Tim Burton has fallen hard recently. His style is a parody of what it once was and he has basically lost all credibility as a filmmaker. Plus, I never really liked him all that much to begin with. There was a certain time in the early 90's when Burton really looked like he would become a premier auteur of his time. Burton was making both critically praised films (Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice) and block busters (Batman, Batman Returns), no simple feat for a director. He was achieving what few had ever done, maintaining credibility as an artist and making enough money for the studio that he was able to fund his own passion projects.
Ed Wood was the pinnacle of this. A stylized biopic about a cross-dressing director who is often referred to as the worst filmmaker of all time. The writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszeski, fresh off the awful Problem Child movies, treated the subject matter with a surprising amount of maturity, grace, and above all love. The film is a love letter to Wood's films as much as it ridicules them. The two writers really show of their USC degrees, adapting Rudolph Gray's novel Nightmare of Ecstasy into a script full of rich characters, touching moments, sharp dialogue, and lots of laughs.
As much as it pains me to say it though, Burton is who takes the script and makes it into a classic film. He shot the film in black and white, which brings Burton's absurd costumes and flamboyant charms the restraint it needs to feel timeless. The movie is full of so many beautiful little touches in the sets and costumes that you almost feel like the film is daring you not to be entranced by this story. It's the little moments of this film that dazzle me, the intermingling of Wood's real life and the films he writes, the way Wood is shot while watching his masterpiece, and of course the scene where he meets his hero Orson Welles. Burton gives us a flare for character and story instead of beating us over the head with his style and art design like so many of his other films. This film gives us the substance with enough flare that we won't forget it.
The cast is wonderful as well. The characters we knew from Wood's films are done admirably, such as Jeffery Jones as The Amazing Criswell or Lisa Marie as Vampira. As are the characters we have not seen before, Billy Murray's Bunny Breckinridge is a definite stand out. The really great performances though are given by the two leads. Martin Landau, who won an Academy Award for the performance gives Lugosi both the humor and the unquestionable sadness that came along with growing old and becoming forgotten. From the moment he comes onscreen I was so convinced by his performance that I genuinely forgot an actor was playing the role. Every second Landau gives to the movie he is Lugosi! Johnny Depp gives a different type of performance. His character is not so wrapped up in subtle intrinsic reaction of a human being lost in a world that has forgotten him. The character of Ed Wood, and I call him a character because I strongly doubt the man this way, is as though he has walked out of a classic film. Wood is both a character structured around the emotions and reactions of that of a classic Capra film and a parody of those very same character traits. He is a walking caricature in a world that is both grimly realistic and terrifyingly surreal.
Every response that Wood has is that of the goofy films from the 30's 40's he so resembles. The dramatic scene near the end of the movie where he loses faith and goes to a bar is not really dramatic! Wood goes there because he is a film character in movie. That's what HE does in the middle of the third act. The film knows it, the audience knows it, Wood knows it, it's the just the people around him that do not understand. The film strives for more than just being a meta-films and that is why it is so much more than mere screenplay gymnastics. Johnny Depp's Ed Wood is both aware and clueless, he exists as a celebration of an era of films and a showcase of the naïveté of such films. He is a confliction by design, yet above of all he represents the existential conflict of the artist, too walk the line between undying optimism and facing the reality of your limitations.
All these players, (the actors taking small or strange roles, the writers leaving their comfort zone, and a director who held back his stylistic urges just enough in order to tell a gripping story) they all gave us something special here. A movie that is enjoyable, original, and thought provoking on many levels. This movie is a hidden jewel in the filmography of an actor now know for playing a funny pirate, and a director now most remembered for multiple shitty remakes of classics and a animated musical (used primarily to sell things at Hot Topic) which he didn't direct. Did the star and mastermind of Ed Wood know that this would be their respective fates? Probably not. But in a way the masterpiece they made together says more about it than I could. A film about trials and tribulations of an artist, and wondering "In fifty years, when people look back, what will they remember me as?". But I can say that, if there is any justice in the world THIS is what you will be remembered for.
-SP McDonald
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