Sleepy Hollow

Tim Burtons latest film is a feast for the eyes. It is a ghost story, inspired by the story ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ (1819) by Washington Irving, set around the turn of the century two hundred years ago. The only colour that breaks through the misty grey here and there is blood red. The New-York detective Ichabod Crane (Depp) uses a ‘modern scientific’ approach to his criminal investigations. At the start of the film he is sent to Sleepy Hollow on the Hudson, a closed Dutch community where he has to get on the trail of the man who has already decapitated three men. Crane is welcomed in the house of the wealthy Baltus Van Tassel and his beautiful daughter Katrina (Ricci). The theory that the detective soon hears is that the murders are being committed by the ghost of a vengeful Hessian Horseman, a German mercenary with a razor-sharp sword who once met his end nearby. The rationalist Crane rejects this superstitious claptrap and wants to prove the impossibility of this theory with his home-made measuring equipment. That isn’t as easy as he thought. Burton approaches the classic story (the first filming dates from 1912) with much visual and little narrative respect. The elegant production, with many eccentric special effects, is filled with small – often casual – jokes and references (even to Burton’s own Mars Attacks!) and has an ideal cast that has a wonderful feeling for all ambivalence.