Mansur Ahmed

The short film Vincent, created by Tim Burton while he was a conceptual artist for Disney, is perfection. It must be obvious, despite its overtly dramatic and macabre nature,  that this is a highly autobiographical work. Not autobiographical in events, I don’t believe Tim Burton has dipped his aunt in boiling wax, but autobiographical in feelings. Because of this, the film is universal and speaks to all of us whether we realize it or not. For some, it may take a stretch to recognize the base similarities between what Vincent (a.k.a. Tim Burton) feels and what every other person on this planet will experience more often than they choose to acknowledge. I am of course referring to our feelings of alienation from the external world. Vincent finds solace in his imagination, fueled by the baroque of Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe. He embraces madness and torment as a kind of catharsis. And watching Burton’s film should give us a certain cathartic release. However, it might be presumptuous to believe everybody will respond to it the same way I have. For all intents and purposes, movies are like Rorschach tests. It would be particularly interesting to gage different people’s reactions to Vincent. Regardless, the title character struggles through considerably intense bouts of darkness and gloom, and at the center of his melancholy lies a very thoughtful examination of loneliness and isolation.

Tim Burton’s heroes, I imagine, are Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe. This film is like an amalgamation of all three of their sensibilities. But while Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price can be more connected to Gothic works, I think Tim Burton is closer in form to Dark Romanticism. If anyone doubts this, just watch his adaptation of Sweeney Todd. I know Sweeney Todd is not an original work from the mind of Tim Burton, but his particular take on the material, and his focused direction, make the events of that story more extreme than anyone could have imagined. His films are of course Gothic, but they’re much more than that. Dark Romanticism may not even be a suitable genre to place him in. Perhaps Tim Burton is his own genre. Although I believe Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are the definitive Batman films, I still love Tim Burton’s Batman movies. But I don’t see them as Batman movies, I see them as Tim Burton movies.

If he had to pick a single one of his works to define his career, he should pick Vincent. All of his films are great, but Vincent, even at a mere six minutes in length, exemplifies everything that is uniquely Tim Burton. The character (you can guess who he resembles) is only seven years old and his obsession with both Poe and Price lead to his detachment from reality. He adopts the fantasy he is a tortured artist and allows the bravura of his imagination to go rampant with a poignance that is very dark and strange. This character is the schematic for most of Tim Burton’s characters, like Edward Scissorhands or Bruce Wayne. They are outsiders who find it difficult to touch the world outside themselves. In the case of Edward Scissorhands, that idea is made visceral by giving him deadly shears in place of hands. Most of his characters have somber physical appearances, with these dark circles around their eyes. I imagine eyes are a very important factor when Tim Burton casts his films. But in spite of their grim outward look, they are usually very tender and emotional. Again, Edward Scissorhands, except for his eyes, is both Tim Burton’s most freakish and dangerous looking character, but he is also his warmest.

With Vincent, Tim Burton may have been trying to explore the possibility of loneliness being the key to our existences. Vincent sees the natural world as dark and mysterious. His mother, in the end, stomps over the means with which he seeks to escape his manifested torment. What she doesn’t realize, and what people who don’t know him won’t realize, is that his delusions of torment are part of the peace of mind he is trying to find. Everyone watches scary movies or rides roller coasters to absolve themselves of the darkest urges they might not even be aware they possess. Vincent, in his own way, is doing the same by embracing and articulating those urges. By melodramatically collapsing to the floor and feigning hopelessness, he is reaffirming his place and belonging in the world. He feels it is his purpose in life to suffer. As morbid as it sounds, that inevitable fact gives some people meaning. It makes them more self-aware and interesting than most of us can understand. After all, we seem to learn more about our true selves and the world in suffering than we do in cheer. Maybe Vincent (a.k.a. Tim Burton) is onto something.