Tim Burton: The Exhibition

Tim Burton: The Exhibition

Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Federation Square, Melbourne
24th June - 10th October 2010

So Kate and I have been down in Melbourne for a bit of a holiday to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. But I did have an ulterior motive for suggesting Melbourne as our destination. ACMI, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is currently housing 'Tim Burton: The Exhibition', on loan from The Museum of Modern Art, New York. If you're a film fan I suggest you jump on the ACMI website and get yourself on their mailing list as they not only put on a number of interesting exhibitions, they also run some great events. 'Tim Burton: The Exhibition' brings together over 700 sketches, paintings, costumes, props, puppets, photographs and films, charting the 28-year career of one of Hollywood's most unique filmmakers.

I knew I was in for a good thing when the first thing that greeted me coming down the escalators from the main entrance was a life size replica of the Batmobile from Batman and Batman Returns, which, in my opinion, stands alongside the DeLorean as the coolest ever movie vehicle. From there we went down another set of escalators to Gallery 1, which housed the exhibition. The exhibition itself is broken up into three main sections: Surviving Burbank, Beautifying Burbank and Beyond Burbank.

The first section, Surviving Burbank, deals with Burton's youth growing up in Burbank, California. This section includes a collection or personal items such as old school books, letters, artworks and rarely seen student films from his adolescent years. Reading some of his early pieces of creative writings and seeing some early drawings was interesting because, while you could see early evidence of the interests and the style that would develop in his adult life, you would by no means label him a child prodigy on the basis of the early works. They definitely only gain their significance on the basis of what comes after.

The next section, Beautifying Burbank, deals with Burton's early, pre-feature film career. After graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, Burton completed a four year apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios. This section contains dozens and dozens of sketches and paintings. Some of them relate to film projects, a lot of the unrealised film projects, but a number are just interesting pictures which provide a bit of insight into the way Burton thinks. There was an entire wall of drawings each of which was based around some form of visual pun. For example there would be a picture of a man with his eyeballs reaching out of his head to unzip a woman's dress accompanied by the caption "He undressed her with his eyes". Of particular interest in this section was a big screen which was showing Burton's 'Hansel and Gretel', a one off, 45min TV film that Burton directed for the Disney channel in 1982. This film had come up a few times in some research I'd done of Burton but I'd never seen it. I didn't sit down and watch the whole thing, but from what I did watch, it was really interesting to watch Tim Burton doing Tim Burton on what must have been a shoe-string budget. The film sets were much more simple and theatrical in nature, with a number of the scenes I saw being filmed on blank white stages, with just the main props in place. That being said you could still see glimpses of Burton shining through, particularly in the costumes.

The final section, Beyond Burbank, deals with Burton's feature film career. It is here that you'll find concept sketches, costumes and props from nearly all of Burton's thirteen feature films. I say nearly all because I was quite disappointed to see a lack of material from his debut feature Pee-wee's Big Adventure. This is the only of Burton's films that you can't get on DVD here and is thus the only of Burton's films I have not seen. But that complaint aside there is still a great deal of interesting stuff in this section. Highlights include Batman's cowls and Catwoman's suit from Batman Returns, Edwards hands and costume from Edward Scissorhands, costumes from Alice in Wonderland, the razorblades from Sweeney Todd, the stop-motion models from Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas and severed heads of Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker from Mars Attacks. But just as interesting as the various props and costumes that you see in this section are the many, many concept sketches that Burton has drawn. It is through these drawings that you really see the way in which Burton's filmmaking style is a natural progression from his background in animation.

'Tim Burton: The Exhibition' is a must see for fans of Tim Burton's films, though I'd assume that was pretty obvious, but it is also very much worth a look for people who have a general interest in movies. For the Burton fan you get to see a lot of his short films and earlier works which you may not have been able to get your hands on, for the more general movie fan there are the props, costumes, etc. 'Tim Burton: The Exhibition' does a great job of being both a movie memorabilia exhibition and a legitimate art exhibition. At $19 an adult, $14 a concession and $10 for a child, it's not going to break the bank (though some of the merchandise might) and is well worth the investment.