Style or Gimmicks Part 2 or Why Tim Burton Sucks!
Following through on the premise described in part 1, film geeks have decided that to be an auteur, to rise up to the pantheon of great directors, you must have a recognizable ''style''.
Too often though this notion of 'style' gets confused and mistaken for simple gimmicks which end up becoming much more than they were intended to be, eventually lessening the 'artistic product' (what a beautifully Hollywoodish oxymoron) that they are attached to.
Take the famous 'Spike Lee shot' where the actor is placed on a moving camera dolly and framed in a way as to eliminate their feet, creating a floating effect. This was used extremely effectively in Malcolm X but has since become such a consistent feature of a ''Spike Lee Joint'', such a part of his ''style'' that when one sees it, we don't think ''This character is confused and lost'' but ''oh there's the Spike Lee shot''. Sure, we recognise his trademark and accept this to be Lee's work, but we've been taken out of the action, the story and the experience itself.
The same goes for the famous Hitchock cameos, which even he admits got out of hand. Why do you think he started making his inevitable appearance at the start of his movies? He too understood how dangerous a gimmick can be when it gets out of hand.
Why do we have to do something so noticeably different and unique to be classed as a great story teller? (see the Citizen Kane vs Fight Club article, which seems to be quickly becoming this site's artistic manifesto) The great craftsmen is he who best tells the story given to him, otherwise it's just style-for-style's sake, or even worse, style for name recognition.
Here is my big problem with the kind of definition brought forward by my follow enthusiasts. It gives an unfair 'advantage' and status to people like Tim Burton, people who make the same repetitive drossy gothic cinematic tales (so often saved by Johnny Depp) over and over again but then because they look 'different' people say he's an auteur. If this is the case this label should no longer be synonymous with quality filmmaking. How many people do i know why say 'oh yeah i like Burton movies'. No you don't; you like gothic movies. Burton has simply cornered the market.
Ironically the best Tim Burton movies is of course the Ed Wood, a contemporary masterpiece and one where Burton kept his 'ooo i'm a cooky artist, i'm so dark and contrived'' BS to a minimum.
A cinematic auteur is someone who leads the creative process from beginning to end in the singular pursuit of his vision. Nothing more, nothing less. Whether you can tell who made it just by looking doesn't bloody matter, they put all the names up at the beginning! Now will you people get this into your thick heads and stop giving Tortured Tim such praise; if he stopped making movies maybe Johnny Depp could be in some good movies again because honestly, it's been too long.
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Thank you very much for standing up to the hordes of misguided Burton followers. He might have filmed a few decent movies once, but his movies now are nothing more than repetative money-grabs.