Wet dream for goth chicks

Rating: Null/10 (13 October 2005)

If you think about it, Tim Burton is one lucky son of a gun. Like his admired Hitchcock, he can be subversive enough to be interesting and yet, unlike other Hitchcock fans like De Palma, he manages to be subtle enough about it to keep making movies with large budgets that take the coins to the pockets that be. He has a regular working team that apparently brings out the very best in him. He has a big cult following, particularly with teenagers, I suspect larger than any other director today. And he still has hip credit, because he has never been a sell-out. Even his worst movie, Planet of the Apes, is not a sell-out, it's just plain bad. On top of that, he keeps bringing out personal childhood stories and fantasies to the screens. When I was a kid I made up stories about a private detective called Dan Smith and his black pup Balthazar, a masked undead avenger called The Jack living in a glass city from the future and comic strips with the five fingers as the main characters, but I don't think I'll ever be omnipotent enough to make movies about that and cast Johnny Depp in them.
Corpse Bride is a mixture of everything that you associate with Tim Burton off the top of your head. It's apparently a standard PG love triangle animated feature, but its roots dig deeper than that and resonate with less conformist undertones. Just look at the ending. Superficially, it's also a brilliant, cohesive blend of different Burton-like things. There's Christopher Lee, and because of that there are also moments that reminded me of the great Hammer Films, there's that Broadway, musical vaudeville atmosphere that he loves to recreate, there's Roahl Dahl-esquire humor, Charles Dickens-like depictions of Victorian misery and the story he has been telling forever about outcasts from society finding a way to re-conciliate themselves with the world. On his earlier, more immature films by sweet isolation. Recently, simply by growing. But while his adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was about the happy part of growing, Corpse Bride's ending is sadder and more nostalgic.
The movie tells a fairy tale starring the typical shy, introverted Depp character, the goth version of his Arizona Dream persona, Victor, forced to engage in marriage with an insecure, romantic, matching girl called Victoria, voiced by Emily Watson. When he f*cks up the wedding rehearsal and runs to the woods, he practices his vows alone with a tree, which just happens to be a concealed skeleton's rusty hand. He puts the ring in the finger and now he's married to the corpse of a woman murdered years ago, and embodied by Burton's new muse Helena Bonham-Carter.
Obvious thing to do right now is to compare this to the masterpiece that is Nightmare before Christmas. And I'm gonna be sacrilegious  it compares. In terms of story, maybe this one is less "different" and original, but equally gripping and smart. In terms of animation, this is the glory. They're puppets, but unlike the ones used in Nightmare with removable heads, these ones are mechanic and can make a wider range of expressions. These are the most goddamn expressive puppets I've ever seen, and they blend with the actor's voices flawlessly. The direction is smooth as silk. If I want something to complain about I might just say that it overuses "neat" transitions, but overall it's just one stunning image after another, moving with seemingly magic editing and pace. I can only begin to imagine the madness that the filming of this movie must've been, the kind of perfectionist torture and devotion from the animators. There's also some seamless CGI, but overall, the movie is a testament and a blow in the face of those who think computer graphics are the only way animation is going to evolve. Technology is (or should be) additive in my opinion. Or, like Burton himself put it, "In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that computers are the way because Pixar makes good computer movies". I say preach it.
It's easier to review bad or mediocre movies than gems like this one. Suffice it to say that, like I already sort of expressed in my Charlie review, I think Burton is entering a new creative period and he's at his peak right now. All I can do is encourage people not to miss it.