Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

TIM BURTON – MICHAEL KEATON – BEETLEJUICE – 1988

That’s the real beginning of this Tim Burton of great fame. This film is absolutely crazy as for the tomfoolery, the ghosts, the people and the situations. It is off limits in all possible ways but it is great because this time there are two things that hold the whole story together.

First of all there is the music. The calypso is a phenomenal good idea. That music in itself is the music of the dead, of happy newly deceased who finally get their last word in this world: they can stay in their home and they become the real soul of this home that is inhabited by some living people and haunted by them with the full agreement and collaboration from the living inhabitants. Death is finally the pleasant delirium that it is supposed to be and not that ordeal so many people are afraid of. When you die you must make friends with some living people. The point is to find how you can make yourself useful to them so that they will welcome you in their home that used to be yours.

The calypso is the gluing element of this fable. Just for it I would watch the film twenty five times if not more.

The second element is that death is a world in itself, a world that is beyond limits and off limits at the same time, in other words infinite and limitless. Death is a real paradise if you accept to be a ghost and to welcome the living in your ordeal. The world of the dead is a vicious world you do not want to linger in. They are so dead that they have to wait for their turn to even get the slightest attention, to wait millions of turns before they just have one chance to maybe see Juno or whoever can help them change their diapers or dance the polka with flies in a spider web waiting for the spider to come and swallow you alive, well that’s a way of speaking since you are dead.

In this crazy world of the dead there is one character you must absolutely meet though you will lose your head, your brain, your sanity and even probably your dead virginity if you meet him. He is the concoction only the dead can relish. He is a breakfast drink for living dead, the extracted juice of some bugs generally known as beetles. And these beetles are not singing even if Beetlejuice is as gross and aggressive as most other beetles, I mean the type that sings. Remember his only and sole goal is to be resuscitated and in this crazy world of the dead you can only be rejuvenated, reborn if you marry a living being and in this case do not dream you can escape the straight marriage of those old days. I guess the Supreme Court had not yet ruled on the subject. Maybe the land of the dead is beyond their jurisdiction.

This way of laughing of the dead, of death is probably the best thing you can do while you are still alive and it is so easy to trespass onto the other side without even knowing about it and certainly not looking behind. Anyone who is a little bit anxious about the end of their life on this earth should enjoy this film that is more than entertainment, it is undertaking. Next time be careful and just run over the dumb dog who is trying to send you into the hellish sands of the dune inferno vastly travelled, run through and browsed by sand worms that have more teeth than a whole herd of dragons.

But remember that getting on board one of these sand worms is the best way to get rid of the bad demonic Beetlejuice and to conquer your haunting place in this here world of the living. You could even consider you have become the new Messiah, Moadib.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU