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Dirs. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson
United Kingdom-USA
Film #23, of Tuesday 23rd October, for Halloween 31 For 31
I have not kept up with Tim Burton as a director, but he does
fascinate me. Mars Attacks! (1996)
and Ed Wood (1994) stood out very
well, and while it was Henry Selick
who deserves the credit for bringing The
Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) on screen, Tim Burton still created the story and the characters originally. As
an animated film where a groom-to-be (Johnny
Depp) unexpectedly becomes wed to an undead bride (Helena Bonham Carter), Corpse
Bride promised a similar film like Selick’s,
only with Burton in the directorial chair with Mike Johnson.
Going into Corpse Bride though there were the thoughts - as the first scenes
of a gothic Victorian town are shown, and a quiet and shy protagonist played
with quite a rich vocal intonation by Depp is introduced - of how Tim Burton has been viewed as becoming
almost a parody of himself to other film viewers and critics. In Britain, one
of the satirical comedy programmes on the BBC, which parodied celebrities, had
a sketch of what Christmas would be like at the house of Burton and his real life wife Bonham
Carter, Burton presenting Bonham Carter a Christmas tree covered entirely in black; it’s a cheap
joke but one that sticks in the skull like a well time knife of a rouge. Part of
this can be partially blamed on Burton
himself, but baring in mind I have not catched up with his later films yet, it
feels more the case that a legit auteur, who in following a basic trait of
repeating his obsessions in each of his films, has unfortunately had his
fascinations swallowed up into consumer product. This is a shame as the influences
Burton and Corpse Bride show – German Expressionism. Hammer Horror (with Christopher Lee wonderfully voicing a
priest), Universal and American Horror (including a Peter Lorre worm of all things) amongst others – are all distinct
entities that exist beyond the weight of a mere plastic collectable of
Frankenstein or Dr. Caligari in a comic book store. Either of those figures
would be great, and I would gladly have either on my shelf; the problem lies more
when the ideas behind them are ignored and they are merely seen as empty pop
trivia images and memes. Sadly Tim Burton’s
individualist style has been devoured by shop store Goth and emo culture.
Corpse Bride is immensely flawed. It has it humour and the entire
cast is game and doing their best, but with its premise, which involves the
protagonist’s original wife-to-be (Emily Watson),
the ending to wrap up the tale is obvious. This is signposted further by Richard E. Grant sliming it up as Lord
Barkis Bittern, the obvious villain of the piece. That does not mean the film
has little of interest though. Visually, or artistically as a world created
entirely from imagination, it is spectacular to see, avoiding becoming cliché by
its populous of imaginately shaped characters, sharing similarities to Aardman
Animations’ work, enhanced by its large British cast, and bizarrely in its more
bulbous characters to the illustrator Ralph
Steadman, most well known for his illustrations for Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas. The cast as it is helps flesh these creations
out as well in their idiosyncratic voices and vocalisms to match the varying
body designs. The film is very macabre visually too, including material that,
if it wasn’t depicted in such a cartoonish way, would be incredibly morbid. Involving
the dead, including a large cast of skeletons and rotting corpses including the
Corpse Bride, the filmmakers are allowed to bring a ghoulish sensibility
without coming off as pointlessly gross, as with the case of the Corpse Bride
which manages to convey the utterly beautiful with decay very unexpected in
most cinema let alone PG rated animation. This sense of fascination, with
liberal doses of black humour and enjoyable creepiness, is prevalent in Burton’s work, only to be pushed any
further by Henry Selick in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Like Selick’s film, Corpse Bride
also has songs and musical number as well, suggesting that along with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet
Street (2007), that Burton is
just as obsessed with musical theatre as with horror stories. The songs don’t
completely work, but there are choice moments where it all gels together. Another
aspect that Burton has been lambasted
about, along with continually casting Johnny
Depp in his films, is the repetition of using Danny Elfman to compose his films’ music. Again, this is a key part
of traditional auteurism, continuing new films with the same collaborators,
thus creating an expanding single entity through multiple films that goes
against human nature of being bored with repetition. If Burton was to start producing less and less quality films in this
frame of scope, which I still need to figure out for myself, than this would be
a significant problem, but Corpse Bride
avoids this partially. The music, excluding the few unsuccessful compositions
that try to make ordinary conversations into lyrics, is very good, the standout
involving Danny Elfman himself, as a character
Bonejangles, as the lead vocalist; with its swing-like mood, it reminds you
that before he was a film composer Elfman
was once part of a band called Oingo Boingo and that, with his brother Richard Elfman, he helped create the
cult film Forbidden Zone (1982), an
un-PC, delirious tribute to early 20th century music and show
theatre though bright eyed madness. The irony is that, considering Corpse Bride’s humour and tone, you can
see shades of Forbidden Zone in this
family friendly film which, combined with the influences of Tim Burton, adds a potentially gleeful
subversion to it all.
It is a shame that however this
subversion is damped by the narrative of the film, based on folklore but
smoothed down too far, obvious in what will happen without a great deal of
magic or life to it. Around this problem however is a cinematic world which
entices me to return back to Tim Burton’s
films. His directorial obsessions are in danger of becoming a parody of itself,
but every director who develops a singular cinematic personality is in risk of
doing this, and it does not take away the fact that his obsession with the
underachiever, the looked down upon, the monsters and the undead brides, is
full of tenderness while he still revels in a severed arm joke or two. If emo
hipsterism does actually exist, it sadly will distort his vision out of
context, but it will be blamed on the culture around such a director’s work
that pulls it out of its emotional context into hollow images of black clad
ghouls. Unless Burton’s later films
fall into clichés and laziness, if I get around to them, it will remain this
way to interpret the issue. The final answer will be to see the films, from Dark Shadows (2012) and Frankenweenie (2012) to the earliest
ones like Beetlejuice (1988), and contrast
them, seeing if my theory is solid or if Burton
is exactly like that parody on a BBC program, at home at Christmas with Helen Bonham Carter, presenting to her
the most pathetically tiny, black covered Christmas tree and discussing how it
fits how he views the season in an inane manner. Corpse Bride borders in the middle, but still suggests the promise
that Burton is far more interesting
than merely making everything black and grim looking.
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