Corpse Bride
Johnny Depp, Helena-Bonham Carter, Emily Watson: Directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson
Corpse Bride centers around a young man named Victor Van Dort, who is about to be married to a woman he has never seen in order to provide their families with money and prestige. He is painfully shy and completely lacks any self-confidence. When he has found a moment of peace away from the pushing and shoving of his parents and parents-to-be, he finally meets his fiancée, Victoria Everglott. She is kind, compassionate, and equally apprehensive about the coming marriage. After a disastrous wedding rehearsal, Victor takes a walk through the woods, practicing his vows and growing a little more secure in the fact that marriage to Victoria may not turn out to be such a bad thing after all. But things change when the wedding ring is placed on a gnarled branch sticking out of the ground, - a branch that turns out to be the withered hand of a corpse. Mayhem follows when Victor is consequently taken to the Land of the Dead and finds himself married to Emily, the departed woman to whom the hand belonged. Victor must work his way through an enchantment, a murder, and his own insecurities in order to find his way back to Victoria. All the while wresting with his head and heart over the very charming and lovely Emily. As lovely as a corpse can be.
This film has a lot to say about how director and writer Tim Burton views the world we live in. It’s a commentary on the obsession with money, the importance placed on status, and it also has a great deal to say about the powerful human trait of selflessness. The World of the Living (or ‘Upstairs’ as the dead call it) is a gray, dreary world. Its inhabitants are greedy, brutish, and cold. Victoria’s parents will not allow her to play the piano for fear of making her too passionate about something. Victor is not allowed to make any choices for himself. It is their duty to accept whatever fate their parents have laid for them. This is the way things must be, and the two youths are so conditioned to accept this system that they don’t even put up anything of a fight against their parents. So when Victor wakes the Corpse Bride and is taken below, he is unprepared and not a little frightened by what meets him there, never mind the fact that everyone is deceased.
The Land of the Dead is a colorful and boisterous city of singing skeletons and cheery ghoulish hostesses, complete with the very hospitable top half of a decapitated bartender. It’s a place that makes being in the company of the Dead seems a lot better than resigning oneself to the heartless World of the Living. Danny Elfman lends his talents once again to another Burton creation. The songs are clever and get the point across without veering too far into superfluous dance numbers, although the Dancing Skeleton bit gets very close. One thing that particularly stood out to me were the piano solos performed by the characters themselves in the film. Apprehension is broken after Victoria is drawn down out of her room when she hears Victor playing the Everglott’s piano in the foyer. At one point, a depressed and heartbroken Emily wanders to a piano and begins to play. Victor joins her soon after, and the piece becomes a duet that lightens both spirits. These are simple and moving moments that displayed the beautiful power of music to draw people together.
In these scenes I found the very essence of the movie itself. Earnest and heartfelt. While the story holds plenty of tragedy and a fair share of macabre moments, Burton is able to mix these things with simple truths and enough lightheartedness among it all that it becomes a kind of eerie poetry. Visually he revisits the Nightmare Before Christmas, with the stick figure-like people and the landscapes of all points and curves. Another thing he revisits are the actors in the cast. Most, if not all of these talents can be seen in previous Tim Burton films. While they all serve well, Helena-Bonham Carter is the standout as the Corpse Bride herself. She brings the right amount of melancholy and vivacity to the character that makes the audience become truly sympathetic towards her plight. Emily is the one we come to care most about, and it is a tricky balancing act that could have gone horribly wrong either way.
Spoiler: While the villain of the film, Lord Barkis, is not at all an extraordinary one, his role reveals a murderous past act that took me by surprise. Maybe it will be obvious and predictable to others before Barkis himself reveals it to us, but until that point, it snuck up on me.
Because Mr. Burton is reusing visuals, talent, and Elfman’s musical stylings, it seems that he is not going too far off the known path. He takes no risks, and anyone familiar with his work may not notice anything particularly exceptional in this round. That doesn’t make it a bad film, it just makes it a safe film. There were also a few scenes put in that obviously tried to make the movie appeal to a younger audience, such as when Emily reunites Victor with his dead dog. Instead of entertain, this stuff just detracts from the plot and slows things down. These kinds of moments made the film fail to keep my attention at all times. But on the other side of the kiddie things, there were parts I thought would be too dark and frightening for kids, - Emily’s resurrection in particular. It may have served the film better if focus would have been directed towards one target area, instead of mixing childish fare with adult themes that didn’t work well together.
That said, I still enjoyed Corpse Bride very much. Talents such as Burtons’ are rare in the film world, and it is wonderful when a director and creator like him can rise to such success and achievement. He does take the less-traveled paths, and I only hope that more of our up-and-coming directors will learn to follow suite.
Story = A-
Originality = B-
DVD Extras = N/A
Acting = B+
Enjoyability = B+
Visuals = A
Overall Grade = B+
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