Victor Van Dort didn't know what he was getting into when he placed a wedding ring on a twig in a graveyard and accidentally proposed to a dead woman. The woman climbs from the dirt, and Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" results.
The story, a 19th century Russian folktale, is reminiscent of one of Bollywood's (India's rendition of Hollywood) many love stories. Two parents match two children for marriage, the couple attempts falling in love and plot twists ensure that havoc ensues - all complete with musical numbers. Victor and Victoria Everglot's parents are introduced in the beginning of the flick with a song about how all things in the marriage of their children must go "according to plan." But in this light romantic comedy, Burton makes sure to touch on the deeper themes of life, one namely being that life, by definition, never goes according to plan - that's what makes it, and this movie, interesting.
He also notes the fact that life itself is fleeting. While the corpse bride sullenly despairs about how her new husband misses his would-be living wife Victoria, her spider and maggot friends sing about how all Victoria has over the corpse bride is a life, something that we all will lose someday.
But the best moment in the film was one which had nothing to do with this common thread throughout the plot - the notion of love between two individuals - but rather the hopelessness Johnny Depp's Victor feels as he sulks in a graveyard after horribly botching his wedding vows and accidentally setting his future mother-in-law on fire.
Depp's careful attention to the emotion behind Victor's lines and Burton's appropriately created body movements portray a sullen Victor who is unsure of himself, of his future and of his place in the world. It is a feeling every audience member can surely appreciate, as Victor's loneliness while he travels from the world of the living to the underworld and back again parallels any emotional roller coaster a person goes through during his or her own perilous rendezvous with love.
Depp and Helena Bonham Carter outdo themselves as the movie's two leading claymation characters. Depp's unassuming, clumsy, hopeless romantic Victor is both convincing and painfully human. His dead bride, played by Bonham Carter, is a charming, whimsical and spunky skeleton with an undying dream of romance.
And Burton-loving fans should know that this movie is not without the major female character losing and reattaching her limbs throughout the movie, as sewn-together Sally did in "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
But the difference between the corpse bride and Victoria in comparison to Sally is they are both refreshingly strong-willed. While Sally only helplessly cared about Jack Skellington in "Nightmare," the corpse bride and Victoria go out of their way to find love and keep it. Both women, dead or alive, know what they want, and neither are afraid to seek their chosen destiny, despite obvious grave obstacles. And in the end, while only one woman wins her husband, both feel they have triumphed. The movie teaches that while romance can be captivating, it is not all there is to life - or death.
And regardless of how things unfold, Burton's claymation world is undeniably captivating. He outdoes himself with a selective use of color to differentiate the living and dead worlds, and his eye for characterization and detail is striking - from Victoria's mother's heaving chest to her father's comically stiff mouth trying to crack a smile. His underworld is zany, playful and in-your-face, as skulls reel and smiling skeletons breeze through upbeat jazz solos with abandon on makeshift bone instruments. Danny Elfman's score brings the entire clay cast to life, subtly enhancing the idiosyncrasies and antics of each character, especially the skeletons of the underworld. His jazz renditions coupled with Burton's dark and creepy visuals are always oddly fitting, making the feared world of the dead refreshingly lighthearted.
