Is Edward Scis­sorhands Tim Burton’s last tru­ly great movie?

When was the last time we had a prop­er Tim Bur­ton movie? One where his blood, sweat and cre­ative juices were etched into the cel­lu­loid? One where you felt like he’d fought for every barmy aes­thet­ic deci­sion in order to pre­serve the mad vision in his head? It brings you back to the old sto­ry about a board­room fra­cas involv­ing the the title of 1988’s Beetle­juice.

Pic­ture the scene (we’re mak­ing this up by the way): Bur­ton in his 10-hole Doc­tor Martens with an asym­met­ric black shock of goth hair, sat oppo­site two cor­po­rate ​“cre­atives” with plat­inum wrist chains, shark­skin suites, per­ma-tans and pony­tails. ​“Tim­bo, here’s an idea for ya – hows about instead of call­ing it Beetle­juice, we call it… House Ghost?” Awk­ward silence. Very awk­ward. ​“Let’s just call it Scarred Sheet­less,” he responds, rolling his eyes, mask­ing the con­tempt. The cor­po­rate guys rub their smooth chins, think­ing. Hmm, that might just work…

We can­not spec­u­late on whether or not Tim Bur­ton is hav­ing these types of meet­ings any more, but it cer­tain­ly doesn’t feel like it. It’s sad to think of a movie as a make or break moment for its direc­tor, but such is the case for his new one, Mrs Peregrine’s School for Pecu­liar Chil­dren. There are two pos­si­ble argu­ments for this sor­ry state of affairs: one, direc­tor Tim Bur­ton has – like all artists do at some point – lost some of his for­ma­tive lus­tre. The mojo just isn’t there any more. He’s become a slave to his per­son­al brand of ooky-kooky baroque. Two, is that every­thing is just fine with Tim and he’s pump­ing on all cylin­ders. It’s the audi­ence that are no longer inter­est­ed in the wares he has to sell.

Dur­ing his ​’90s hey­day, there was a real feel­ing of the patients tak­ing over the stu­dio asy­lum. He was punch­ing out exper­i­men­tal block­busters like weren’t no thing. You watch 1990’s Edward Scis­sorhands now, and mar­vel how such a thing could get the green light. Maybe stu­dios like to have a wild card in their midst, so they can at least be seen to be play­ing the game while releas­ing schlock as a side­line which is actu­al­ly the mainline.

It’s Burton’s own favourite of his films, and it’s easy to see why. There’s that feel­ing of dis­rup­tion, of a film that makes a con­nec­tion as both a sen­ti­men­tal tidal wave, and as a sil­ly, iron­ic con­fec­tion. It’s a fable, but it’s also a mock­ery of fables. It’s morals are coun­ter­feit, an excuse rather than a robust philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­ning. Yet the emo­tions are real, and that’s what counts.

The film is a fan­ta­sy-romance that’s built on the macabre foun­da­tions of hor­ror. Edward (beau­ti­ful­ly played by John­ny Depp), is dis­cov­ered in a dilap­i­dat­ed man­sion sat on top of a hill by Diane Weist’s tena­cious Avon lady which over­looks a pas­tel-hued sub­ur­bia. His mas­ter (Vin­cent Price) per­ished pri­or to his com­ple­tion, leav­ing him to fend for him­self and with giant scis­sor blades replac­ing his fin­gers. His leather body­suit with its met­al ringlets recalls one of the Ceno­bites in Clive Baker’s Hell­rais­er, while his blade mitts are pure Fred­dy Kruger. Yet he’s gen­tle like Frankenstein’s mon­ster, and the film asks sim­i­lar ques­tions about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of liv­ing a peace­ful life but with a killer poten­tial at your fingertips.

