Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (review)
There Will Be Blood
Just hearing a description of it, you have to think, my god, my god, yes. The twisted, separated-at-birth twins Tim Burton and Johnny Depp taking on Stephen Sondheim’s gory opera about a murderous barber? Who else would you give it to? Who else could possibly do it justice? But then... wait: Burton’s movies have always been magnificent messes, all baroque spirals and curlicues of such lush, lacy darkness that more than earned forgiveness for the fractures in their creepy spiderweb delicacy... but forgiveness, indeed, was required, when Burton too often let his gloriously grim creations slip out of his control. Johnny Depp can pretty much do no wrong -- if you mention Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I won’t hear you, la-la-la, I have my fingers in my ears -- and may in fact be walking proof of the existence of God. But Tim Burton has not always been entirely successful, however laudable his audacity has always been.
But this is perfect. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street up on the big screen, all operatic gruesomeness and cobblestones-and-fog moodiness, is perfect. One of the most perfect movies ever, maybe, and sure to be pointed to for forever as the way to do a movie musical right. And the way to do horror, right, too.
I’ve never seen Sondheim’s stage version, and I know it has its fanatical adherents -- they may be perturbed to discover that some songs have been truncated, and others excised altogether. (I’ve heard one or two purists say they can’t stand what Burton has done with it, even if Sondheim had his hand in the trimming.) It’s the nature of the, heh, beast: what works onstage doesn’t always work on film, and some of those songs that are needed to convey emotion and state of mind across the distance of a theater perhaps aren’t needed quite as much when we can get right in a character’s face. How do you adapt a big, bold opera to the intimate nature of film? Just like this.
And this really is intimate: Johnny Depp’s (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Corpse Bride) Sweeney Todd -- a pseudonym he adopts upon his return to Victorian London after a long exile of unjust imprisonment, a nom de revenge as he plots to murder the judge who convicted him merely because he, the judge, coveted Todd’s wife -- is a mass of balled-up anguish as he bites out Sondheim’s bitter lyrics about the cesspit that is London and the relentless weight of grief that haunts him. Johnny Depp sings! And well, too. But not with the smooth polish a professional singer would have brought to this... which is exactly right. The satisfying roughness to his vocals is entirely suited to the bleakness of this character and his story. Maybe you need an operatic tenor with lungs the size of dirigibles when this is on stage, but here, Depp’s raspy whispers are absolutely thrilling.
And the same goes for Helena Bonham Carter’s (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) Mrs. Lovett, Todd’s former and again landlady and now his partner in crime. She’s not refined either, as a singer, but she devours Sondheim’s nastiness and regurgitates a cheerfully wicked character who is as distressing, in some ways, as she is evil. She longs for the oblivious and, it must be said, slightly dim Todd in a way that is resigned to rejection before she even gets her crush on, and in one sequence -- which demonstrates how wonderfully Burton (Big Fish, Planet of the Apes) and screenwriter John Logan (The Aviator, The Last Samurai) have cinema-tized Sondheim -- she sings of her fantasy of their life together as husband and wife, but even in her daydreams, she can’t imagine Todd as anything other than the dour, dead-on-the-inside soul that we and she see him as.
All this almost too-intimate intimacy -- part of the horror of this Sweeney Todd is how it feels, at times, as if we maybe shouldn’t know quite so much about these characters as we do -- is perfectly counterbalanced by the deadpan drollery of it all. This is so hilariously sick and twisted, particularly if you’re not familiar with all the details and twists of Sondheim, that you can’t believe Burton dares to go so far as he does. Not just with the gallons of cherry-red blood that drenches the whole endeavor, but with the casualness with which certain doomed characters are dispatched, with the crunchy repetition of broken necks and limbs bending the wrong way, with how sportily the fates of certain characters are toyed with.
There’re been lots of fascinating instances of movies playing with music and with the genre of the musical this year -- Enchanted with its spoofing, the long-form musical video of Once -- but Burton will go down as the filmmaker who brought the horror comedy and all its attendant geek sensibility to a genre that has been busting out in all directions but that one. (My geek reflexes were so engaged that I couldn’t help but play with all kinds of geek puns as a headline for this review: “A Close Shave”? “Shorn of the Dead”?) When we start seeing science fiction musicals, we’ll have Burton to thank.
[buy at Amazon (Region 1)] [buy at Amazon (Region 2)]viewed at a semipublic screening with an audience of critics and ordinary moviegoers
rated R for graphic bloody violence
official site | IMDB
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comments
posted by Eric Dale Eubanks (Fri Dec 21 07, 7:01PM)
Thanks as always for a splendid and considered review. I saw this at a midnight show this morning/last night, and couldn't sleep till dawn for sheer delight -- and adrenaline.
