Inside Tim Burton's strange, nightmare, Gothic world

Rating: 7/10 (13 February 2009)

While watching "Sleepy Hollow" I was struck by certain similarities between Tim Burton's work and some of Terry Gilliam's films such as "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Brothers Grimm". Both directors have a vivid visual imagination and a good eye for a striking image. Both are fascinated by myth and legend and by the clash between Classical reason and the Romantic imagination. It is noteworthy that "Sleepy Hollow" takes place in 1799/1800, just as the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, is giving way to the nineteenth, the Age of Romanticism.
The film is very loosely based upon Washington Irving's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". New York police constable Ichabod Crane is sent by his superiors to the upstate village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders in which the victims have been found decapitated. He is informed by the local people that the killings have been not been carried out by any flesh-and-blood human but by a mysterious Headless Horseman, believed to be the ghost of a Hessian soldier killed during the War of Independence. Ichabod dismisses such tales as mere superstition, as he is a rationalist with no belief in the supernatural and a great belief in modern, scientific methods of police investigation. He suspects that the village's richest citizen, Baltus van Tassel, might be behind the murders, which is unfortunate as he has fallen in love with Baltus's daughter Katrina. As his investigations continue, however, and several more killings take place, he is forced to conclude that something supernatural might be occurring, that the Headless Horseman is real and that someone might be controlling him.
Despite the film's American setting, it was actually filmed in Britain, with numerous British actors such as Sir Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson and Richard Griffiths in the cast. (Like Gilliam, Burton appears to be something of an Anglophile). The strongest influences on the film were the horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions in the sixties and seventies; Christopher Lee, who starred in many of those films, has a cameo appearance here. The village of Sleepy Hollow, with its half-timbered houses, is more reminiscent of the sort of fantasy Mittel-Europa seen in Hammer films like "Twins of Evil" than it is of colonial America; this look may also have inspired the village seen in "The Brothers Grimm".
The film has its weaknesses. The plot is little more than standard Hammer fare and the acting, at least in the leading roles, is not always of the highest quality. I have admired Christina Ricci in some of her other roles, such as "The Opposite of Sex" and "Monster" (a film I did not otherwise care for), but here, as Katrina, she seems too deadpan, never showing much emotion even when people, including members of her family, are killed in front of her. Johnny Depp always seemed too fey and effeminate. He stated that he always thought of Ichabod "as a very delicate, fragile person who was maybe a little too in touch with his feminine side, like a frightened little girl", but this characterisation makes it difficult to believe in Ichabod as a courageous action hero, which he develops into in the latter part of the film. This was the third film collaboration between Depp and Burton, but I must say that I preferred his performances in "Edward Scissorhands" and "Ed Wood".
"Sleepy Hollow's" greatest strength is its distinctive visual style. Although most Hammer films were made in lurid colour, Burton apparently contemplated shooting the film in black and white. This idea was later abandoned, but the look of the finished film is almost monochromatic with a colour scheme dominated by blacks and dark greys and few bright tones other than the red of the blood. (Len Wiseman was to attempt a similar look in "Underworld"). The idea was to give the film an eerie, otherworldly, look, and Burton succeeds well in this aim. He takes us inside a strange, nightmare Gothic world, a world of headless horsemen, of trees of the dead and of haunted windmills, a world of graphic violence leavened by a certain grim humour. It is the sort of film where style is indeed more important than substance, and style is something it has in plenty. I would not, however, rate it as highly as Burton's best films, such as "Edward Scissorhands" and "Big Fish", where he combines his distinctive visual style with material of greater substance than anything in "Sleepy Hollow". 7/10