers to compensate for the absence of Burton's vision and his ability to conjure from the dark recesses of his own psyche the drama of evil versus good, they failed miserably — proving that what had begun with Burton should indeed have continued with Burton.

The Batman series will prove especially useful in examining Burton's work from the auteur theory perspective. His other films will be used in comparison to help analyze his cinematic imprint or brand as it is identified in auteur manifestations. This essay will examine the interplay of novelty and stability intrinsic to auteur theory — which, as history, is not about events in sequential order but about the revaluation of those events in conjunction with era (Andrew, 727) and, taking it one step beyond Andrew's thoughts, genre as well.

Burton and Genre

Andrew writes that: "Whereas formalist critics could point to nothing other than technical ingenuity or perfection to account for the strength of a poem or film, the issue of genre lets us lodge the value of the work within the culture itself or within the tradition of films from which it comes" (109).

When we consider Burton's work in terms of genre — Ed Wood being an exception to Burton's broader generic expression — we must place Burton in the category of the fantastical: a combination of contemporary cultural reality and the illusion of fantasy, expressed through a creative, comic-book-character-style novelty that helps explain the unfathomable realities of the world around us. Those realities are embedded in the social, political, and individual struggle to exist freely within the constraints of law and morality in the ongoing conflict of good versus evil.

Consider Burton's 1988 film classic, Beetlejuice, starring Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in the lead roles as a quintessential married couple, Adam and Barbara Maitland. At the prime of their youth and their marriage, they become victims of a car accident caused by swerving to avoid a deer. From the opening scenes of the film, up to the point where Adam and Barbara plunge into the frozen depths of the river running beneath a picturesque covered bridge, this classic portrait of an untimely death is fully in keeping with the image of the Maitlands that Burton has constructed. He creates the sense of the classical married couple: young, attractive, living the American dream in a way that reflects their own combination of eccentric uniqueness — evidenced by the outward appearance of their home, the interior décor reflecting country comfort and floral patterns against light tones, and the one room that is entirely his, filled with a train set and a miniature village. These individual traits will serve as stark contrast when the Deetzes are introduced and subsequently move into the home following the couple's deaths.

In these opening scenes, Burton uses the brightness of color and warm earth tones — a home perceived as airy, sunny, and comfortable — to mark the stark differences in character and lifestyle between the Maitlands and the Deetzes. Delia Deetz (Catherine O'Hara), her husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones), and their perpetually depressed daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) represent the dark side, set in deliberate contrast to the Maitlands and staged to prepare the viewer for the fantastical events to follow. This is also the point at which Burton introduces the nemesis, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), the chaotic force challenging good — and, along with the other otherworldly characters, the source of novelty in the film. That novelty is precisely what the Maitlands must acquire in their effort to discourage the Deetzes from imposing their darker, post-modernistic personalities upon the beloved family home.

Once the Deetzes move in with their post-modernistic style of furniture and décor — much to the now-ghostly Maitlands' distress — it becomes a contest for the Maitlands to develop their ghostly skills under the guidance of their spiritual counselor, Juno (Sylvia Sidney). The scenery and characters of the spiritual realm are no less strange and bizarre than the life of the Deetzes. As a result, the Deetzes fit right in with the now-strange world the Maitlands inhabit. There is a symmetry to the new existence of the Maitlands and the lifestyle of the Deetzes: the historical has merged with the present, and the conjunction produces a kind of balance.

We can compare Beetlejuice to Burton's other strangely fantastical works in which a merging occurs between the genre of fantasy and the classical social concept of the suburban family and community. In Edward Scissorhands, the contrast of the fantastical and the classical emerges once again. Edward (Johnny Depp) is a person whose hands are scissors, inserted by his Frankenstein-like creator. Rather than becoming a distraction, this remains a mystery to the viewer — why did the creator choose scissors instead of human hands? The character of Edward is expertly played by Depp, who brings the comic-like figure to life with precision. When Burton unites Depp's semi-robotic portrayal of Scissorhands with Ryder's conveyance of deep, dark depression, the result is a moody contemporary drama suffused with surreal fantasy.

