ajmilne

Lush, gorgeous, glitteringly dark--a gloomy, misty landscape of twisted, black trees, and looming shadows--Sleepy Hollow is visually breathtaking. Budding directors, cinematographers, and set directors should be required to watch this film as a textbook study into how one establishes atmosphere. Elfman's score is a jewel as well, the perfect complement to all this visual mastery. At once sumptuous and ominous, brooding on horrors seen and horrors to come, it sets off the misty, haunted look of the thing perfectly.

Beyond this, cast and casting are inspired--a wonderful gallery of oddly matched talents, note-perfect in their various roles. Depp is a strangely lovely Ichabod Crane, faithful, all the same, in spirit to the original: quirky, overwrought, his constant efforts to exude competence and confidence are continually undermined by the brutal reality that he is never more than a few short steps from becoming entirely unhinged by the wanton irrationality that abounds in this haunted rural corner of early America. This is Crane as a would-be man of science; uncomfortably finding himself on the trail of a headless ghost, he's determined nonetheless to rise to the challenge and see that justice is done. In his portrayal, Depp achieves a stammering, flustered delivery and gawky physicality that evoke the character perfectly. Ricci, for her part, is cast smartly half against type: playing a coolly beautiful, wide-eyed fairy tale princess, she brings a note of self-assurance and self-possession to the part that makes it as memorable as any of her more overtly dark roles: she's a heroine to complement Depp's Ichabod, composed where he's addled and alarmed, in her element where he's out of his depth. And yes, they do look awfully good together. Add to these principals a wonderfully mixed and matched stable of fine, nuanced English character actors, one icon of the horror genre and a few familiar old faces and favourites of Burton: Richardson, Lee, McDiarmid, Walken, Gambon, Jones, and there's some serious wattage on the screen, here, all generally put to very good use. There are some nice flashes of dark comedy, too, as you'd only expect from Burton. All of which makes the film, all in all, a fine mix of beautiful things.

That's what's great about Sleepy Hollow; see it, if for nothing else, for all that mist and shadow--on the big screen or in the gorgeous HD DVD version, if you possibly can, for Burton works this canvas beautifully, and you do want to see it in all the detail you can. And see it for Depp and Ricci, Lee (in a cameo, technically, but it's a key one, and he makes every second count), and Richardson.

There are, however, also more than a few weaker spots, here. Burton billed Sleepy Hollow as an homage to the classic Hammer horror films, and it does evoke that very feel, frequently--both for better and for worse. Yes, there's mist and mystery, a suggestion of supernatural dread lurking in every long shadow, and some reasonably affecting horror--but there's also a fairly liberal dash of fake blood (occasionally used for a nice comic effect, but then overused), and a little more latex gore than I've a taste for, personally. The failing is a common one in horror: the old 'too much on the screen/not enough left to the frightened imagination' problem. Having established that beautifully spooky, haunted atmosphere, Burton seems to think he can lean harder on it than he can, goes all kinetic and bloody, in the end, and the whole winds up a good notch or two more overt than it probably should have been, reveling just a little too much in the gore, and inevitably failing, therefore, to use it as powerfully as it might have to terrify. The horseman of the title itself, especially, though brilliantly menacing, initially, loses much of that menace as it becomes too familiar a presence on the screen, and this only gets worse and worse as the film proceeds. I found myself almost wishing Burton had had slightly less effective effects at his command: it might have helped, a little, if he'd been forced by technical limitations to keep his beloved whirling headless horseman o' death in the shadows a little more, let us be a little more afraid of what we can't see.

All that said: yes, it's quite worth the time. Absolutely do see it. Against those weaknesses, the sheer dark beauty of the visuals and the general brilliance of the cast make it well worthwhile.

Patry and Lacourse' Denial is solidly competent, lean, and focused in terms of film-making; there are few flourishes here. It has the basic documentary style common to most professionally made, reasonably well-budgeted made-for-TV documentaries; minor embellishments include a soundtrack with an occasionally subtly evocative quality, impressionistic passages attempting apparently to evoke the terror felt by escaping civilians during flight through the jungle from the scene of the massacre central to the coverage, and eerily powerful use of the disturbing drawings of children who have apparently experienced similar atrocities. Otherwise, it's done in a very classic, traditional documentary style: interviews and archival footage.

This, however, was a good move. It is as though Patry and Lacourse correctly judged, looking at their raw footage, that with material like this, you really don't need to dress it up much.

And you really don't. Denial is a powerful, disturbing work. Viewing it by happenstance some years ago first got me seriously seeking out and watching documentaries.

The film's mesmerizing quality comes ultimately from the subject matter; the horror of the El Mozote massacre, though hardly unique to the period or the region, was particularly pronounced, and the apparent villainy of subsequent attempts to quash coverage particularly arrogant and craven.

The journalism behind this work is also quite good; Patry and Lacourse score several coups beyond reaching the very rare survivors, including an interview with a civilian spear carrier for the Atlacatl battalion who was present at the massacre; his testimony is riveting.

Though probably a rather difficult work to get hold of unless you've access to a good library that happens to have bought a copy (the only distributor I've found seems to have only what I must assume are institutional rates), Denial is well worth watching out for. If it comes by a television set near you, be sure to set your VCR.

There's so much you can say about this work. Vivid characters, colours, and situations that practically leap off the screen into the theatre next to you. A wonderfully quirky, repeatedly startling story. Graceful low-key cinematography that turns slums and sideshows into an eerily beautiful netherworld, countless images that look like you could freeze them and hang them as inspirational totems for cults we have to hope don't exist. Jodorowsky paints with a heavy, vibrant brush, but it's the perfect tone for this primal-yet-humanizing tale.

But I should post a warning. As far as I'm concerned, my first viewing of this film was one of the more worthwhile two hours or so I've ever spent in a theatre, and I think based on my experience that this sadly neglected wonder deserves every bit of word-of-mouth promotion it can get. But I'm betting it's not to everyone's taste.

So this is my advice: if you found Storaro's green and red/jungle foliage and human remains canvasses in Apocalypse Now unsettlingly beautiful the first time you saw them, and wondered momentarily whether still prints were available for hanging before realizing what you were actually suggesting to yourself, here's a film for you. If you found Delicatessan's celebration of the paradoxical beauty hiding in human ugliness and stupidity a bit too sanitized for your taste, Santa Sangre's rather murkier depths await. You will love this work.

If, on the other hand, you have no taste for painters who work best in human blood as opposed to oils, and/or don't appreciate a bloody carnality mixed in with your religious metaphor, you will quite probably hate it with a passion that exceeds my affection. And I don't really blame you or judge you for walking out early. It takes all kinds.

Either way, fondly or with revulsion, you will remember it vividly, ten years later. I can say this confidently, as that's how long it was from the first time I saw this film to the day I wrote this review. Don't say I didn't warn you.