Since the arrival of Quentin Tarantino in 2013, never had the announcement of a Prix Lumière in Lyon so panicked the young people living between Rhône and Saône. Director Tim Burton will be honored at the Lumière festival which begins this Saturday. He is due to arrive next Thursday to spend four days in the capital of Gaul and collect the prize which will be awarded to him on Friday October 21 for his entire career.
If the crazy universe of Tim Burton rocked the toddlers of the 1980s, gently frightened the little ones of the 1990s, it seduces just as much the Z generation, born much later than the release of its greatest masterpieces. But why does it fascinate young people so much?
“He has this ability to awaken the macabre and gothic side that we all have deep inside us and to approach dark themes with enough gentleness so that it is not terrifying, analyzes Caroline Vié, film journalist and specialist in Tim Burton. . Everyone finds himself in his characters of teenagers who are a little stuck, ill in their own skin, who are looking for themselves, who want to stand out from their parents and from the fairy tales in which everything is beautiful. Lilly Marit, a 22-year-old audiovisual master’s student at Sup de Pub, is the perfect example. Edward Scissorhandsa feature film she discovered when she was 10 years old, quickly became her favorite film, in any case one of those that marked her “the most”.
“I compared myself to Mr. Jack’s darling”
“At the time, I was a little kid who lived in the suburbs. I was considered a bit of a weird girl. I identified with the character very easily,” she says. “Me, I could represent myself in all the main characters of each of his films”, testifies Cindy Pley, a 24-year-old seasonal worker both “captivated by the strangeness of the characters” and fascinated by the “dead who dance or who sing “. “Little, I compared myself to the darling of Mr. Jack, she continues. At that age, I stayed in my corner, in my world. I’ve always liked something a little dark. Unlike other little girls who loved Barbies and pink, I wasn’t attracted to any of that. »
Lilly also developed a tenderness for the character of Victor, hero of the film. Frankenweenie. A little boy who loses his beloved dog and uses the power of science to bring him back to life. “I totally recognized myself in it,” she says. I had never seen in the cinema the love I could have for my dog at that time. Tim Burton was able to transcribe what I felt. »
Sometimes frightened by certain films, the two young women concede having appreciated “the touch of humor” which allowed them to “appease”. “It never traumatized me. I would even say that it helped me, explains Cindy citing for the occasion the funeral wedding. I wasn’t particularly afraid of death, but this film gave me a little more comfort in the idea of saying that we will all go through it one day. And it doesn’t matter. »
revenge of the geek
“The characters he invents are very depressive, sad, with few talents, very poor, or without objectives. But Tim Burton, he manages to take ugly and glaucous people to make them endearing, aesthetic and symbolic”, analyzes Abel Maringe, 22, student at the Esra film school. He too was immersed in the director’s universe very early on.
“Tim Burton is the revenge of the ‘geek’ and it’s a theme that works very well with teenagers, summarizes Caroline Vié. Its heroes are the opposite of the “jocks”, these young, beautiful and tanned sportsmen. They are even very directly inspired by his own experience, he, the pale little kid who preferred to hide in his cellar while the other children played football under the sun. “He takes on the ill-being like no other and he knows how to magnify it. This is particularly what appeals to adolescents, what attracts them, continues the journalist. He manages to create characters completely out of society, like Ed Wood who is a transvestite filmmaker author of narnardissime nanars, to make heroes of them. If you take the example of Edward Scissorhands, he is as popular and appealing in the 1990s as the characters played by Stallone. »
“Tim Burton is the revenge of the ‘geek’ and it’s a theme that works very well with teenagers, summarizes Caroline Vié. Its heroes are the opposite of the “jocks”, these young, beautiful and tanned sportsmen. They are even very directly inspired by his own experience, he, the pale little kid who preferred to hide in his cellar while the other children played football under the sun. “He takes on the ill-being like no other and he knows how to magnify it. This is particularly what appeals to adolescents, what attracts them, continues the journalist. He manages to create characters completely out of society, like Ed Wood who is a transvestite filmmaker author of nanarissimes nanards, to make heroes of them. If you take the example of Edward Scissorhands, he is as popular and appealing in the 1990s as the characters played by Stallone. »