Another gothic masterpiece from Tim Burton

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2000)

Tim Burton has always been a maverick amongst Hollywood directors, and Sleepy Hollow is no exception. Written in his unique, heavily gothic visual language, it is a fascinating exploration of the boundaries between reason and magic, and the way that evil leads to evil, violence inexorably to more violence until justice is done.
The film is carried along at a scorching pace by a riveting plotline, eschewing the horror convention of not showing the ghost until at least halfway through the film. Instead, the conspiracy at the heart of the plot reveals itself in deepening layers, each one implicating more and more of the people in the town until the horrible secret is revealed. With each twist I thought we had found the culprit, only to be thwarted by yet another level of complexity. The denouement was both surprising and shocking.
As with all Burton films, Sleepy Hollow is visually very striking and creates a world of its own, a world where ghosts and ghouls are real and interact with the living for very good reasons. As with Beetlejuice, the atmosphere is both sinister and comical, although a lot more emphasis is placed on the sinister here than in the earlier film. And at the heart of the film is Constable Ichabod Crane, puffed up with an absurd self-confidence and belief in reason which rapidly crumbles under the weight of evidence of supernatural goings-on. Johnny Depp is fantastic as the 19th century "modern man" who trusts reason over superstition, slowly revealing the horrific facts of his own history through dreams and visions as the film unfolds. Christina Ricci excels (yet again) as his love interest Katrina, the beautiful innocent who falls in love with him and sets out to help him unravel the mystery. The rest of the cast are also terrific, particularly Michael Gambon and Miranda Richardson as Katrina's father and step-mother. Burton always seems to get the best out of his actors, and they pay hearty tribute to his talents in the "Making of..." film on the DVD.
There is so much to say about Sleepy Hollow that it would take more than a brief IMDb review to cover it all. It explores the limits of the rational approach and the way in which belief and understanding are based on a combination of reason and openness, the union represented by the blossoming love between Katrina and Ichabod. It deals with evil and its consequences. It shows how love can bloom out of horror and how the apparent horror on the surface of things can belie the true horror caused by social ostracisation and rejection. Burton's gothic fantasy world is not there to help us escape from our own but to help us understand it, and Sleepy Hollow is yet another masterpiece from a true Hollywood genius. Burton is a man who knows why he makes films - look on and see.