"With all our tricks we're making Christmas time"

Rating: 8/10 (23 December 2011)

Stop-motion animation has been around almost since the beginning of cinema, but this was the first time the form had been used for a full-length motion picture. Just like cell animation sixty years earlier, the claymation we see here had been employed for pre-feature shorts or blended with live-action, but hadn't really been taken seriously as a facet of the cinematic medium. This is one of the good things about having popular mavericks like Tim Burton in Hollywood – they can use their mainstream bankability to push through projects the studios wouldn't normally touch with a bargepole.
Burton didn't actually direct Nightmare Before Christmas. He instead produced and came up with the story outline, but this doesn't make much difference as far as the finished production is concerned. This is perhaps the most archetypal Burton story, the ultimate tale of scary looking outsiders trying to fit in with the bright and happy world outside and failing beautifully. There's also that familiar look of both characters and scenery (Burton was always heavily involved with the design of his movies) – spindly figures, wild hair, black and white stripes, curling fronds like gnarled fingers. There's been a depressing trend in recent decades of making horror characters seem comical rather than scary, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, with its mix of the grotesque and the cartoonish, is a (probably unwitting) flagship for this. It's a shame because it's essentially the dumbing-down of kid's stuff. Children's movies were better when they could be properly frightening.
Something that really helps The Nightmare Before Christmas work is its being a musical. At first hearing Composer Danny Elfman's skittering melodies don't seem suited to singing, but then you realise just how much story and characterisation is carried in those lyrics. It's all a bit reminiscent of Lerner and Loewe's musicals, in that the songs are very much used to move the story along. And the tunes – while not exactly ones that are easy to sing along to – are rather pretty. They're also highly evocative – "What's This?" fizzes like a snowstorm, "Sally's Song" feels tender and sad, "Jack's Lament" is by turns proud and melancholy. Oogie Boogie's bluesy number injects a little bit of fun to kick off the final act of the movie.
And we shouldn't downplay the contribution of actual director Henry Selick. Selick takes this stop motion feature with a cinematic approach, using close-ups, camera moves, tilts and the like, to dramatic. The level of detail to the sets is exceptional, and there is a no-expense-spared look one would not associate with the shorts this medium has typically been used in. Most importantly however is the personality that goes into movement the characters. At ten frames a second, this isn't exactly smooth, but there is a wonderful texture and life in stop-motion that you don't quite get in other forms of animation. This is probably the biggest gift that The Nightmare Before Christmas has given us – the championing and reinvigoration of this seemingly dated art form, ironically in the very decade that CGI became the predominant animation method. It paved the way for many more claymation movies, which is undoubtedly a good thing.
And as a final thought, I'll just mention that stop motion is an incredibly easy form of animation to do at home. All you need nowadays is a digital camera and the right software (you can do it with Photoshop), plus of course a bit of patience and imagination. It doesn't have to be clay models – you can animate object you like. Have fun..!