Sleepy Hollow
a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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When I attended a screening of Tim Burton’s new film Sleepy Hollow last week, I was not surprised to hear euphoric cheering, half-hearted applause, and outraged boo-ing as the end credits rolled past. On the way out, several people grumbled about how Burton consistently disappoints us, failing to provide anything of substance. It is worth mentioning, though, that those same peeved viewers had waited in line eagerly with the rest of us for 90 minutes just to feast their eyes on Burton’s latest achievement. Substance or not, we love this guy.
Since he stormed into the spotlight with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Burton has occupied a unique corner of eccentricity in the faculty of big box-office directors. He’s provided us with so many unforgettable characters and spectacles –Michael Keaton’s melancholy Batman and hysterical Beetlejuice, the big screen’s most memorable suburban landscape in Edward Scissorhands, Michelle Pfeiffer’s most memorable role in Batman Returns, Martin Landau in Ed Wood, and the breakthrough stop-animation of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton’s works are hard to classify; they make a comedy out of a horror, showing up the conventions of scaring people for the silly parlor tricks that they usually are. (His only sincerely scary accomplishment remains the Landau performance of a sad and despairing Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.)
Still, Burton’s work only seems to increase the disdain many have for him. Many were shocked that Mars Attacks!, the first movie to be based on a series of bubble gum cards, was frivolous and thinly plotted. In response to Sleepy Hollow, The Chicago Reader‘s Jonathan Rosenbaum bemoans how Burton disrespects the integrity of Washington Irving’s novel, while William Arnold of the Seattle P-I is upset that the movie if devoid of suspense and horror. Clearly, Burton’s Sleepy Hollow does not even attempt to recreate Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It’s not very scary. When the monsters in the movie actually HAVE heads, they’re of the cartoony Beetlejuice variety. And when the action rises to Indiana Jones pitch (there’s a nod to the classic truck chase here), Burton is far too busy looking for good laughs to inspire any genuine screams.
Sleepy Hollow is a hilarious tribute to the old-style Hammer horror that loved to announce how scary it was. Entertaining but artless, they TOLD rather than SHOWED. And there is a lot of telling in this film.
In Burton’s version of the story, Ichabod Crane is a constable from New York whose penchant for deduction carries him to solve a particularly riddling series of decapitation homicides in the backwoods village of Sleepy Hollow. The gallery of grizzled geezers who greet him there (Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones, Ian McDiarmid, and Burton’s beloved Michael Gough) waste no time trying to outdo each other with quavering voices and tales of woe. When the incredulous Crane stammers, “The heads were taken?!” Gough rasps: “Taken… taken by the headless horseman… taken…. BACK TO HELL!!” If you try taking this melodrama seriously, you’ve already lost any chance of enjoying this picture.
In spite of its satire, Sleepy Hollow does provide more substantial treats than any Burton film since Scissorhands. The director’s work with actors is steadfastly brilliant. There is no better actor/director team than Johnny Depp and his curious coach. Depp’s Ichabod is a pillar of cowardice, a pale, jittery man who is all too quick to hide behind women and children when the monster rides into town. While Christina Ricci has an enchantingly cherubic face to charm feeble Ichabod, and while the talents of others like Miranda Richardson are given a lot of over-the-top license, it is Depp who holds our attention in this context.
And what a context. Sleepy Hollow is, above all, beautiful to look at. Instead of using special effects to make things look real, Burton works the other way, making everything look like a painting. From Irving, he selects only the elements that interest him most: windmills, scarecrows, haunted houses, hard restrictive Bibles, mysterious witchcraft symbols. There is more mist than forest in this forest, and what trees there are look absolutely miserable. The townsfolk fare no better… all but the children are physically warped in one way or another by bitterness, arrogance, greed, jealousy, or fear. Grownups are hard, cold and suspicious; religion and the law are instruments of torture.
Freud would have had a field day with this film, postulating on Burton’s own childhood in view of how threatening and wicked these people really are. Adults tend too loom over the camera, glowering, punishing. Perhaps the movie’s biggest surprise is that the horseman is not the story’s greatest villain. Ichabod’s memory of his own vindictive father is far more fearsome, yet another dark lord who uses the Bible as a tool of hate and fear rather than liberation and love.
But these lurches toward meaningfulness never get very far. Depp and Ricci keep the laughs coming with their perfect balance between sincerity and irony. Funniest of all is Christopher Walken, relishing his brief and silent appearances. And the stereotypical Danny Elfman Burton-class-soundtrack (lots of chimes and choral stuff over the dark gothic dirge theme) is as much of a presence as any character, running though almost every frame of the film (but hardly an original work, calling up his signature chimes and choral effects over that dark Batman dirge.)