Edward is quick­ly adopt­ed by the Bog­gs fam­i­ly, and we fol­low his slow but mean­ing­ful inte­gra­tion into polite soci­ety. He becomes a land­scape gard­ner, a pet styl­ist, a hair­dress­er and, even­tu­al­ly, an acci­den­tal thief and mur­der­er. Yet Bur­ton and co-con­spir­a­tor Car­o­line Thomp­son are more inter­est­ed in the film’s dark satir­i­cal poten­tial. Its bru­tal depic­tion of south­ern work­ing class Amer­i­cans pulls no punch­es. Though it’s easy to see the film as a super­fi­cial paean to glossy mid-cen­tu­ry kitsch, Bur­ton uses his out­landish, colour-cod­ed pro­duc­tion design to chas­tise these faux-ritzy com­mu­ni­ties filled with sexed-up gut­ter­snipes, reli­gious nuts, boy rac­ers and porcine bread­win­ners. This is the con­ser­v­a­tive heart­land, and it stinks to high heaven.

In fact it’s depic­tion of down­home, small­town Amer­i­ca isn’t too dis­sim­i­lar to the one pre­sent­ed in David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Vel­vet, where pris­tine white pick­et fences and plush green lawns are mere­ly a shield with which to hide all the per­ver­sion and trans­gres­sion. Per­haps Edward Scis­sorhands is slight­ly more trag­ic, toy­ing with the idea of what Frankenstein’s mon­ster would’ve been like had he been tak­en in by a coterie of bored house­wives. The Dev­il makes work for idle hands, and the women in the film are all like pre-fab Jeanne Diel­mans, tired of their lot as domes­tic pris­on­ers and drawn to a life of casu­al sex and vio­lence, to the point they reach orgas­mic heights when hav­ing their hair cut. Mean­while, the men remain com­i­cal­ly blind to the destruc­tion that sur­rounds them, epit­o­mised by an amaz­ing­ly cool-head­ed Alan Arkin as the Bog­gs patriarch.

The time in which the film takes place is inde­ter­mi­nate. It looks and feels like the 1950s, yet var­i­ous cul­tur­al mark­ers (TV chat shows, men­tion of VHS play­ers, mod­ern police cars) sig­nal that it’s more like the 1980s. These peo­ple have trapped them­selves in the past, and the film’s sil­ly sense of humour is itself decid­ed­ly sweet natured and old fash­ioned. Edward is part man and part machine, and the film is about splic­ing and jux­ta­pos­ing. It’s when two incom­pat­i­ble ele­ments come togeth­er, but they some­how achieve fusion. Like the goth­ic and the orna­men­tal, or the banal and the sen­ti­men­tal. Our hero is forced to flee back to his cas­tle for a life of soli­tary con­tem­pla­tion, unable to fit in to the rou­tines and rit­u­als of a life where rogue ele­ments her­ald either breath­less excite­ment or dead­ly threat, and noth­ing in between.

Even if Bur­ton is play­ing fast and loose with the fairy tale form, does Edward Scis­sorhands have a moral? Maybe it’s some­thing to do with the sup­pres­sion of the indi­vid­ual? Or pos­si­bly about col­lec­tive rejec­tion of The Oth­er? Bur­ton is often char­ac­terised as a film­mak­er inter­est­ed in the lives of freaks like Pee-Wee Her­man, or Bat­man, or Vic­tor Franken­stein from Franken­wee­nie, or Sweeney Todd or Willy Won­ka. Yet this one extends great empa­thy towards his hero’s out­sider sta­tus, sug­gest­ing that an unwill­ing­ness (or inabil­i­ty) to con­form will always lead to even­tu­al seclu­sion. But, as in all good hor­ror films, Edward is revealed as a freak among freaks.

Bur­ton was him­self a freak at one time, but now the DMs have been swapped for com­fort­able train­ers and the bound­less imag­i­na­tion replaced with more flat­pack think­ing. But maybe it’s not him? Maybe it’s the fault of the sys­tem? He melt­ed our hearts with Edward Scis­sorhands and then, just as eas­i­ly, crushed them with the bril­liant, pure-shot of unfil­tered Bur­ton that was Mars Attacks! His imag­i­na­tion is his bless­ing and his curse. He’s trapped in his cas­tle on the hill, with only his mem­o­ries for com­pa­ny. His most recent work hints at great­ness with­out ever tru­ly achiev­ing it. Let’s hope he man­ages to escape and lay waste to the sub­urbs once more.