Vincent by Tim Burton

Tim Burton is well-known for his dark films such as ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘Edward Scissorhands’. He is also famed for his quirky-themed films, for example, ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’.

In total he has created 18 films and has remade the film ‘Frankenweenie’ which is one of his earlier creations. Some of the films he has made include; ‘Batman’, ‘Sleepy hollow’, ‘Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Corpse Bride’.

He created ‘Vincent’ because Disney Studios (where he was employed at the time) were not satisfied by his work. They decided to give Tim $60,000 to produce an adaption of a poem. ‘Vincent’ was produced by Rich Heinrichs, Tim Burton’s friend at Disney and was narrated by Vincent Price, Tim’s hero. After he had created ‘Vincent’ he was sacked from Disney because this was not the type of film they produce, therefore Tim’s expertise was not needed.

‘Vincent’ is about a seven year old boy, called Vincent, who wants to be just like Vincent Price. It shows how his life is and how he imagines it could be.

Throughout the animation there are many gothic and depressing scenes, for example near the end of the animation he thinks he is going mad. The scary atmosphere is added to by Vincent Price’s deep voice and the horrifying music which is played. Although it is deranged and surreal there is an element of comedy injected into the animation through how the characters look; Vincent’s sister is very short with a spherical head and mad hair, Vincent’s aunt continuously pats him on the head while he is thinking about dipping her in wax.

This film is themed around Identity and being who you want to be, this is shown through many various lines of speech; “For a boy his age he’s considerate and nice, but he wants to be just like Vincent Price”, “He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cats, though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats.”.

It is also themed around Childhood and the over imagination of a young boy; He reads about a man’s wife being buried alive and ‘believes’ that his own wife has been buried alive, even though he is only seven and doesn’t have a wife.

There are also many other themes such as insanity, solitude and abandonment which are commonly found in most of his films.

I thought that it was very well made. It was scary and the narrator’s voice was well chosen because it ‘set the scene’ well. The scenes at the end were very powerful because of all of the images that they used. One member of the audience said; “it may be short, but it is very effective, creative and overall brilliant.” another member said; “I saw it and I liked it a lot. The poem was just plain beautiful in the trademark voice of Vincent Price and the animation was very ad hoc”.