Beautiful film

Rating: 9/10 (16 November 2007)

Johnny Depp is "Edward Scissorhands" in this 1990 Tim Burton film, directed and co-written by him with enchanting music by Danny Elfman. The film also stars Winona Ryder, Anthony Michael Hall, Dianne Wiest, Kathy Baker, and Alan Arkin. Into a bright, pastel suburban world, a kind Avon lady, Peg (Wiest) takes a strange young man (Depp) out of a bleak mansion where he seems to be alone and brings him into her home. Dressed in black, with black unkempt hair, white skin (kind of Michael Jackson-esquire), Edward has scissors for hands. He is the creation of an elderly inventor who died before Edwad could be completed. Though quiet, Edward exhibits great artistry with his scissors, making ornate art forms from bushes. Soon, however, he falls in love with Peg's daughter Kim (Ryder) and becomes a threat to Jim, her abusive boyfriend. Jim manages to turn the entire neighborhood against Edward.
The theme here is a common one for Burton, that people who don't fit in are people with souls who have something to give. He tells the story in such a poignant way - Edward rarely speaks except with his scissors, and the scissors create things of beauty. The end of the film is heartwrenching in one respect but in another says that beauty lasts forever, frozen in time, and that a spirit can go on and be felt even when the person himself is rejected. Certainly one of the great films. A real triumph.