Review: Edward Scissorhands

-written as an assignment for my Film 131: Narrative Film class for my Masters in Film-

Edward Scissorhands has been one of those untouchables movies for me, in league with such films as Loch Ness (1996) and Warriors of Virtue (1997), for its role in shaping my love for films at an early age.  I was five or six then when I first saw it on VHS and instantly fell in love with it. I remember distinctly being captivated by the story and the possibility of the existence of a man with scissors for hands. I recall vividly how and why the film created such a desire for me to travel to the States as a child—to catch a glimpse of people with scissors for hands and other peculiarities I imagined existed in that land so far away. Warm memories from that time usually accompany my recollections of the film. It is for these very reasons that I usually disdain revisiting such “classics”, for fear of discovering “flaws”, technical or conceptual as “taught” me by my years in film theory, in those films I loved so. It was with a great sense of hesitation then that I took out my copy of the movie that I bought so long ago for this assignment.

The film that functions as a darkly comic and slightly demented adult fairy tale still held my attention and admiration from start to finish. I was so delighted to see the very things that captured my imagination then—the appearance of a rather interesting character into the dreariness of everyday reality, the high tragedy of Edward and Kim’s doomed romantic relationship, and the tragic truth of man’s capacity for inhumanity—hold my fancy still. The images from the film I surprisingly still remember from the first time I saw it—the wacky shapes and forms of Edward’s topiary creations, the cartoonish and exaggerated look of the suburbs and gothic castle, the scene where Edward surprised everyone by grooming a neighbor’s dog, and most vividly the image of Kim dancing under the “snow” Edward creates while he was making his ice sculpture in the garden—are to me now still as beautiful as when I first beheld them then. I was grateful to realize that indeed Edward Scissorhands was and is a worthy film upon which I have associated numerous memories of my childhood with. What is even more interesting is that far from being disillusioned with the film, the takeaways I have from my years of film theory in university enrich my love of the film. Now I do not just like the story because “it’s nice” and “it made me sad but in a good way”, but I appreciate it now more so as it is an effective fictional narrative that explores the politics of inclusion-exclusion, the human capacity both for moral good and inhumanity, and a pleasant visual experience from the beauty and spectacle of one imagery to the next.

As with all films Tim Burton, his signature visual eccentricity is apparent in Edward Scissorhands. The images do not just delight but speak volumes of what the director tried to achieve. The cartoonish depiction of blood (a gooey hyper-red blob) every time it appears in a scene serve not just to soften the rating the film might receive for exhibition then, but also to consciously remind the audience of the artificiality of what is being shown. Most filmmakers would avoid this effect but Burton, in my opinion, highlights it even more to drive home what the story essentially is—a fairy tale, a fable. Another notable visual choice shown in the film is the exaggeration of the look of both the gothic castle and the suburb below. The gothic castle is so dark and generic that it achieves an effect much like a cartoon, consistent with other elements of the imagery such as the portrayal of blood, which dulls the horror a gothic castle might bring and brings it almost to a mundane sobriety. This dulling of an extreme is then contrasted with the sickeningly pastel-colored suburbia below, achieving a hyper reality of what is supposedly mundane and creating an odd but surprisingly effective contrast with the dulled and sobered up gothic castle. The visual quality of these two primary settings of the story highlights the qualities of the characters that come from them. Edward, an extreme and severe looking creature that comes forth from the gothic castle, longs for nothing but normalcy and the sense of belonging, while the residents of suburbia, with nothing special about each individual but the wacky clothes they wear, are roused by, interested in, and ultimately hateful of the former’s peculiarities. The lone image of the ordinary-looking and realistically-dressed family of the Boggs serve not just as a sharp contrast to express visually their difference from the rest of suburbia but also as the necessary anchor in reality that helps suspend the audience’s disbelief. The plainness of the Boggs makes it even easier to fall for, root for, and ultimately be taken up in the budding romance of Edward and Kim. These images, each a pretty enough picture to savor every time they grace the screen, serve the narrative and the purpose of the film exceptionally well.

Ultimately, re-watching Edward Scissorhands was well worth the internal conflict of my hesitation against risking ruining my memories of the film as it indeed proves to be a timeless classic that stands the test both of time and any pretense of “knowing better”.