Lovestruck: Corpse Bride teaches us how true love can also be about letting go

Love stories, even fictional ones, do not always guarantee a ‘happily ever after’. Although not in any way unrealistic, it does make for a dreary sort of story to be played out in cinema when love stories do not come with the kind of ‘happy ending’ the audience expects. Of all the ways a tale of love can end, one that involves a couple themselves choosing to spell the closure of their story seems to hit the hardest . There are the stories where, despite there being love lingering between two characters, they themselves come to the realisation that separation would be in their best interests. And then there are the accounts of unreciprocated love, made much more gutwrenching when the story actually teases audiences of a very real chance that it could end in happiness.

Tim Burton and Mike Johnson’s dark fantasy tale, Corpse Bride, is, at its heart, a love story. But the nuances of its story make it so much more than that. Victor Van Dort(Johnny Depp) finds himself in a bit of a situation when he makes a fool out of himself by messing up his wedding vows rehearsal in front of his bride-to-be Victoria Everglot(Emily Watson) and her family. Determined to redeem himself, Victor makes his way to a forest to practise his vows to perfection, and he finishes off his flawless recital by putting his ring through what he imagines to be a tree branch. As luck would have it, the ‘branch’ turns out to be the finger of a corpse, that of a young woman named Emily(Helena Bonham Carter), and she rises from the dead to accept Victor as her groom to be. Ushered away to the land of the dead to, ironically, start a new chapter in his life, Victor starts to plot his escape back to the land of the living, where his real bride-to-be awaits him.

Emily felt her long wait, stretched over the course of years, come to an end when Victor ‘proposed’ to her. The way her palpable joy comes crashing down in an instant when she realises that Victor had made a mistake and did not really love her is heartbreaking to say the least. But what follows in the third act is perhaps the most poignant in her story is how it ends on a bittersweet note.

Emily had been a bride waiting for someone to whisk her away to her happily ever after for a long time, even taking her longing to the grave after her life came to an end at the hands of someone she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Her ‘relationship’ with Victor wasn’t much, true, but it did get her closer to getting her heart’s greatest desire after he agreed to marry her by joining her in the land of the dead, i.e by killing himself. Just as they were about to complete their marriage vows, Emily spots Victoria, and is overcome with emotion, leading to the ultimate sacrifice.

She turns to Victor, eyes brimming and voice choked with emotion and says just how much she loved him but she had to let him go because he was not hers. As she walks away from her chance of a happy ending, giving it up for someone she loved, she achieves her own salvation in the end, finally being allowed to be at peace for the first time.

Emily spent most of her life, or afterlife, building the entirety of her identity around being a bride, even being buried with her wedding dress and bouquet. For her to give it up at the very end in the name of love marks a sacrifice that few would have expected her to make, given how fragile she seemed. But it just goes to show how deep her love for Victor ran and, in letting him go, she showed it in the most powerful way possible.

Corpse Bride can be streamed on Vi Movies and TV.