Director: Tim Burton (USA, Germany, UK). Year of Release: 1999
1799, Sleepy Hollow, New York State. An actuary witnesses a client signing his Last Will and Testament. Once the document is signed, the actuary seals it and boards a horse-drawn carriage, which rushes as quickly as it possibly can. The actuary is watching scary pumpkin-headed scarecrows flash past, as a horseman whooshes past the carriage and beheads the driver. The actuary runs towards the scary scarecrows, but when he turns round he too is beheaded.
Cut to: New York City, where policeman Ichabod Crane is unsuccessfully trying to make the court system understand the new science. We are entering a new millennium and yet people are still being locked up for the flimsiest of evidence. Ichabod appeals for root and branch changes in the judicial system. He is laughed out of court by people who have more power than him, but they suggest that he might move North to help a village which is suffering a spate of beheadings.
When Ichabod arrives in Sleepy Hollow, he is confronted by Katrina, the daughter of one of the men who run the town. Katrina is playing a blindfolded version of kiss chase, and as she catches Ichabod, she is bound to kiss him. Kiss over, Katrina hands Ichabod over to her father, who is older and male, which of course makes him more important. Ichabod is allowed to stay at their house while he carries out his inquiries.
Ichabod is at first unable to integrate into rural life. He is allocated a horse which insists on going in an opposite direction to the one he is supposed to go. On the one level, this is harmless fun with a number of visual jokes. On another, it undermines Crane’s attempt to impose himself as a Man of Reason. He is trying to persuade the rural community that they can only progress by understanding the new Sherlock Holmes inspired detective work, but remains a figure of fun.
As Crane, Johnny Depp is already on the way towards the Jack Sparrow type overacting with which he has been coasting for the past couple of decades. Whenever he comes into shot, we see him broodingly staring away from the camera, a foppish curl of hair dangling over his cheek. It is the sort of “don’t look at me” acting which is intended to draw attention to the actor. This does help build up Ichabod Crane as a hapless Character, even when the plot requires something else.
We learn more about the headless horseman, who is supposed to have died 20 years before. He was a fearless fighter who was active in the US American war of independence and had even filed down his teeth until they look like intimidating sharp fangs. Some reviewers have been unduly coy about naming the actor who plays the horseman, but surely no-one could have done this better than a snarling Christopher Walken.
Crane’s job is to break the superstition carried by the local yokels, and to find a rational scientific explanation for what is happening. Indeed he does uncover some dodgy dealings by the men in charge. And yet, the problem is that this is a Gothic fairy tale which cannot be fully explained by reason. This leaves the film in a bit of a dilemma – it appears to be appealing to enter the nineteenth Century with a spirt of scientific progress, but is also bound to the unscientific myth.
A romance develops between Ichabod and Katrina. As Katrina, Christina Ricci is given nothing to work with. At the time she was at the top of her game following superlative performances as Wednesday in the Addams family films and a few decent Indie films. If you google her now, you are prompted to follow the link “Whatever happened to Christina Ricci?” Her filmography since Sleepy Hollow is full of films you’ve never seen. Maybe this underwritten part is where it all started.
We can’t really blame Ricci for her lack of impact in a film which largely requires her to faint when the going gets tough. Her role, inasmuch as she has any at all, is to be rescued by the hero Ichabod Crane. In contrast to Wednesday’s gothic dark hair, she has blonde pigtails forced upon her. Now it’s not that Ricci is bad looking, but her acting always showed more character when she was playing kooky. Katrina is just too mainstream and pretty for her.
What is Sleepy Hollow trying to say? The opening scenes, which has Crane challenging the old practices of 18th Century policing would have you believe that this is an argument for reason against superstition, that people should not be imprisoned because of the wild beliefs of their accusers but should be offered a fair trial. The longer the film goes on, the more we learn that science is wrong and we must come to terms with the fact of headless riders from the past.
Sleepy Hollow is a fairy tale, and there’s nothing wrong with that as such, but if this is the case, it should not make the claim that is about to Expose the Truth. Similarly, it is brilliant that the film looks so spectacular, but the more you understand that the Look is there to hide a flimsy plot, the more you feel cheated. The film is perfectly fine as far as it goes, but it suffers from making itself out to be far more substantial than it actually is.
Nonetheless, this is a Tim Burton Film which seethes with Gothic atmosphere. Scenes of a moonlit mansion with accompanying windmill look gorgeous. And the plot holds us for a while until it starts getting repetitive and insubstantial. Before last night, I hadn’t seen the film since it came on telly shortly after it was released. I had presumed that my forgetting what had happened was down to the ageing process. I now realise that there just wasn’t too much to remember.
CinePhil 