UA wind of magic is blowing over Lyon. To succeed Jane Campion (2021), the Dardenne brothers (2020) and Francis Coppola (2019), the Lumière Festival has decided to award its prize this year to director, screenwriter and producer Tim Burton and his phantasmagorical universe. Follower of the fantastic and influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Tim Burton reveals himself to the general public by signing the staging of Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990) et Batman: The Challenge (1992).
He then began a more experimental cycle by signing the biographical Ed Wood (1994), the satire Mars Attacks ! (1996) then the remake The Planet of the Apes (2001), which will be a critical failure. The return to the top took place in 2003 with the success of Big Fish. Subsequently, he collaborated with Disney studios, for whom he produced Alice in Wonderland (2010), his greatest commercial achievement, and Dumbo (2019). At the same time, he gives free rein to his imagination in a more gothic style: the horror film Sleepy Hollow (1999), the musical Sweeney Todd: Fleet Street’s diabolical barber (2007) then the tales Dark Shadows (2012) et Miss Peregrine and Peculiar Children (2016).
“An old man stuck in a child’s body”
During his career, he was accompanied by a host of actors such as Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, as well as Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close, Christina Ricci, Eva Green, and even Marion Cotillard in Big Fish. Influenced by fantastic cinema, German expressionist cinema as well as the films of Hammer FILM Productions, mixing black humor with irony and the macabre, gothic with baroque, marvelous with horror, Tim Burton imposes his style and his universe from one film to another.
“When I was a kid, I loved horror movies. I spent my time watching all the monster movies, even the Japanese ones. I always had the feeling that these films interpreted our childhood dreams and nightmares. And, in a way, they are less frightening than our own imagination. People draw boundaries between adulthood and childhood, but, in reality, it’s a blurry line. I remember what it’s like to be a child, and the reality is that I always felt old. An old man stuck in a child’s body”, confided the director to the Point in October 2016, on the occasion of the release of Miss Peregrine and Peculiar Children.
READ ALSOTim Burton: ‘I’ve always been treated like a lunatic’
The 63-year-old filmmaker will also be in the news in the fall with the arrival on Netflix of his series Wednesday, which traces 16-year-old Wednesday Addams’ student days at Nevermore Academy. The first season will follow Wednesday as she tries to harness her burgeoning psychic ability, foil a monstrous murder that has terrorized the local town, and solve the murder that her parents were involved in 25 years prior. An entire program !
The 14e edition of the Festival Lumière will take place in Lyon from October 15 to 23, 2022.