Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride Has A Heartbreaking Real-Life Inspiration

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride may be a melancholic film, but its real-world inspiration is even more heartbreaking than its dark fantasy narrative

Corpse Bride, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, is based on the Jewish folk tale “The Finger”. The film adaptation adds a lot of embellishments and changes the general tone and messaging, but the story arc is the same. A man accidentally marries a corpse who then tries to hold him to his vows, but it is eventually decided that the dead cannot be bound to the living and the corpse leaves the living world. This same framework creates two completely different stories. “The Finger” is a cautionary tale about taking promises seriously while Corpse Bride is a dark love triangle about transcendence and learning to let go.

How Does a Living Groom End Up With a Corpse Bride?

In the Jewish folktale “The Finger”, a young man is out in the woods celebrating his upcoming marriage with friends when they come upon a corpse. Because they are in a celebratory mood and thinking about marriage, the young man takes out his wedding ring and places it on the corpse’s finger as a joke. He recites his wedding vows and, to everyone’s surprise, the corpse rises, claiming him as her husband. The young man and his friends flee. The corpse chases them through the woods, but they manage to escape.

In Tim Burton’s film Corpse Bride Victor Van Dort (Depp) is a nervous, clumsy young man. He is in the woods alone after a frustrating wedding rehearsal in which he is unable to recite his vows correctly. He is practicing them, trying to get them right, and places the ring on what he thinks is a twig but is actually a corpse’s finger. This corpse also rises up and claims him as her husband. The change here is subtle but significant. By having Victor simply practice his vows instead of making a distasteful jest, he is automatically a more sympathetic character for the audience to root for.

Marriage in “The Finger” and ‘Corpse Bride’ Is “Until Death Do Us Part”

In “The Finger”, the young man proceeds with his wedding the next day, but the corpse bride crashes the ceremony, condemning him for taking another bride. She demands their marriage be consummated. When the elders hear that he made a vow to her in front of witnesses, they put a stop to the wedding to discuss whether the marriage is valid. Eventually, they decide that because he had made a prior engagement vow to his living bride and there has never been a precedent for the dead holding a claim on the living, the marriage is not valid.

Tim Burton adds a lot of embellishments to this part of the story. He gives the corpse both a name -Emily (Bonham Carter) and a backstory to make her a more sympathetic and fleshed-out character (even if some of the flesh is rotting). He also gives the living bride, Victoria (Emily Watson), a more active role. Victor is temporarily trapped in the underworld with Emily and Victoria tries desperately to find him. Unfortunately, her parents thwart her attempts and marry her off to the same gold-digging lord who murdered Emily. This raises the stakes so that it is more important than ever that Victor returns to the living world to save Victoria from the same fate Emily suffered. It also complicates things by giving Victor and Emily time to bond in the underworld. Not knowing the danger Victoria is in, Victor decides to give up returning to the world of the living, but an elder of the dead discovers that his marriage to Emily is invalid after all. “Your vows are until death do us part,” he says, “but death has already parted you”.

Tim Burton Includes Both Brides’ Perspectives in ‘Corpse Bride’

In the folktale “The Finger” the corpse bride shrieks in agony while the young man sighs with relief at the elders’ decision. The corpse collapses onto the ground, no longer sentient, and the young man proceeds with his marriage to his living bride. He is grateful to have escaped the trouble his misspoken vow almost got him into. In Corpse Bride things end a lot differently. Victor volunteers to drink poison, so he and Emily can be fully united in death. They travel to the land of the living to perform the ceremony, but Emily sees that she is about to do to Victoria what had been done to her when she was murdered on her wedding day and chooses to let Victor go. Her decision allows her to transcend death, and she ascends to another dimension of the afterlife. Both the brides are given more agency in Tim Burton’s version, and it changes the tone of the story considerably.

Victor, Emily, and Victoria are all motivated by love, while the characters in the original seem to be motivated by either convention or carnal desires. Victor is willing to die for Emily while Victoria will do whatever it takes to find Victor. Emily ultimately chooses to let go of Victor because she has genuine empathy for Victoria. In the original, the audience hopes the young man will not have to be married to a corpse but in Corpse Bride the audience sees the story from the brides’ perspectives as well. They understand that Emily is trying to reclaim the happy ending that was snatched from her when she was murdered and that Victoria wants to escape a loveless (and likely fatal) marriage. The audience, like Victor, is torn between the two women, wishing them both to have the happy ending they deserve.

Both stories use the same framework to tell a completely different tale with different messages and purposes. “The Finger” is a cautionary tale about taking one’s promises seriously. It was most likely told with an adult audience in mind and its primary purpose was to horrify with its chilling premise. Corpse Bride is a charming dark fairytale and love triangle about letting go. Its biggest draw is its dark but playful aesthetic and, while it is enjoyable at any age, its primary audience is children. Tim Burton stayed true to the folktale that inspired him but gave it his own flavor and a more heartwarming message.

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