Sleepy Hollow

The story of the Headless Horseman is a classic tale by Washington Irving, and seems like it would be difficult to transfer to the big screen. However, Tim Burton and the cast of Sleepy Hollow find a way to take the story further and enrich it with new levels of darkness and meaning. While the overall story shows a clear rivaling of Good and Evil, the story finds itself straying into a number of other categories, never leaving one underdeveloped either.

The struggle of Good and Evil is shown with the innocent people of Sleepy Hollow struggling against the embodiment of death and cruelty as the Headless Horsemen decapitates people nightly. It is difficult for the town to defend themselves from such an unstoppable force, and prevents good from being able to triumph in a natural way against the supernatural demon.

Another theme that appears in the film Sleepy Hollow is Man versus Himself. The image of the cardinal being caged seems like a minor part of the movie, but the recurring illusion of a caged cardinal stood for Ichabod Crane’s internal battle of overcoming his objective, reason-based view on the situation and understanding that he must overcome his dark, senseless past to face the supernatural danger before him.

A final theme is Revenge. Another prevalent theme, the headless horsemen rides to get a head for a head. Although he is *[SPOILER ALERT]* actually being controlled by another citizen in town who has possession of his head, he still exacts his revenge for the controller. The controller of the skull only wants to exact her own revenge, and uses a supernatural force that she cannot control to do so. She, who is the stepmother of Katrina Van Tassel, was originally an outcast of Sleepy Hollow as a younger child. She grew up to be a witch and brought the cursed horsemen back by stealing his head, only forcing him to decapitate everyone that stood or stands in her path to power in Sleepy Hollow. Eventually, the horsemen gets his final shot at revenge by killing her and dragging her back to hell with him.

A motif of the film that shaped how it played out is Reason versus Illogic. Ichabod came to solve a mystery of a murderer, and refused that it could be anything more than a psychotic man. The mysterious self-cauterizing wounds do not seem like much of an issue against his logic, and insists there must be an explanation. It is not until he sees for himself that the rider certainly has no head and is undead that he can truly believe. Ichabod’s dreams also deal with the idea of Reason. At first they seem to make no sense, but as the audience learns they are memories, and not strange delusions, they realize that, though it may be reality, it still loses any sense of reason to the crazy character that is his father, who murders his mother in the same sick sense as the rampaging horseman.

Ichabod’s battle against the supernatural results in triumph by the use of his logic and deduction, but only through the wider lens of the supernatural. Tim Burton’s interesting take on the supernatural, and introducing that element so late in the movie to captivate the viewers in the solving of the mystery alongside Ichabod, shows a conflict between characters yet allows for more mystery and darkness to arise from the taken aback figure, even if everyone but yourself and Ichabod knew it all along. The movie is great; it is not always easy to find Tim Burton movies to like, but I would recommend Sleepy Hollow. The film has many great aspects to it. I would give it a 4/5 heads.