Review №3

Ed Wood (1994)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Patricia Arquette, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie, Bill Murray

Director: Tim Burton

Synopsys: The ambitious and optimistic unsuccessful director Edward Wood Jr. tries to get into Hollywood with the production of absolutely untalented and bad-made films. His wife breaks with him, producers rejects his ideas and even the appearance of the famous actor Bela Lugosi in his works does not bring any good reviews.  

Review

The film took place in 1952 in Hollywood, the famous film factory where any newcomer director or actor dreamed to work. The main character Ed Wood had a strong desire to become a great director but the films he produced were worthless and botched. Ed had never remade any of the scenes thinking they were good enough for a movie: broken decorations, lack of light, bad actors or screenplays did not stop him to continue his shooting. He had some attempts to make something interesting with the help of the producers but failed time after time. Searching for a new contract he met the famous-in-past actor Bela Lugosi, who became an old drug addict who stopped his career and got in depression. They needed each other because Wood could give him a new role and Bela could promote Ed’s films because of his fame. However specific relation of Ed Wood to cinema could give him a chance to be a star. Though may be he just had no talent…

The story is simple and complicated at the same time. A man wanted to produce interesting, remarkable and popular films, he searched for projects and dreamed to involve his talent in them. The difficulty was that he had no special characteristics to, he had never heard advice and he considered his movies to be great but they were not.

The performance of the actors here is really great because they could convey that atmosphere. Johnny Depp, frankly speaking one of my favorite actors, made his work genially as usual and demonstrated such interesting person as Ed Wood from his positive and interesting side. His movements and facial gesture are terrific in his each film. Martin Landau and his Bela Lugosi impressed me (not only me but a lot of people because he got an Oscar for that role) because of his similarity with real Mr. Lugosi and conveying of loneliness and despair of his character. The other actor performing here helped Tim Burton created such good film.

As for the direction, here the young Burton is presented. I would never think that it made Tim because this film rather differs from what I expect to see by his production. Without Helena, fabulous, fantastic screenplays and special effects it is difficult to define him. Despite unusual genre for him, he coped with the job.  

The biographical background of the film forced me to find information about Edward Wood Jr. and what I saw in the movie was the reality of Wood’s life. Tim Burton cut off some details, made Ed more optimistic than he had been but all in all I consider Ed Wood to be a good biographical film about the worst director ever.