“He died before he got to finish the man he invented, so the man was left by himself — incomplete and all alone.”
On December 14th, 1990, my grandmother dropped me in front of one of our local movie theaters. Almost 10 years old at the time, I was already deeply in love with cinema, and movies/books were quite literally the only things that made me feel okay. I came from a weird childhood existence of one parent being a Pentecostal Christian and the other being a drug addicted individual who turned the other cheek to my sexual abuse as a child, so it’s safe to say, I was not your typical kid. I wasn’t outgoing or loud. I was quiet, fighting depression on the level that most adults do, all throughout childhood. I fought my inner voices telling me I would never be like the other kids. I had zero confidence and maybe 3 friends in total. My older brother was more popular and I was always looked at by family members as the weird little brother. I was put in therapy as a child because I preferred to stay in my room to watch movies and read Stephen King novels. I got straight A’s in school but still, I was in so many ways, the black sheep of my family. I hated sports, cared more about the filmography of Jeff Kober and Fred Ward than what Ugly Kid Joe single was on the radio, so I was never really looked at like a “normal” kid. I hated being around.
Being a huge fan of PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, BEETLEJUICE and especially BATMAN, at ten years old, I was already a massive fan of Tim Burton’s. So when EDWARD SCISSORHANDS was released, I begged my grandmother to take me to see it. Dorothy “Pearl” Arnold, my grandma, was the most profoundly impactful person in my entire life. As a child, she showed me JAWS, drove me to buy the soundtrack to THE LOST BOYS, and even let me stay up late at the age of six to watch LEGAL EAGLES on HBO.
Dorothy didn’t see me as a “freak”, and she nurtured my love for the arts. When I was 14, I planned on spending my allowance to go to the local theater to see HEAT on opening night, and when my stepmother made me spend it instead on taking my little brother to TOM AND HUCK, my grandmother took 10 dollars out of her purse and drove me right back to see Michael Mann’s heist classic. Long story short, my grandmother brushed off a hair appointment and a night of playing crazy eights to drop me off at the theater and wait in the car, while I watched the 1990 Johnny Depp-led film.
Even as a ten year old, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS spoke to me in ways that touched my soul and left its indelible mark. The story of Edward, an invention that was never complete, the film revealed so many things that, at the time, I need to hear and see. When Peg (Dianne Wiest) arrives and sees Edward, she’s scared, not realizing that the traits that make him so off putting (scissors for hands) are not his fault. Edward has no ulterior motives, his intentions are pure. He sees Peg as someone to talk to, someone who takes the time to talk to him, to try to understand him. There’s a sense of innocence that shines through Edward, that we don’t see very often. Depp is now know mostly for being the real life equivalent of his Jack Sparrow character, but his performance in EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is so genuine, so authentic, that you forget you’re watching the guy who was sucked into his bed just six years prior in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.
There’s youthful naïveté in Edward: he is polite yet scared. He doesn’t know what it is to be “normal”, or to be “complete”. When Peg welcomes Edward to come home with her and stay with her family, it’s new to Edward. He’s never had a family, only his father, the inventor who sadly died mere moments before being able to complete him. Edward is lost and alone. Coming home with Peg and being invited into not only her family but her circle of friends, is a special moment for Edward. There are almost tears in his eyes as he sees houses, animals, and eventually Peg’s photos of her daughter, Kim.
Seeing Kim for the first time changes Edward. He sees feelings of seeing love personified in a photo. It’s at that moment when Edward feels a part of something. Not only a part of the family, but a part of the feeling in his man-made heart. He’s committed to being selfless to Kim, because he doesn’t care about what he can get form people. He only cares about what he can give. Edward is the personification of what makes a human a human. It’s not his job, it’s not his swagger, it’s his heart. In a time where most people are self-serving, Edward gets his happiness from not only making Kim happy, but also in trying his best to do the same for others.
None of us are perfect, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been a selfish idiot quite a few times in my life, but seeing a character on screen that was so pure and selfless inspired me to try to be better. It inspired me to think of others before myself…and that wasn’t even the biggest take away from the film.
I sat there with wide eyes, enthralled by the design, the acting, and the beautiful score by Danny Elfman. What stood out to me the most, however, was how I felt completely alone in life, and I just watched a character embody every bit of that sadness and loneliness. During sleepovers growing up, due to feeling upset and alone and unlike the other kids, I would wait for people to fall asleep and leave my friends’ houses at 3am. I felt odd when friends would be talking about girls and cars and so on, because I didn’t care about those things. I just wanted to feel like a human being. I felt like an alien, like an outsider. Like Edward, I felt incomplete.
My innocence was stolen from me when I was seven, and the three years from then until I watched EDWARD SCISSORHANDS were traumatic, to say the least. Sitting there, I was transported into a world where an invention embodied ME. Desiring to be liked and, even more so, loved by those around me.
We live in a time where there are so many memes about “emo” kids that it’s become a stereotype. Bullying is at an all time high and people are, to put it bluntly, fucking cruel. Empathic individuals are frowned down on as being “weak” for caring. There’s a moment in the film, in which Edward appears on a talk show, and one of the questions he receives, involves whether or not he’d like to get an operation to have real hands. The person asking the questions says, “But if you had regular hands you’d be like everyone else,”. Edward responds with, “Yes…I know.” And it was that moment that hit me as a child. “Yes…I know.”
There’s pain in Edward, and as much as he tries to fit in with everyone around him, there’s a realization that he will never be like them. He will never be “complete.” That lesson was a hard one to digest as a child and, and just as difficult as a 39 year old adult. What that realization did bring though, was an understanding that I was not alone. We are all broken in our own ways. We are incomplete and we all strive to put ourselves back together again. We might not be the same as every other person, but in reality, do we REALLY want to be? Edward embodies that loneliness, that loss of yourself, and what Burton did is give his audience a character that speaks to the loneliness and alienation that so many of us feel. Whether it’s just the feeling of belonging, or the hope that someone will someday love you for yourself and not think you’re a “freak”, or when your less-than-pretty parts come out, Edward speaks on being an outcast and a discarded invention.
I don’t remember the first time I scored a point in basketball, the first time I rode my bike without training wheels, or even the first time I received an honor roll medal. I do remember the first time I felt like I wasn’t alone, and it was on that December evening in 1990. Though it still brings me to tears every single time I watch it (ask my daughter, she and I watched it last night and we were both weeping messes), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS will always be a film that touched my soul and made me feel okay for once. While a lot of Burton detractors will argue that he has since become a caricature of the quirks he became known for (an argument I agree with), there’s something so beautiful about this story of loneliness that has become the anthem in film form for so many lost and individuals. And rightfully so, because it’s a classic piece of cinema and it will forever mean the world to me.
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