This content originally appeared on Open Culture and was authored by Colin Marshall
Tim Burton grew up watching Japanese monster movies in Burbank, which must explain a good deal about his artistic sensibility. It seems to be for that reason, in any case, that the new Konbini “Vidéo Club” episode above takes him first to the Asian cinema section of JM Vidéo, one of Paris’ last two DVD rental shops. Early and repeated exposure to such kaiju classics as Honda Ishirō’s Godzilla and The War of the Gargantuas may have instilled him with an affection for poor English dubbing, but it didn’t rob him of his ability to appreciate more refined (if equally visceral) examples of Japanese film like Shindō Kaneto’s Onibaba and Kuroneko.
Burton describes those pictures as dreamlike, a quality he goes on to praise in other selections from a variety of different eras and cultures. Even cinephiles who don’t share his particular taste in viewing material — bound on one end, it seems, by The Passion of Joan of Arc and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and on the other by I Was a Teenage Werewolf and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, with the likes of Jason and the Argonauts and The Fly in between — have to admit that this indicates a deep understanding of cinema itself.
It may be the art form whose experience is most similar to dreaming, but only occasionally throughout its history have particular films attained the status of the truly oneiric. One suspects that Burton knows them all.
In fact, one of the twenty-first century’s most notable additions to the canon of the dreamlike won the Palme d’Or with Burton’s involvement. This video includes his brief reminiscences of being on the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, where Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives took the top prize. That same year saw the release of Burton’s own Alice in Wonderland, which he describes as “the most chaotic movie I’ve ever made.” In 2019, he directed his second live-action Disney adaptation Dumbo, which, though hardly a passion project, wasn’t without its autobiographical resonances: “At that point, I kind of felt like Dumbo,” he admits, “a weird creature trapped at Disney.” Perhaps that long on-and-off corporate association finally having come to an end, or so he suggests, means he’ll now be freer than ever to draw from the depths of his own cinematic subconsciousness.
Related content:
Tim Burton: A Look Inside His Visual Imagination
Watch Vincent, Tim Burton’s Animated Tribute to Vincent Price & Edgar Allan Poe (1982)
Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gretel Shot on 16mm Film with Amateur Japanese Actors (1983)
David Cronenberg Visits a Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies
Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
This content originally appeared on Open Culture and was authored by Colin Marshall