Last week we watched the film “Nightmare Before Christmas”. I’ve had trouble coming up with what to write about, because the movie really didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t hate it, and I didn’t like it. It inspired nothing. That said, I’m aware that the film has, for lack of a better phrase, as “cult following”, And there are elements of the film I appreciate. This partitioned appreciation leads us up against the idea of “auteur theory”, and I want to take a critical look at the notion using “Nightmare Before Christmas”. Wikipedia gives the following as a definition of auteur:

“An auteur (/oʊˈtɜːr/; French: [otœʁ], lit. ‘author‘) is an artist, such as a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.^[1] The term is commonly referenced to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.^[2]“

One can easily think of Tim Burton as an auteur, I think, then. His style, particularly, in claymation, is very distinct. We see his distinct form of gothic horror as early as the short-film “Vincent”, and it extends into many of his projects besides “Nightmare Before Christmas”. Not all of Burton’s films are in this style (“Pee-Wee Herman’s Big Adventure” would be an altogether different affair with the tone of “Vincent”), but if we constrain our perspective to these particular films, Tim Burton seems to have a distinct style. So, that I find “Nightmare Before Christmas” so bland and unappealing, under this theory, becomes the blame of Burton. It is his style – his control – that led to my disappointment.

I find this explanation unfair and woefully inept, and to that end I want to posit a critique of auteur theory that is very simple. If I take a critical look at my own experience with the film, I have to become more specific. The animation and music, and particular their syncing, are truly incredible (more on this in a second) but the simple narrative and relatively undeveloped characters, in my opinion, don’t hold my attention without a sense of Pulp or Camp to tie it all together, and the portrayal of the film’s central romantic relationship is in my view so traditional that it’s almost uncomfortable for me. These critiques do not necessarily apply to Burton himself. Most of this seems to be a coupled fault to the writing (the work, at least in part, of Michael McDowell and Caroline Thompson), and what seemed to be a general overambitious goal with the project (does anyone else find the film too short?). But as I said – the music and animation are spectacular. Danny Elfman, as usual, does a swell job, and the cast of animators (120, according to Wikipedia, under the lead of Henry Selick) bring the style developed in “Vincent” to life in a fluid and remarkable way. And it is here we are reminded that Burton wasn’t even the director of this movie – he was producer. He had his hands dipped into every piece of this movie, both good and bad. It feels wrong to characterize the movie “as his”, because this undervalues or overvalues the work of all the individual moving cogs that made it happen.

In the end, I have few strong opinions about “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. But I don’t want to think of the film as quintessentially “Burton’s”, as an auteur theorist might. There are aspects of it I want to admire deeply, and those aspects cannot be attributed entirely to Burton, nor can they be attributed entirely to non-Burton entities. Making a movie is generally a communal effort, and I think it is healthy to appreciate or dislike them as such.