Although not as dark as I anticipated, this is definitely an R-Rated Tim Burton film. One word: blood. The heads do indeed roll. And bounce. And bleed. But the violence is campy, exaggerated for the sake of a shock, more in the vein of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure than Halloween. Ray Park, who made such a great Darth Maul in Phantom Menace, is similarly menacing here, compensating with confidence and aggressiveness what he lacks in… well… a head. Fortunately, Burton doesn’t make this a splatter-fest, like I feared he would. The horseman comes, he lops off heads, he leaves. It’s obvious that his appearance, bolting out of the fog on his black horse like an inevitable nightmare, was the image that compelled Burton to make this film.
Although many critics are taking turns using Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay for target practice, it’s not a disaster. The new story is suitable to the genre that it nearly spoofs, peppered with foreboding pronouncements of doom, hushed conspiracies to catch the crook, and sentimentally gooey romantic interludes. Walker also wrote Seven and Fight Club. He’s at home in the verbiage of cops and serial killers in the big city, but here he strains to achieve the archaic dialect of the Irving world, and as a result there are no memorable voices. The cast basically have the job of divulging information between the action scenes, so we have enough story to provide structure. The villain’s inevitable tell-all speech is the film’s one truly embarrassing low point; as loose ends are desperately tied up the film comes to a crashing halt and the enchantment is broken.
I do agree with Jonathan Rosenbaum, to a point: “Beauty separated from meaning isn’t nearly as likely to be as memorable as beauty arising from and commingling with a good story.” Of course. But should we criticize the moviemaker for failing to deliver something he never intended to deliver? “Beauty separated from meaning” is as fascinating to Burton as heads separated from bodies. It’s pure and… forgive me… brainless fun. We don’t get mad at kids for playing with their toys; in fact, sometimes we join them. Why be hard on Burton?
Ultimately, Sleepy Hollow is an elaborate Halloween party, where everybody gets to ham it up. It’s the kind of movie Beetlejuice or Jack Skellington would have felt right at home in. Critic Michael Atkinson puts it best: “Every shot of Sleepy Hollow is a box of candy sent directly to every Boomer brat who ever spent a Saturday watching old horror movies on local TV, reading Famous Monsters of Filmland, or assembling an Aurora monster model.” Burton is indeed the Willy Wonka of campy horror. He’ll never win a director’s Oscar, but we owe him credit for providing some of our most enthralling visual fantasies.
And as for those who gripe about the lack of nourishment in their dessert… well… I’m tempted to make some jab about how they’ve lost their heads.
a second opinion – guest review by Danny Walter
Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton’s latest foray into the land of the macabre, has Johnny Depp arching his eyebrows through foggy moonlit nights, chasing headless horsemen, and hacking blood spurting trees of death with a hatchet. The animated Legend that Disney spun this isn’t.
Though gruesome in parts, and downright violent in others, this horror story comes off as somehow playful in Burton’s capable hands…a tale of terror where the audience need never fear becoming terrified themselves.
Depp plays New York inspector Ichabod Crane, a lone pioneer of the forensic sciences, struggling through the dark ages of late 18th century investigation where, “If you found him in the river he obviously drowned.” At least this is how Crane’s backward superiors see things, and tired of listening to his sermons on scientific investigative techniques, they banish him to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of grisly beheadings.
Arriving in Sleepy Hollow, Crane meets with the town elders, and learns who they suspect is behind the murders when they tell him the legend of the Headless Horseman. Executive producer Francis Ford Copolla’s presence is felt in Burton’s showing us the legend through a flashback stylistically reminiscent of the flashback tale in Copolla’s own Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The Horseman, a Germanic warrior sent to America to help Britain quell the revolution, rides through the foggy hay fields lopping off the heads of many a silhouetted foot soldier. Even his horse is named Vlad. Played with ferocious zest by Christopher Walken, the horseman winds up losing his own head, by his own sword, and is buried in the woods outside Sleepy Hollow. However, the Horseman has risen from his grave, and is terrorizing the townsfolk by stealing the heads of their neighbors. Ichabod, skeptical of this theory, announces that the killer is of flesh and blood, and will be caught through logic and reason.
The film then begins to play out as less of a horror story and more of a whodunit, as Crane searches for connections between the victims, and begins to unravel a conspiracy involving the town elders. Even when encountering the Horseman himself, Crane faces his fears, and takes to the woods to seek out who the Horseman is, and why he is collecting heads. When we finally do find out whodunit, the killer is asked “Why?”, and we are dragged through a monologue ALA “Bond villain” to help out the brain-dead in the audience.
Burton’s horror film draped over the bones of a murder mystery, while devilishly fun, suffers from a bland plot hidden well within stylization, and wonderful character creation. Again the shadow of Copolla is seen in the cleanness of the visual effects only twice indulging in the “Large Marge” effect of eyes and tongues slingshotting out of heads that Burton loves to showcase in such films as Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and Beetlejuice. And the Horseman! Thank God for CGI. This man had no head! He was beautiful. Not some guy stumbling around with a fake pair of shoulders on his head. No. It was Ray Parks, master of evil, Darth Maul, from the Phantom Menace, and they erased his head!
