Happy holidays, everyone! Jorge takes a look at a beloved cinematic moment that feels like Christmas...
For this week’s “Blueprints”, a film that isn't so much about a particular holiday, as one that encompassed the feeling of it: flickering, warm, and hopefully lovely. So let’s see what Winona Ryder dancing under a stream of shaven snow looked like on the pages of the Edward Scissorhands script...
Edward Scissorhands
Written by: Caroline Thompson
[You can read the full script here. I will be talking about these pages and this scene.]
Tim Burton's 1990 classic is not a holiday movie per se, but its last third does take place during Christmastime. Last year, in one of my very first pieces for The Film Experience, I wrote about how the movie embodies what the holidays feel like: comforting and nostalgic, with the combination of old and new.
Edward Scissorhands is well-remembered for many things: the first collaboration between director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, the pinnacle of the director’s signature Gothic sensibilities, and Dianne Wiest’s pitch-perfect Avon-selling suburban mom.
Arguably its most emblematic two minutes features Kim (played with wide-eyed naiveté by Winona Ryder), witnessing Edward turs a sculpture into snow. She finally sees his heart and soul and welcomes him fully into her life. Not with a conversation, or an embrace, but with a dance. On the script, this moment takes a little over a page. It has almost no dialogue. And it reads like the movie itself: descriptive, poetic, and lyrical.
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Screenwriter Caroline Thompson fills the action lines with flowery descriptions of the scenery (“Moving reverently down the row, she is entranced by the intricacies of each sculpture.”), the movements of Kim’s dance (“She takes it; steps, turns, kicks, follows with her arms.”) and detailed emotional sketches (“Unabashed glee and a kind of majestic gracefulness have been set free”).
However, the scene plays quite a bit differently in the page than it does on screen. This is not rare, as the filmmaking process tends to elevate and fill in the blanks of what the writer put on the script. But Edward seems to do the opposite.
While the screenplay is full with colorful descriptions and in a way depicts an intense love-making scene between two different creatures, expressed through dance and show, the final scene in the movie strips it all down.
The script describes an interplay: Edward is actively engaging with Kim as she sculpts the ice. He changes the speed and tempo of it to fit her dance. But the film seems to do it the other way around; Kim is the one getting to know Edward through the falling snowflakes, even if he is disengaged. But in the end, the sentiment behind both versions is the same: Kim and Edward are discovering each other, creating an intimate connection represented by shards of thin ice.
At first glance, this may not be the most Christmassy scene, or the most Christmassy movie, apart from its timeline and the imagery of snow. But it is a lovely moment between two outcasts finally understanding each other, and finding beauty in the simplest details. Dancing on your own while someone else makes it snow for you. Isn’t that what the holidays are all about?