In the end we dislike him although we know it's wrong

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2005)

Edward Scissorhands was a film that confused me the first time I saw it, and many times afterward. The problem was simply this: if Edward was such a kind and gentle soul, how could he skewer Jim at the end? There are lots of logical reasons. Jim was trying to kill him. Jim was endangering Kim. Or Burton's own explanation, that even someone like Edward has a breaking point. None of these, however, satisfied me.
Tim Burton has a tendency to have protagonists he has an ambiguous relationship with. Beetlejuice is a villain, yet he's the most likable person in the movie. Ed Wood is an absolute hack, yet it's hard not being sucked into his vision that he's brilliant. Jack Skellington of the Nightmare Before Christmas is the hero but we really kind of loathe him. Ichabod Crane of Sleepy Hollow is the hero, but he's a pompous dork.
The thing these characters have in common, however, is that they are creators, people who produce their own realities, sometimes literally, as with Ed Wood, or sometimes magically, as with Beetlejuice, or sometimes just in his own head, like Ichabod Crane.
Edward Scissorhands, too, is a creator, and of Burton's characters, the closest to being a pure artist. He does hair styling, pet grooming, topiary and ice sculpture. This is relevant to why Edward does everything he does.
The author James Joyce contended that an artist is a person who reacts to a woman neither by lusting after her or loving her, but wanting to capture her essence on paper. This distancing factor is what makes artists perpetual symbols of man's sense of isolation. But the artist's vision is clearly more isolating than that of a average man, because if the average man could create it, it would seem less like art and more like hackwork.
Artists are often portrayed as tragic loners, doomed to ultimately gain satisfaction only through the products of their imaginations. The problem with Edward Scissorhands is that he clearly is _not_ a loner. He desires the company of other people. He initially enjoys the adulation he receives. Even when he knows he is being used, he still allows it to happen because of a love of people, especially Kim. He is so very lovable and Johnny Depp accentuates this. So can he kill? His scissor hands, of course, are what ultimately distances him from the people he wants to be close to. They inadvertently destroy property, or hurt people even when Edward is trying to save someone's life. The scissor hands are also the symbol of the artist: they are what permits him to create. But they also permit him to kill.
In many ways, murder is the thing that ultimately, permanently takes the perpetrator away from society. It is the highest crime, and when no justification, such as self-defense, can be found for it, it is often punished with death or life imprisonment. Having Edward kill Jim erases our vision of Edward, the gentle, lovable soul, even if we say Edward was totally justified in doing it. Edward is capable of more than just hurting people accidentally.
The contradiction of Edward, the lovable and Edward, the homicidal caused horrific conflict in me. The first time I saw the film, I disliked it, precisely for this reason. How could I even feel sorry for Edward if he killed someone? And isn't that the point of the movie, that Edward is a tragic character? Hasn't Burton defeated his own purpose? But a tragic character is a person of great abilities with one flaw that brings him down. Edward is exactly this. His flaw, however, is not his scissor hands; it is, rather, his need for human contact. But Edward is not just a tragic hero, but also a tragic artist. He is a person we must ultimately dislike, even if we don't want to, because that is the only way he can do the thing he _must_ do, avoid human contact, and achieve the distancing from human reactions Joyce talked about.
This is the true genius of the film: the tragedy of the artist. Burton wants us to feel conflicted, to view Edward as something far worse than we ever thought he could be. We cannot truly love the artist, only what he creates. It is one of the great paradoxes of life, and Burton wants it to be under our skins.
Many famous artists, like Gauguin, Wagner, or Hemingway, were detestable people. Yet what they produced is enjoyed and will continue to be enjoyed. And at the film's very end, we don't see Edward, but the "snow" he creates by sculpting the ice. Kim's final line, "sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it," tells us in the final analysis, the artist is the insignificant part; the art is what is important. The art imparts joy.
And in the art is redemption: ours and Edward's.