Aidan Eljumaily-Reflective Blog

            Over the course of this semester, I have learned many great things about Tim Burton, his work, and about how perception can make everything beautiful. Burton and his deep dark ways have made me take completely different views on certain things, and also have provoked me to watch movies with attention to much greater detail. Every movie that Tim Burton directed held some sort of special dark meaning to how his life and personal experiences were. It was incredible to go from watching huge grossing films that the man created to reading Oyster Boy and other Stories and seeing how really dark and unusual he was.

            From Fantasy to Science Fiction and even Musicals, Tim Burton’s library of successful films is immense. All these different films brought to light so many different issues and ways of thinking throughout the semester. From looking at the end of the world in a satirical sense like in Mars, to complete and utter world and time disaster in Planet of the Apes. Burton shows that you can take any sort of idea or story and find ways to put bits of yourself into it. This makes for a much more personal and direct way of directing.

            The correlations between Tim Burton’s movie character’s and their lives are numerous. His focus is on stories that involve tricksters and the unusual, and through this focus he makes positive thinking experiences with his films. Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands; these are just exampes of characters Burton truly relates to. His effortlessness to take his bleak past and put it into the art form of filming is incredible. From it I have actually grown to be a better musician and artist.

            When you watch film after film after film of different Tim Burton productions, you start to see the underlying common lessons and emotions he is trying to portray. This honesty, that Burton believes in the beauty of the unusual and a world where even the strangest of people can do good, has inspired me to be more honest in the work that I do and the things I want to present about myself. Burton took a very dreary, negative life and made a positive one out of it all by being honest in his work and never lying to himself.

            The fact that he also used many of the same actors for different movies surprised me. Burton using actors that he was comfortable with and knew showed that he wanted to really have people he could trust. He wanted to know that an actor was going to go out there every day and have some personal connection that he could put onto his or her character. This is an incredible way of filming, because Burton makes it so personal and comfortable. With movies as dark as Sweeney Todd and fantasies as bright as Alice in Wonderland, all with similar casts, Burton shows that you can take any group of people that make art together and merely shift the tides every time you make a new project.

Eljumaily- Alice in Wonderland

This semester in class, we only really reached the tip of Tim Burton’s full career. Burton had many other films that utilize the many different methods and quirks that we studied and focused on. For my other movie I chose Alice in Wonderland. I loved watching Burtons version of Alice because of the honesty I felt he wanted to put into the movie. The early Alice in Wonderland film was a kid’s orientated story about a sweet girl named Alice who falls into a dream like state and travels to another crazy world while sleeping under a tree. This kind of thing is right up Burton’s alley, and I say he took the film to a 5 Oyster level. Burton took the basis of all the trippy things that occur in the old film and make them his own grotesque, beautiful story. He includes the tale of the Jabberwocky, bringing an element of fear and true evil into a story which originally came off as a dreamlike children’s book.

            The acting in Alice in Wonderland was up to the same level that all of Tim’s movies function at. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter again act brilliantly under Burton’s direction, and really take Alice to the next stage. Both the actor and the actress fit their roles perfectly. As already quirky characters themselves, Depp and Carter brought a new understanding to the characters of the Mad Hatter and The Queen. Depp makes the relationship between the Hatter and Alice much deeper, making a sort of awkward but beautiful love story between a young girl and the insane hatted man that visits her in her dreams.

            Carter makes plays up the Queen’s wickedness to a whole new high, giving a chilling and haunting performance that Burton knew only Carter could. Rickman also plays the Blue Caterpillar character beautifully. His trippy low voice fits the smoke trick-doing hallucinogenic Caterpillar perfectly. Another great part of the fim was the costuming and graphics. Alice in Wonderland is one hell of a film to try and take on by using real actors instead of solely cartooning. All the characters have some sort of physical costuming trait that they can be identified, like how the Queen has a huge head and how the Hatter is obviously always wearing his hat.

            The setting is also another incredible part of the movie. The amazing scenery and places that Burton visits and changes around from the original Alice to the new is awe-inspiring.  The final scene where the Jabberwocky comes out and Alice finally faces all of her fears in her dream state is a wonderful metaphor of a scene. It makes life seem like just a game, with the setting being a chessboard and the soldiers of the Queens army being cards. Burton really digs deep in this movie to show how one can overcome their fears through their mind. Alice does this through her many adventures, and Burton’s portrayal of that old story comes out with 5 Oysters.

Eljumaily-Sweeney Todd

Tim Burton’s film Sweeney Todd takes the very vile, disgusting act of cannibalism and puts a very plausible, emotional reason behind it. Viewers find themselves sympathizing with Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd, all while they are slaughtering people like cattle and serving them to others. This cannibalism is a symbol for the way humans saw each other and treated one another in mid-nineteenth century London. Sweeney Todd plays off the idea that it’s a “dog eat dog” (man eat man) world out there.

            The first initial scene where Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd convince themselves that cannibalism can be justified is when Sweeney kills Parelli and Mrs. Lovett makes the suggestion that they just use the meat from the body to make pies. They sing about their menu, and how they will “serve anyone, to anyone”. They make commentary on the different tastes of people, how some are worse, like lawyers, and how priests are a bit too fat. They also bring up the idea that “those who serve will serve those up above”, meaning that society will be flipped over and those at the bottom will rise to the top.

            This is exactly how times were in London around the mid-nineteenth century. People were starving, the government was corrupt, creating a huge gap between the wealthy and the poor. The average man who got miniscule pay compared to those officials up above also heavily fueled London’s industry. This made for a very hateful relationship between the rich and the poor. Sweeney takes this matter into his own hands and begins eliminating the problem, one by one. Todd, however, kills everyone, showing that the real problem in the world of man is man.