Lovers of the Disney version of Sleepy Hollow were rewarded by Burton’s nod to the animated feature with frogs echoing croaks of “Ichabod, Ichabod”, and a Headless Horseman hurling a flaming jack-o-lantern at a fleeing Crane.
A subplot of suppressed memories haunting Crane as he sleeps pops up throughout the film. Memories of Ichabod watching his mother with (Freudian?) adoration as she dances around him, draws magical symbols in the ashes of the fireplace, (which Christina Ricci’s Katrina mimics later) and spins into the air, floating, with a look of joyful rapture on her face. These surfacing memories also reveal that his puritanically religious father repeatedly punishes his mother, in the family torture chamber we assume, for indulging in these rituals, until he is finally responsible for her death.
These scenes are completely with out dialogue, and edited in confusing dream like imagery. They do much for establishing Crane’s state of mind and perhaps explain why he holds to the idea religion and all things spiritual are to be feared or dismissed as superstition. They do not, however, beautiful as they are to watch, do much for moving the plot forward.
Another odd scene that departs from the tone of the rest of the film, is of the Horseman mercilessly assailing an entire family of innocents. Burton goes out of his way to show us how healthy this family is. (Much different from Crane’s experience) Young Mother and Father obviously in love with each other and their impossibly cute son, Horseman bursts in and terrorizes them all. Why so ruthlessly? Yeesh!
Depp’s Ichabod is endearingly squeamish, and prone to fainting spells. His facade of disbelief in all things of the spirit world, thinly veils the faith of a child who knows that ghouls and goblins really do exist. He is a hero who actually experiences fear and shows it, but is still able to behave heroically.
A beautiful set that profits from a smaller scale, and singularity of tone, turns out to be one of Burton’s best realized worlds. Where Gotham overwhelms, and the world of Edward Scissorhands jars the viewer with its contrasts of one locale to another, Sleepy Hollow can be held within the scope of comfort and easy recognition. The woods, the homes, the church, and the cemetery, are all places we expect to see in a setting like Sleepy Hollow. Even the giant windmill, though obviously a bit self indulgent as the base of operations for the killer, fits in with the rest of the town.
Like many autuers, Burton surrounds himself with those he has had success with before. This is his third film with Depp, previously as both Edwards “Wood” and “Scissorhands”, and his tenth partnership with composer Danny Elfman, who brilliantly turned out a soundtrack that blends well with the film while not sounding anything like his other Burton projects. More Burton favorites include Martin Landau as headless victim number two, Jeffrey Jones as the minister in bulbous powdered wigs, Lisa Marie as Cranes mother, and of course, Mr. Headless himself, Christopher Walken.
Although Christina Ricci seems like she sprang directly from the head of Burton himself, this is their first time working together. With little to do other than play love interest to Depp’s Crane, replacing what he lost with the death of his mother, she’s such an interesting creature we love her anyway.
Miranda Richardson is unfortunately absent throughout most of the film, and when she is present she’s doing her best Joan Allen impersonation. Happily there are a few moments of classic over the top Miranda, and while satisfying they leave us wanting more. It is also wonderful to see Michael Gambon in so many pictures lately, and quite a treat to see the usually evil Ian McDiarmid playing a smallish fearful man sporting the same goatee as the mayor of Munchkinland. Newcomer Marc Pickering was wonderfully expressive as Depp’s sidekick/assistant Young Masbeth.
Wondrous sets, Beautiful soundtrack, Brilliant actors, and a world from the mind of Tim Burton dress up a well-used plot, to make Sleepy Hollow a horror story we can indulge in with glee…as if we were small children on grandfather’s knee, safe in the protection of his burly arms to giggle at the antics of those spooky ghouls and goblins that we know really do exist.
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Director – Tim Burton
Writer – Andrew Kevin Walker, based on Washington Irving’s tale ”The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Director of photography – Emmanuel Lubezki
Editor – Chris Lebenzon
Music – Danny Elfman
Costumes – Colleen Atwood
Production designer – Rick Heinrichs
Producers – Scott Rudin and Adam Schroeder
Paramount Pictures. 110 minutes. Rated R.
STARRING: Johnny Depp (Ichabod Crane), Christina Ricci (Katrina Van Tassel), Miranda Richardson (Lady Van Tassel), Michael Gambon (Baltus), Casper Van Dien (Brom), Jeffrey Jones (Reverend Steenwyck), Marc Pickering (Young Masbeth), Michael Gough (Notary Hardenbrook), Christopher Lee (Burgomaster) and Christopher Walken (Hessian Horseman).
Tags: Review Archive - S
June 8th, 2004 at 6:12 pm
Feingold is so busy boiling Republicans that he commits what may be a first in theatre-critic faux pas:
He forgets to tell us the title of the play he’s reviewing.
But obviously that’s not as important as his agenda for Mengele-style ethnic cleansing of conservatives.