Tim Burton

You know, I've been thinking about why I'm thankful to God for Tim Burton. I thought about it after I wrote it, and I even decided to take it off of my "1000 Reasons to be Thankful" list. However, this is the reason I like Tim Burton.

1) Tim Burton is one of those men that God has endowed with incredibly creativity for some reason. He doesn't use it to honor God, but it is from God.

2) Tim Burton believes in fairy tales. Every movie he has directed is a fairy tale movie with a fairy tale ending. (I love fairy tales.) Though many of his recent movies are adaptations from books (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish) or plays from the 1920's (Sweeney Todd), he has a knack for choosing a story that ends either in complete bliss or utter tragedy.

3) On a similar note, Tim Burton is a sucker for good love stories. Big Fish is one of my favorite movies of all time. Nothing steals a woman's heart like a man standing in a field of daffodils that he planted outside her window. Corpse Bride, even though it was dark (as all Tim Burton films are), was a story of a love so pure that even death couldn't break it up. Rarely does Tim Burton use sexual content to "enhance" his movies. He doesn't need to. He loves showing the purity of true love (in the fairy tale sense). **Disclaimer: The premise of Sweeney Todd is that a man is wrongfully accused of a crime by a judge who desires his wife. When Barker (Todd's real name) is sent away, the judge rapes his wife. The difference than most modern directors, however, is that they would feel the need to show you at least a portion of this. Burton tastefully sticks to the music's implications that "her reputation was stained" or something like that. Nothing is shown. At all.

Why I'm removing him from my thankful list...

Please be aware that Tim Burton's movies are almost always dark and dreary. Really, they remind me of a lot of the fairy tales I read as a child. Dark and scary.

If you have any aversions to violence, I don't recommend Sweeney Todd. There are graphic images of death that are very haunting. Most of the violence is almost like a cartoon, not lifelike at all. However, at one point in the movie, a woman is thrown into a furnace, and Todd watches her burn. VERY graphic. (If you were unable to handle the images of death in The Prestige, this might be too much for you.)

Most of all, if you choose to watch this movie, make sure the kids are in bed. That was one requirement I had for watching this with Jonathan, and I wish I had stuck to my guns on it. Conlan wasn't watching the movie (most of the time he was in his bedroom playing), but once or twice he looked at the screen when something horrible was happening. It's not worth it if the kids are up.