Corpse Bride at 77 Minutes: A Gray Village, a Bright Underworld, and the Case for Brevity

Corpse Bride runs 77 minutes. That is the whole argument for it, and against it.

Tim Burton and Mike Johnson directed the 2005 stop-motion romantic fantasy, written by John August, Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler. Johnny Depp voices Victor Van Dort, the nervous son of fish merchants. Helena Bonham Carter voices Emily, the corpse bride of the title. The tagline promises “There’s been a grave misunderstanding.”

Trailer, via Warner Bros. Rewind.

Victor Van Dort and the Ring on the Root

In an English village in the 1800s, Victor and Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) are pushed into an arranged marriage. Her aristocratic family needs money. His nouveau riche family needs class. The two meet, are nervous, and fall for each other almost at once.

Then Victor ruins the wedding rehearsal. He forgets his vows, drops the ring, and sets Lady Everglot’s dress on fire. He flees to a forest, rehearses his vows to a tree, and slides the ring onto what he takes for an upturned root.

The root is Emily’s skeletal finger. She rises from the grave in her wedding dress and claims him as her husband.

The Land of the Dead and Elder Gutknecht

Emily spirits Victor to the Land of the Dead, a colorful realm where the deceased live on. There he learns she was murdered on the night of her elopement by her fiancé, who stole the family jewels and gold she had brought.

The underworld is the film’s best idea. It is brighter and warmer than the village above, and the dead are livelier company than the living. Elder Gutknecht (Michael Gough), the kindly ruler of the realm, grants the couple temporary passage back. Victor wants only to reach Victoria.

That is the engine of the back half: a man who lied to a dead woman to get home to a living one.

Two Worlds, Two Palettes

The film’s central comparison is between the two settings, and the design carries it.

The dead dance. The living negotiate. Burton and Johnson know which side of that table they prefer.

A Cast Built for Voices

The voice cast is deep. Tracey Ullman plays Nell Van Dort / Hildegarde. Paul Whitehouse plays William Van Dort / Mayhew / Paul the Head Waiter. Joanna Lumley is Maudeline Everglot, Albert Finney is Finis Everglot, Richard E. Grant is Barkis Bittern, Christopher Lee is Pastor Galswells. Jane Horrocks plays the Black Widow Spider / Mrs. Plum. Enn Reitel plays the Maggot / Town Crier.

The production has its own running order worth noting:

Corpse Bride is the first stop-motion feature Burton directed, after producing The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. It was made at 3 Mills Studios in London and shot with Canon EOS-1D Mark II digital SLRs instead of the 35 mm cameras used on Nightmare. Danny Elfman, Depp and Bonham Carter came aboard immediately.

The story comes from “The Finger,” a 17th-century Jewish folktale put down by Howard Schwartz, which Joe Ranft brought to Burton during Nightmare. The film is dedicated to Ranft, who died a month before release.

At 77 minutes, Corpse Bride is the shortest kind of feature and it moves like it. The plot resolves quickly, and Emily’s fate lands because the film never lets her become a joke. She was robbed and killed. She is not the villain. Victoria is not the villain either. The villains are the living.

The weakness is that the living world never gets the same care. Victoria waits, bereft, and the film does not give her much to do while she waits. The arranged-marriage satire is thin.

But the comparison at the center holds. A gray village where marriage is a transaction, and a bright underworld where the dead are generous. That is the film’s argument, and it is a good one.

TMDB audiences rate it 7.6 of 10 across 10,413 votes.

Corpse Bride · Helena Bonham Carter · Johnny Depp · movie review · stop-motion · Tim Burton