| By Fred Topel
In Theaters September 23
|
If it’s dead people coming back to life, singing and dancing, it must be Tim Burton. Ever since Frankenweenie, Burton has explored the undead with his darkly comical way, and ever since Beetlejuice, he’s applied musical choreography wherever possible. Corpse Bride is no exception, has Burton’s latest animated film feature a singing, dancing dead girl, maggots and all.
“I think dealing with the undead comes from growing up in Burbank, sort of a suburban kind of feeling like Night of the Living Dead during the day with the bright sunlight,” Burton said. “I just always liked monster
movies. I was always sort of fascinated by again growing up in a culture where death is looked upon as a dark subject and then living so close to Mexico where you see the day of the dead with the skeletons and it's all humor and music and dancing and a celebration of life in a way. That just always felt more positive approach to things you
know so I think I always responded much more to that than this dark unspoken cloud in the kind of environment I grew up in.”
In Corpse Bride, the land of the dead is a fun, happening place compared to the stuffy British land of the living. Of course, Burton has no deep convictions about an afterlife, only hopeful influences from various cultures. “I have no idea what happens but like I said I do respond to other cultures that treat life [and death] with a much more positive approach. I think this other form teaches, especially when you are a child, it teaches you almost to be afraid of everything and feel like something bad is always going to happen whereas that other way seems like a much more spiritual and positive approach. That's as far as I go because I really have no idea what will happen.”
Based on the Russian folk tale, Corpse Bride tells the tale of Victor, a nervous groom who drops his wedding ring onto a skeleton’s finger. He not only inadvertently brings the woman back from the dead, but the careless act commits him to eternity of marriage. An eccentric outsider like the best of Burton’s characters, Victor too reflects Burton’s early frustrations in life. Even though he’s a happy family man now, Burton says he will always be a weirdo.
“The thing is you are very effected by your early life and if you ever had that feeling like an outsider or that
loneliness, it doesn't leave you. You can be happy, successful, whatever but that thing still stays inside you. You always will have that.”
Like his Nightmare Before Christmas, critics are already speculating that Corpse Bride may be too intense for children. “I've always had problems with that with certain adults. I mean, I remember people saying that about Nightmare and tiny, tiny little kids come up and say that they loved the movie. I think it's more of an adult problem than a kid problem. Corpse Bride I find is even softer in a certain way. It’s basically a love story, an emotional story, [with] humor and like any kind of fable or fairy tale there may be elements that are somewhat unsettling but that's part of the history of those kinds of stories.”
Rated PG for its intense elements, Burton finds the rating appropriate, but still expects any child should welcome the film’s story and images. “To me the story is quite just emotional. I personally don't find it dark at all. In the same way of Nightmare, in fact I think it’s somewhat less dark in a certain way. I also think adults forget that kids are their own best censors. Some kids like that kind of stuff and some kids don't and I think they are the best ones to
judge it. Adults are like, ‘You can’t see this, you can’t see that.’ It creates this climate of fear and it makes kids more afraid. I have a child that is under two years old and he has watched When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Viva Las Vegas which isn’t a horror movie but some people might cal it scary. It’s about how you present things. If he didn't like something then he'd run away. If you were like, ‘Oh my god, Elvis and Ann-Margaret are about to kiss!’ he'd freak out.”
Lest any parents group go up in arms over Burton’s liberal views, the filmmaker assures us that he does have some limits for his child’s entertainment. “Well, I am not going to start showing porno movies or anything, hardcore
porn. I find it's a fascinating subject and I was talking to somebody who’s writing a book on it. If you go into a shop and its like, ‘Okay, here are the Teletubbies and here are the Wiggles, which some would say scarier than most horror movies, and it’s very limited, it’s interesting if you show them other things and don't present it like ‘Oohh,’ it might be amazing what they accept.”
In Burton’s family, the only thing that scares the kid is the parents, Burton himself and Helena Bonham Carter. “We don’t try to. He just kind of looks up at us like who are you? I don't know if it’s because of the way we look or how we act.”
Corpse Bride is now playing in select cities. It opens everywhere September 23. |
