Tim Burton (Burbank, California, 1958) has always been an extraordinary filmmaker. On the one hand, he is an “auteur” in his own right, a director with his own personal and perfectly recognizable universe. This world is halfway between surrealism, the fantastic and “impossible” worlds of Escher, American pop, Victorian “gothic” and a reinterpretation of horror and horrific imagery. scary of mass culture.
At the same time, Burton is A Hollywood puppy and his expensive, studio-produced films are released in a big way blockbusters. Titles like Bitelchus (1989), his second film and his first major success, Edward Scissorhands (1990), Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) or Ed Wood (1994), to name only the best of a generally brilliant filmography, cements the legend of the man who wanted to be an artist in Hollywood and succeeded.
In 1989, when Bitelchus It became a huge worldwide success. Burton was still unknown to the general public, but The film has already firmly built the foundations of its visual and moral world. On the one hand, the idea of fantasy, of magic, in a rational and incredulous world in which adults, as they grow up, lose the capacity to have imagination.
On the other hand, faced with this “civilized” and corseted reality which despises what it cannot see, the figure of the rebel, of the “different”, who bursts into the formality of social conventions to leave them in pieces and reveal their seams.
A rebellious character who will give birth to his most beautiful creations. These androgynous “Scissorhands” played by Johnny Depp with a heart of gold and the soul of an artist who ends up being destroyed by a community that condemns difference, or this Jack Skeleton of Nightmare Before Christmas who wants to redeem himself as the prince of darkness by changing Christmas and fails in his attempt. Not to mention the unforgettable Ed Wood, the talentless director whose enthusiasm and love of cinema redeem him.
Burton seeks light in the darkness and finds the darkness of light. Beauty is in the margins, in the misunderstood who can’t fit in because they can’t handle the hypocrisies of life.. Faced with a prefabricated reality and Mr. Wonderful, he asserts that what makes us human is not perfection but precisely the opposite.
The Return of Bitelchús
In this first Bitelchus The story is about a couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) who, after dying in a car accident, become ghosts and return home to a remote town to continue their lives.
Their problems begin when a wealthy New York family moves into the house, “evicting” them to the attic. After numerous attempts to scare off the unwanted tenants by claiming they are ghosts and failing, they finally hire Bitelchús (Michael Keaton), a “zombie” like them, quarrelsome and rude, expert in using much more aggressive techniques to get what he wants.
Under its airs of a fantastic family comedy, Bitelchus hidden a scathing critique of Reagan-era turbocapitalism and how it had eaten away at the soul of American society. Instead of being afraid, wealthy New Yorkers saw a business opportunity to make money from paranormal phenomena and use it to impress their friends.
Only the teenage daughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder), is able to see ghosts. As they say in a book that is a sort of guide “for the recently deceased” of constant consultation by new ghosts, The vast majority of adults cannot see them because they have lost the ability to be surprised. and detect the strange or magical in life.
Thirty-five years later, Burton returns to Bitelchus to tell another story, a kind of crazy version of this universewhich is visually exploited with all its consequences. Without a doubt, in this first film he created a world that was worth continuing to explore.
The scenes set in the world of the dead, with decapitated men, women dismembered by the accident that cost them their lives, and giants with sculpted heads, deserved greater attention. Even today, these scenes constitute Burton’s greatest visual discovery and They are purely artistic, of sublime depth and beauty.
In the new film, teenage Lydia (Ryder) is a grown woman who rose to fame through a paranormal program in which she uses her gifts to connect with the afterlife. The plot begins when his father dies and the family must gather for the funeral.
His stepmother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), who in the first film was a failed artist who was constantly joked about, has become famous and respected. And as a new addition, there is Ryder’s college-bound daughter (Jenna Ortega) who doesn’t speak to her mother and is traumatized by her father’s death.
And there’s also Lydia’s boyfriend who constantly drops “new age” phrases with which the film mocks the obsession with “psychologism” that has invaded society, where everyone is nothing but “traumas” and “repressed emotions”.
A film festival
Bitelchus Bitelchus It is a celebration, a joyful celebration of pure cinema and its marvelous capacity to create fantastic worlds and realities. With a less clear plot than the first partwhich almost worked like a story, Burton lets himself go here without complexes to fully exploit all the artistic and visual possibilities of this world that he himself created.
On the one hand, this Bitelchús who also deserves to be saved in the first part to realize how much times have changed, Today I can no longer be shameless or harass a minor.Michael Keaton’s “punk”, braggart, womanizer and king of filth, is once again a secondary character but also the most charismatic, the king of disorder and chaos who upsets this “civilized world” that the director persists in dismantling in almost every sense of his films.
On the other hand, here the teenager is not the only one who can see ghosts but on the contrary, she refuses to believe in her mother’s supernatural powers. And Ryder, fortunately back in cinema, embodies with nuance and sensitivity a tormented woman who has lost her self-esteem. Very funny and entertaining, visually explosive and hypnotic In its depiction of the world of the dead, this film is a gem.
