TIM BURTON – CORPSE BRIDE – 2005
This animated film that uses
puppets and other means to build a full show, dancing, singing and haunting
included, is remarkable. Remarkable for its pleasantly morbid humor and
subject. Remarkable for its caustically social criticism. Remarkable for its
mesmerizing loving young characters. These are the victims of everything in the
world. Of their parents, of their social position, of their young age, of their
romanticism, of their naiveté and of course of all the social climbers and
social vultures our beautiful human society hosts and even cherishes. It is
true without these social escalating climbers life would be humdrum and
tasteless. With them it tastes like mud and there is always some hullabaloo
around them.
The plot is superbly simple. The
son of a rich bourgeois family is planned by his parents to marry the daughter
of a pauperized noble family who is planned by her parents to marry the son of
a rich bourgeois family. They fall in love at first sight, and first touch of a
piano keyboard, which is exceptional for an arranged marriage. And then
difficulties pile up because a social vulture comes up and wants the girl since
he is pauperized and badly informed. He thinks the noble family is rich and he
wants to put his hands (and both of them of course) on the girl and her family’s
fortune.
Then, due to some local and
perverse circumstances the poor young man ends up in a cemetery and he gets, by
total accident, married to a dead girl, hence a corpse “till death us parts.”
But this clause is difficult to implement. The rest is to be discovered by
yourself and your doppelganger because we all have a doppelganger who would
like to visit the other side of the mirror, the other side of reality, the dark
side of the moon and even the invisible side of our psyche. I know a lot of
people who would love to visit the underground underworld just for fun,
provided they can come back. Though coming back is the most difficult part of
the game, and please do not fall in love with anyone on that other side because
then you’ll have to join them for ever “as soon as death us unites.”
But the most beautiful and
fascinating part of this film is of course the animation. I will not be
technical but the “puppets” are perfects especially the skeletons dressed or
undressed, dancing or not, singing or howling, playing bone percussions or bone
saxophone. They can fall down on the ground and scatter all their bones and
then in an instant get back up and reassemble the jigsaw puzzle of their ribs,
phalanges and knuckles. There is some kind of a magical trick in that. I must
say that the dancing skeletons can be alluring and even exciting. But please no
S…, we’re not necessarily English, but we’re dead. Too bad because a bag of
bones can be very surprising at times.
The music is of course great.
This is a Tim Burton film, mind you, And the music is essential to make the
bone hallucination dance and sing. But the music is also essential to lure the
social escalating climber into drinking the poison that was not intended for
him, and he will not end like the girl he killed, “always a bride’s maid but
never the bride,” he will end “always a bridegroom but never a married man.”
Poor chap!
Finally it is important to know
that this film is not recommended for sensitive people who should also be
sensible and avoid the morbid fear and lethal angst they may feel in that
funeral of a wedding, in that deadly descent to Limbo from which there is no
way back. Once an underworld resident, always an underworld resident. Ask
Orpheus about it. You will recognize that fascination for death that is the
hallmark of Mr. Tim Burton. It is why we like him, true enough, but it is also
why we come back all the time to be flagellated with bones, corpses, rotting
flesh and maggots. I must say that the spider seamstresses are quite a
perverse, obnubilating but so sugary-sweet-honey-pie vision. We could accept to
become macabre diabetic and an overdose of that graveyard paraphernalia would
lead us to the bliss of a symbolical and orgasmic death directly there in our
armchairs.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
AMAZON.COM
AMAZON.CO.UK
6
of 6 people found the following review helpful
IMDB
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU,
Olliergues, France, December 6, 2006
Death is like the paradise of love and the real gate to
marriage
Do not try to disentangle and find out all the allusions
this film contains. You will always miss most of them, even Hamlet. Just enjoy
the animation that is superbly creative and the situation that is so full of
humor, black and white and in colors, that you may end up losing your marbles
and loosening your jaws. The music is definitely marvelous and mysterious. A
Danse Macabre in high noble society and a wedding march in the cemetery. An
accidental marriage crossing the life and death divide that has to be repaired
to satisfy the true right love marriage that could not take place due to some
infernal elopement or kidnaping of the bridegroom. The characters are superb
marionnettes and cartoons so nimble and yet stiff at the same time that they
seem to be dancing cripples in wheelchairs. It's true though the dog is the
best of them all. This film is a caricature, a satire of any commonplace trite
established statement and of any attempt at being creative and escaping this
preprogramed and overdigested world of ours. You will think of many other films
and you will be right, though you will miss most of them. At times it is a
direct allusion like an echo and at times it is an indirect allusion like a
photographic negative. And the best of it all is that it is neither gross nor
frightening, but deeply romantic, with maybe a touch of slavonic nostalgia and
sadness.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon
Sorbonne
AMAZON.FR
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Ce film est un chef d'œuvre éternel dans son noir et
blanc qui en devient une vraie palette de couleurs. Ne cherchez pas les
allusions vous ne saurez jamais les trouver toutes et vous vous sentiriez bien
frustré d'en manquer une pelletée. N'allez pas vous mêler les méninges dans les
fils plus qu'entrecroisés de ces marionnettes qui jouent aux dessins animés.
Une vraie Danse Macabre dans la haute et noble société ruinée et une marche
nuptiale en plein dans un cimetière, entre les tombes, les cadavres et les
squelettes. Un malencontreux mariage malvenu a fait traverser la ligne de
démarcation entre la vie et la mort à un pauvre jeune homme prétendument au
bord du mariage. Il faut réparer l'erreur et libérer la mariée funèbre en un
vol de papillons et marier la mariée terrestre dans une envolée d'émotion. Mais
les personnages sont si vrais, si raides, si démantibulés qu'ils en ont l'air
d'être des tas d'os déboîtés dansant dans une chaise roulante. Rien ne résiste
au caustique humour plus que noir de Tim Burton qui lamine tout ce qui bouge du
côté de l'ordre établi et de la tradition, et mitraille tout ce qui frétille du
côté de l'innovation. On innove dans la mort et on enterre dans la vie. Mais
rien de grossier ou de morbide dans tout cela. Bien au contraire, un profond
romantisme vente dans les cursives et les coulisses avec un brin de nostalgie
slave un peu triste dans les sombres nuées d'un ciel bas comme une poutre à
suicide.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine & Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:12 AM