Tim Burton's most personal and relevant film...

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2007)

Edward Scissorhands was a transitional film, not just for its director, but also its star. While it was often overlooked and avoided by the mainstream audience when it was first released, people who have more in common with its titular character than they realised at that time have since embraced it with open arms. Watching it seventeen years later, I can understand how it put some members of the audience off, as it is also Tim Burton's most serious, least light-hearted film. In contrast to Batman, Ed Wood, or even Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands is played completely straight, with every note of the story intended to be taken seriously. Or so one might think from experiencing the manner in which the story is presented. Although it is tempting to think of Edward Scissorhands as being intended as satire or a joke, everything that the public knows about Burton suggests that he was totally and utterly serious about the message of the film, both those intended and those that the people the film particularly appeals to have discerned.
At its heart, Edward Scissorhands concerns itself with an Avon saleslady named Peg, who finds the titular character within a haunting-looking Gothic mansion after a particular bad day at the grindstone. Unsure what to make of her new acquaintance, she brings him home and embarks on an effort to domesticate him, for lack of a better word. Figuring that all one needs is love, she slowly introduces Edward to the rest of the family, and eventually the neighborhood. At first, everything goes swimmingly, with Edward finding his rather strange condition allows him to do things the stiff-minded townsfolk would not deem possible. But with such sudden acceptance also comes a degree of unhealthy curiosity, not to mention jealousy. As Peg's daughter, played by Winona Ryder in one of her rare fits of relevance, takes more of an interest in the new arrival than she probably should, the normie element starts to deliberate about how to besmirch Edward's character. The manner in which they subsequently behave will strike many who have something in common with the director as oddly familiar.
Much of Edward's background is told through the use of flashbacks that not only detail how Edward lived before he was discovered by the bored housewife, but also why he is in the state he is in. The film, or rather its publicity materials, describe him as being unfinished, but I really hesitate to use that word in this context. Unfinished, incomplete, or variations thereof have a very specific connotation, and the reality is that this connotation is very different from the Edward Scissorhands we see in the film. For certain, he lacks fingers, but he not only comes across as being far more sincere than those around him. He also demonstrates that what he lacks, a fully formed set of hands, is far less important than what the townsfolk he is introduced to in the first act lack, an open mind or an imagination. It is no coincidence that the hairstyles and greenery sculptures that he creates using his bladed fingers take on shapes that never occur in the imaginations of the townsfolk. Or within the imaginations of members of the audience, for that matter.
As I said, the film marks a transition. Director Tim Burton was starting to be taken seriously as a director with a unique creative vision. Batman had just made so much money that one of its stars wound up being paid more than some small countries make in a year. Beetlejuice was prompting grapevine talk of this weird director who portrayed the afterlife as being warmer than the world of the living. And then there was the star of Edward Scissorhands, a former teen idol by the name of Johnny Depp. Although the effect took more time to become more discernible for Depp, this is but one of the films that began to make audiences and the press alike take him more seriously. Even though he was already twenty-one when he made his debut, it is easy to look back on his early appearances and realise he demonstrates more talent than anyone he shares the screen with. After working with Burton for half a dozen films, I am sure Depp must realise just how perfectly they are matched. The only other actor that comes close to benefiting so much from Burton's direction is Michael Keaton.
Indeed, regardless of the colour scheme Burton uses for the different environments of his films, he manages to make one sharply repulsive compared to the other. The mansion in which Edward is found is dark, foreboding, and haunting. Yet it is at the same time so warm and inviting, thanks in no small part to a strong score by Danny Elfman, that one wants to run away with Edward and tell this normalised world they are never coming back. Indeed, after being denied knowledge of what I am for so long, and seeing normies get away with what would be called perjury in a just world during this film, I have to ask those normies one thing. Yours is a world of respect with trust, and mine is not? Tim Burton is therefore not just a director of unique and extraordinary vision. He is the voice for a neglected minority that is being assaulted from all sides by normalists and negationists. Whether he intended this is beside the point, as Edward Scissorhands demonstrates. That he does it so well, and so passionately, makes the end result infinitely more watchable.
It is for these reasons and more that Edward Scissorhands is an unqualified ten out of ten film. Burton does not just offer a piece of himself here, he reaches out and touches so many.