Fantasy, Reality, and the Social Message

Auteur theory suggests that Burton's work must function as a decryption of meaning (Wollen, 104). Burton's films meet this criterion in that the fantasy element is used to foreground the social message. We find this not only in Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, but certainly in the Batman films. Batman, Burton's first entry in the series, is perhaps the defining signature of the director. Gotham is a dark place that manifests evil in the character of the Joker (Jack Nicholson). Bruce Wayne — Batman — is the force with which evil must reckon. Yet Batman himself has a dark side, made manifest in his costume, his gothic mansion, and the technology he employs to combat the Joker and other criminal elements.

In this film, Burton needed only a handful of big-name, talented actors — Jack Nicholson (the Joker), Michael Keaton (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Billy Dee Williams (Harvey Dent), and Kim Basinger (Vicky Vale) — to attract an audience that might otherwise have passed on a comic-book-to-film production. Yet these actors, by virtue of their talent, require minimal direction, which allows Burton to focus on the structure of the film itself. The film is not structured around the actors; rather, the actors fill the structure Burton has already coded — his own interpretation of the storyline — by bringing its characters to life within that framework. The actor interprets the director's coding: the darkness of the scenery, the emphasis on visual elements that suggest a cesspool of everything deteriorating in humanity, with Gotham as the garbage can into which that deterioration has been tossed.

Burton's genre is a combination of fantasy deployed to facilitate the rationalization of reality. His films repeatedly make the statement that what society perceives as normal can only be so perceived within the framework of what society deems abnormal. He uses the genre of comic-book characters in comic-book storylines — where good prevails over evil, but where the socially perceived normal is always flawed, and that flaw is resolved by that which resides outside the perceived normal. In Burton's films, the perceived normal can only be resolved through joining forces with the perceived abnormal. This causes the viewer to consider the definitions of normal and abnormal, and to question how society arrives at them. It also prompts the viewer to recognize that normal and abnormal together produce a balance that is always better than what existed before the two were joined. It is only through the genre of fantasy inserted into a contemporary setting that Burton is able to accomplish this social statement.

Conclusion

Burton meets the first criterion of film auteur theory, as Caughie interprets it, in that he relies more upon the tools of directing than upon direction itself (109) as the first step in his filmmaking process. He meets the second step in Caughie's interpretation of auteur theory in that he imprints his own distinguishable personality as a value upon the film. Anyone who has seen Burton in real life alongside his actress wife, Helena Bonham Carter, can envision them both as characters in a Burton film. They are unique personalities, and Burton's uniqueness — his novelty — transcends life and imprints itself upon his film works.

Burton's films might rightly be described as "Gotham" — referring to the enormous success of his Batman films — in that the image is one of dark lighting and a black-and-white sensibility to the screen characters, even when they appear in color. Burton's use of this lighting against urban and suburban settings helps bring out a sense of social dysfunction, and it is the signature of his films, including Ed Wood, which is inspired by the real life of the director of that title and employs the same lighting, the same sense of the fantastical mixed with the reality that the fantastical helps to put into perspective.

Burton meets the auteur standard described by the Cahiers du Cinéma critics and later theorized by Andrew and Wollen: his films demand active decoding, reward close analysis, and bear an unmistakable personal imprint across every element of production — from casting choices to structural logic to the recurring dialectic between the normal and the abnormal. It is only through the genre of fantasy inserted into a contemporary setting that Burton is able to fully accomplish his social statement, and it is precisely that integration that defines him as one of contemporary cinema's most distinctive auteurs.

References

Dudley, Andrew (1984). Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford University Press.

Caughie, John (1982). Theories of Authorship: A Reader. Routledge, New York.

Valicha, Kishore (1988). The Moving Image: A Study of Indian Cinema. Orient Longman, Bombay, India.

Wollen, Peter (1972). Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. Indiana University Press.