            Sweeney’s initial idea of ridding the world of man is to merely kill every last one of them until he gets to the judge, but Mrs. Lovett takes it to the next level by suggesting that they serve the dead to the living. This symbolizes how all the conflict and corruption in London at that time was causing the population to implode and eat themselves. Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett were merely helping the cause out, by taking two wrongs and creating a right in their own mind. This is how Burton’s film takes the most disgusting of primal human cruelties in cannibalism and backs it up with an innocent reason.

            The reason for Todd’s carnage was obvious in the fact that he had been sentenced to hard labor overseas for a crime he didn’t commit and had lost his beautiful wife and child in the process. The scene that shows Barker with his perfectly happy family is a very bright, picturesque scenario in which Benjamin has a very optimistic, sunny view of life. Life when he returns, however, is dark, dreary, and obviously seen through a completely different view by the newly-named Todd.

            This new, horrible view of life represents the measures that civilians in London were pushed to at this time. Food was scarce, innocent men women and children were being hung, and the streets were dirty with blood and corruption. This is where mankind turns on itself and it becomes a man eat man world. Overall, Burton’s film Sweeney Todd shows the carnage and vileness that society pushed people to in mid-nineteenth century London.

Eljumaily-Big Fish

Tim Burton’s film Big Fish takes main character Edward Bloom, a mortal man, and makes his life incredibly fantastical. Burton flawlessly takes the sunny Bloom and throws him into many dark, grotesque situations with odd, nearly mythical characters. These characters seem to have a certain connection with Bloom and likewise he is constantly drawn to the strange and unusual. The many similarities that the movie plot has with Burton’s completely normal/fantastical life are striking. Burton has the ability to fully understand what it takes to take such a strange, dark past and make it larger than life.

            The first scene that truly shows how Edward embraces darkness involves his childhood friends and the Witch. All the other children are too afraid to go up to the Witch’s door and find out if she is real or not, while Bloom approaches it just like another normal household. Burton would show the same familiarity to the dark, boarded house because of his own childhood jail cell of a room. When the Witch shows the children how they will die, Edward takes in the scene with a look of curiousness on his face. He is okay with it, just as Burton finds the same comfort in very dark things.

            Another scene where Edward takes the strangest of situations and makes good of it would be when he takes on Karl the giant in front of the giant’s cave. He sarcastically tells the giant to eat him, then gives Karl comfort and tells him they should run away together. Everyone in the town fears Karl as if he is a monster, but within minutes Edward makes friends with the monster and runs away with him. He starts his story off with a bang, having the star of the town begin his travels with a companion so feared by those same people.

            All of these strange events that Bloom exaggerates immensely in his own head and through his stories are very similar to how Burton saw his life as a child. When his father would scare the other children with his Were-wolf act gave him the fantasy in his head that he needed. To him, his father was a fairy-tale creature that contributed to young Tim’s imaginative mind. Edward might not have done or experienced completely all the things he spoke of, but he remember them and took them in in ways that made him larger than life and almost mythical.

            Burton ceaselessly takes the strange and unusual and couples it with the sunny and bright. The fact that Edward’s last name is Bloom already sets him up for being a character full of life and happiness. That Mr. Bloom takes in all these different grotesque events and makes them beautifully contrasting stories was a perfect trait for Burton to build his work Big Fish on. It’s Tim’s optimistic side, where he takes many of the strange occurrences he had and makes them beautiful through a normal man much like himself. Overall, Big Fish is a wonderful display of how the disgusting can be made beautiful through your own mind.

Eljumaily-Planet of the Apes

Tim Burton’s film Planet of the Apes connects both ape and man by utilizing their many common dualities. One of the most obvious dualities was the battle between science and primitivism. Many key points in the film involve a metaphorical stare-off between technology and primates. Two of these points occur when Leo Davidson takes advantage of the technology in front of him and uses it to either forcefully control the apes or trick them into defeat. These scenes show the build of character that occurs when Davidson finally has his comfortable tools. He becomes much more of a leader and really gains the upper hand with his guns and spaceships.

            When Davidson and the rest of the crew escape into the forest and find the space-man’s gun and messaging unit, he really shows superiority and control. He takes Limbo as a hostage with the gun and tells everyone he has a spaceship to get to with his messenger, therefore making him the leader and navigator of the group. This is a shock to the rest of his group, because they have all lived in a time where Apes were always the rulers and superiors of humans. Until the weapon is ironically destroyed by one of the stronger apes, Davidson had full control of any of the apes. This powerful moment gains Leo the respect and wonderment that leads the rest of the apes and humans to follow him.

            The other scene I chose as an obvious display of the science-primitivism duality was the second to last scene in the movie, in which the battle takes place and Davidson’s chimp comes back to save the day. Other than the first engine burst that Leo uses to blast the initial attack from the apes, the humans lack any sort of upper hand or piece of technology. This commences the slaughtering of some apes and many humans, until the chimp in the pod comes back. All the apes cease their violence and begin to bow down to who they think is the god of all monkeys, Semos. Davidson totally takes advantage of this moment to grab his gun, but in turn starts a fight with Thade that injures the chimp and brings them to a final stand-off in the hub of the broken down ship. Finally, primitivism holds the science that allowed humans the upper hand on apes.

            This cross of the duality ends up showing, however, that humans were still bound to come out on top. Davidson uses his knowledge of the hand-automatic door lock and locks Thade in a cage. This is a build of character again because it shows the power Leo can have and gains him more respect and awe with the apes. He leaves in confidence and swagger, kissing the two different species women and flying off in his ship, only to find that his world is now apes with technology. This twist is very much similar to the old 1968 twist in which the main character was on earth the whole time. Overall, the duality between science and primitivism runs rampant in many of Planet of the Apes scenes.