Dark Shadows
It had been a long time since I had liked something by Tim Burton, and that is why it pleasantly surprised me. I do not think it is one of his great films, nor that it reaches the level of his most complete works, but it did give me back something I had missed: that pleasure in the gothic, the strange, the misplaced characters and a macabre comedy that does not need to ask for permission. I saw it as an elegant, colorful and dark piece of nonsense, but with charm. And that Burton works much better for me than the more automatic or merely decorative Burton.
What I liked most was the tone. It does not try to be real horror, or deep family drama, or pure comedy. It is a strange mixture, uneven at times, but likeable: an eighteenth-century vampire waking up in the seventies, a decaying mansion, a fallen family, a spiteful witch, absurd humor, black romance and the aesthetics of a cursed fairy tale. That combination could have gone terribly wrong, but it has enough personality to make the ride pleasant. Some scenes seem made simply to enjoy the clash between the old and the modern, between gothic melodrama and pop culture.
Johnny Depp is very comfortable as Barnabas Collins. He is one of those characters that seem designed for him: polite, tragic, ridiculous, theatrical, dangerous and lost in a world he no longer understands. Sometimes the performance gets too close to gesture and pose, but here it fits the game. I found it funny to see him react to television, music, cars or modern customs as if everything were an incomprehensible aberration. That fish-out-of-water side is probably the funniest part of the film.
The family also helps a lot. Michelle Pfeiffer brings elegance and authority; Helena Bonham Carter appears with that eccentric edge that fully belongs to Burton’s universe; Eva Green clearly enjoys herself as an excessive, sensual, poisonous villain, broken inside. The cast understands the tone, and that matters, because a film like this collapses if the actors do not accept the absurdity. No one seems to be in a realistic work: everyone functions as a piece of a haunted house, half comic and half rotten.
The look is another of its great attractions. The mansion, the colors, the costumes, the make-up, the music and that mixture of Victorian darkness and the seventies have plenty of charm. Burton’s visual taste is still there, even when the story is not perfectly tuned. There are shots, details and atmospheres that compensate for some weaknesses in the script. It is not a perfect film narratively, but visually it has life, and that is already more than I found in part of his more recent cinema.
The problem is that the story does not always know what it wants to be. At times it seems like a comedy of cultural shock, at times a tale of curses and impossible loves, at times a family satire, at times a supernatural adventure. That dispersion makes some subplots feel weak and certain characters have less weight than they promised. It is enjoyed more for scenes, atmosphere and isolated moments than for the strength of the whole. When it tries to become more intense or close too many things at once, it loses some of its grace.
Even so, I had a good time. It made me smile, I liked its world, I liked its weirdness and I liked meeting again a playful Burton, even if he is not at his best. It has humor, style, characters with presence and that absurd melancholy of monsters who do not know in which era they have been forced to live. It is not a masterpiece, but it does not seem to me the disaster some saw in it either. For me it was a pleasant, gothic and entertaining film.
In the end, it remains an imperfect but enjoyable oddity. A supernatural comedy with the scent of a dark fairy tale, an aristocratic vampire completely out of place and a Burton who, at moments, seems to be enjoying himself again with his favorite toys: mansions, curses, pale make-up, strange families, black humor and impossible loves. Perhaps it lacks more focus and more bite, but it has enough charm for me to remember it fondly. And coming from a period in which Burton had not convinced me for quite some time, that already feels like enough.
What I liked most was the tone. It does not try to be real horror, or deep family drama, or pure comedy. It is a strange mixture, uneven at times, but likeable: an eighteenth-century vampire waking up in the seventies, a decaying mansion, a fallen family, a spiteful witch, absurd humor, black romance and the aesthetics of a cursed fairy tale. That combination could have gone terribly wrong, but it has enough personality to make the ride pleasant. Some scenes seem made simply to enjoy the clash between the old and the modern, between gothic melodrama and pop culture.
Johnny Depp is very comfortable as Barnabas Collins. He is one of those characters that seem designed for him: polite, tragic, ridiculous, theatrical, dangerous and lost in a world he no longer understands. Sometimes the performance gets too close to gesture and pose, but here it fits the game. I found it funny to see him react to television, music, cars or modern customs as if everything were an incomprehensible aberration. That fish-out-of-water side is probably the funniest part of the film.
The family also helps a lot. Michelle Pfeiffer brings elegance and authority; Helena Bonham Carter appears with that eccentric edge that fully belongs to Burton’s universe; Eva Green clearly enjoys herself as an excessive, sensual, poisonous villain, broken inside. The cast understands the tone, and that matters, because a film like this collapses if the actors do not accept the absurdity. No one seems to be in a realistic work: everyone functions as a piece of a haunted house, half comic and half rotten.
The look is another of its great attractions. The mansion, the colors, the costumes, the make-up, the music and that mixture of Victorian darkness and the seventies have plenty of charm. Burton’s visual taste is still there, even when the story is not perfectly tuned. There are shots, details and atmospheres that compensate for some weaknesses in the script. It is not a perfect film narratively, but visually it has life, and that is already more than I found in part of his more recent cinema.
The problem is that the story does not always know what it wants to be. At times it seems like a comedy of cultural shock, at times a tale of curses and impossible loves, at times a family satire, at times a supernatural adventure. That dispersion makes some subplots feel weak and certain characters have less weight than they promised. It is enjoyed more for scenes, atmosphere and isolated moments than for the strength of the whole. When it tries to become more intense or close too many things at once, it loses some of its grace.
Even so, I had a good time. It made me smile, I liked its world, I liked its weirdness and I liked meeting again a playful Burton, even if he is not at his best. It has humor, style, characters with presence and that absurd melancholy of monsters who do not know in which era they have been forced to live. It is not a masterpiece, but it does not seem to me the disaster some saw in it either. For me it was a pleasant, gothic and entertaining film.
In the end, it remains an imperfect but enjoyable oddity. A supernatural comedy with the scent of a dark fairy tale, an aristocratic vampire completely out of place and a Burton who, at moments, seems to be enjoying himself again with his favorite toys: mansions, curses, pale make-up, strange families, black humor and impossible loves. Perhaps it lacks more focus and more bite, but it has enough charm for me to remember it fondly. And coming from a period in which Burton had not convinced me for quite some time, that already feels like enough.
Mini Review: It had been a long time since I had liked something by Tim Burton, and that is why it pleasantly surprised me. I do not think it is one of his great films, nor that it reaches the level of his most complete works, but it did give me back something I had missed: that pleasure in the gothic, the strange, the misplaced characters and a macabre comedy that does not need to ask for permission. I saw it as an elegant, colorful and dark piece of...
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