Ed Wood (1994)

Film Review by David Almeida

WATERMARK

FILME FATÁLE

October 5, 1994

When presented with an idea for a major Hollywood motion picture, one might question a film about a cross-dresser who is “the worst director of all time.”  It does present possibilities to comment on the motion picture industry, the studio system, and the Hollywood community.  Also, the comic potential of an inept director is considerable.  However, none of these elements can be found in Tim Burton’s disappointing Ed Wood.  This film misses many of its golden opportunities, and instead finds itself bogged down by an uneventful screenplay full of underdeveloped subplots and one-dimensional characters.

Ed Wood is the true life story of Edward D. Wood, Jr., the man who brought us such sci-fi B-movie cult classics as Bride of the Monster.  The movie starts with Wood as a fledgling playwright, whose cross-dressing tendencies interest him in directing a film about a half man/half woman.  Although Glen or Glenda is a terrible flop, he is driven to make more movies.  He meets and befriends horror film star Bela Lugosi and makes B-film after B-film attempting to resurrect Lugosi’s career and establish his own.  As his works accumulate, we slowly see the framework taking shape that will eventually lead to his most remembered work, Plan 9 From Outer Space.  In the process, Wood achieves his dream to act, direct, and star in his own work - just like his idol, Orson Welles.

The main problem in Ed Wood is the lack of depth of its title character - indeed this Ed Wood is every much an anti-hero as the real Wood is the anti-Welles.  Johnny Depp (looking like Ricky Ricardo on Ritalin) gives a funny, energetic and consistent performance, but we never know what is going on under the surface of his optimistic grin and arching eyebrows.  Wood undergoes no change in the film; he is neither a better person nor a better director by the film’s end.  The movie tries to create a climactic plot point when Wood actually meets Orson Welles and is advised, “Visions are worth fighting for.”  The problem is that Wood’s visions don’t seem worth fighting for, and the film never convinces us they are.

The most enjoyable part of the film is Wood’s relationship with Bela Lugosi, played to perfection by Martin Landau.  At times his resemblance to the real Lugosi is frightening.  Landau gives a hilarious, off-color, and touching performance as the aging morphine-addicted former Dracula star.  The one outstanding achievement of Ed Wood is that it manages to make Lugosi sympathetic, and it is he who remains with us outside of the movie theater more than Wood himself does.  The other characters in the film never come to life the way Lugosi does.

Tim Burton is probably the most logical director to bring Wood’s story to the screen.  In his past works (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas), there are always driving elements of the supernatural, the skewed, and the downright odd - he is in many respects, a modern-day Ed Wood himself.  His strength is how he can make us feel for characters whom we otherwise would pity, dislike, or even avoid.  He has a very fine flair for humor - the many laughs which can be found in Ed Wood are neither contrived nor forced.  His opening title sequence is superb, and his authenticity in re-creating Wood’s original work is brilliant.

Unfortunately, Burton’s direction is a beautiful welcome mat to an empty house.  Perhaps the film is too true-to-life and could have benefited from some fictionalization.  A more engrossing film could have been told from Lugosi’s viewpoint.  In any case, Ed Wood fails to capture the “genius” behind the man who is still remembered to this day for his worse-than-mediocre work.  The irony of this all is that like Wood’s films, Ed Wood will most likely live on to be shown at sci-fi conventions for decades to come, even after it has been forgotten by the general public.  Burton has so much better work on his résumé that should live so long. ▼▼▼

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