I'm devoted to the Sondheim original; as a professional actor I've done SWEENEY three times thus far [Pirelli and years later when my voice was deeper, Judge Turpin]. Sondheim was integral in the decisions about what to excise and how [I have just suffered your headline dilemma, because of course my impulse was to write:"What to cut and how"!]and a surprising amount of the score is still retained, sometimes as underscoring [minus choral singing]. There's some grousing about cuts from critics [not many, admittedly] who admit they don't know the source material, or any theatre material, but will discuss MOULIN ROUGE rhapsodically [I need to stop here before I start looking for my own razors and pie-making accoutrements...] but I offer for the record -- as a Fleet Street veteran -- that the cuts and the vocal stylings of the fantastic leads are appropriate for the medium.
Even as a self-proclaimed SWEENEY devotee, I realize the trickiness of adaptation from stage to screen, and I can't imagine it having been done better than this incarnation.
posted by JT (Mon Dec 24 07, 8:05PM)
Granted I have yet to watch There Will Be Blood, but I think Sweeney Todd is the best movie of the year. Knocks No Country for Old Men from my top spot. It is so gorgeous to look at and all the songs are absolutely perfect. I've been listening to the soundtrack non-stop all weekend. Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen are all spectacular, and I was really impressed with the little kid who plays Toby.
You mentioned in another post that the advertisements for the movie tried to hide that it was a musical. Well, I love a smart Chicago opening night crowd. It was completely sold out. People were dressed up as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Everyone was laughing and gasping and there were cheers and applause at the end. I normally hate crowds and I'll watch most movies on a Monday morning matinee, but this was a truly wonderful experience.
posted by moongirl (Sun Dec 30 07, 1:11PM)
i have yet to see this movie (i may be going this afternoon O.O) and i must say i'm really really nervous. i guess i just don't do so well with horror movies, violence freaks me out. of course i am a little young for this i guess (i'm 14-ish), but this is a great reveiw. i just dont know if its right for me . . . but i love johnny depp and tim burton i just don't like blood . . . oh well . ..
posted by Tonya J (Sun Dec 30 07, 4:23PM)
I already emailed MaryAnn thanking her for the Sweeney Todd review I read at Rotten Tomatoes, but I want to say it here too. She made up for every ignorant, unenlightened review about the film I've read (not that I can't enjoy a bad review of a film) along with people like A.O. Scott and Peter Travers at Rolling Stone.
Well done, MaryAnn!
posted by Laura (Sun Jan 06 08, 5:12PM)
Must agree with you on this one, MaryAnn. It was delightfully awful. Awful in the horror, blood and gore sense. Burton and Depp are certainly a twisted pair. At the end I did sort of want to know what happened to Anthony and Johanna, but really, after that last frame with Sweeney and, well, better not spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet seen it, I can understand how it would get in the way.
Thanks for the review.
posted by Dan (Fri Jan 18 08, 2:27PM)
Being a film student, I can never watch a movie without pulling it apart slightly. Of course my only complaint would be the viscosity of the blood in the opening sequence. However this is a minimal problem compared to the cinematic masterpeice that "Sweeney Todd" is. Leave it to Tim Burton and Johnny Depp to crank out of the grinder a musical horror, served hot off of the stage right into your lap. It's a pity to hear that Danny Elfman (the third Burtonite) was not included in the production, but Sondheim's music was already there so no over score was needed. Like a said a pity.
All the main characters singing was definatly warneted. Honestly, who doesn't want to see Alan Rickman singing? This film is my current obsession.
I hope when you watch it it will be yours as well.
posted by MaryAnn (Fri Jan 18 08, 7:19PM)
What's your complaint about it?
posted by Pedro (Mon Feb 18 08, 4:26AM)
okay, so professor snape is going around with wormtail, while edward scissorhands is chasing them looking for revenge and competing with rival barber ali g. meanwhile, professor snape's protege is infatuated with the lead singer of an emo band.
but i kid. the movie's great. it served as a reminder both of how much i love johnny depp (and tim burton) and how much i loathe sascha baron cohen. it also served as proof that alan rickman plays all of his characters the same way - they're all professor snape.
as for cohen, there was in fact one surprising moment. as soon as i saw his name on the credits i said to my sister "what the hell is he doing in this movie? this is not a 'funny' movie!" - not that anything cohen does is ever actually funny. then he appeared and i was like "oh, here he is pulling an over-the-top european accent - it's borat all over again! go away, you're polluting the movie!" but then in the scene between the two barbers, something happened - cohen was actually, you know, Acting. oh, he was still doing his ali g voice, but he was emoting and monologuing and letting his character be something other than ridiculous. so much so that it took me a few minutes to realize that that was in fact his ali g accent.
but then he gets killed, and the movie gets much better.
posted by Pedro (Mon Feb 18 08, 4:28AM)
one small gripe, though - how come Toby never wonders where his master went? i know pirelli abused him, and he was probably glad to be shot of him, and i know Todd told him his master had "been called away". but after days of him not appearing, surely the kid would begin to wonder? unless he was completely dim, of course.
posted by Fretfire (Fri Jul 17 09, 8:51AM)
I know I'm commenting way after the fact, but I LOVE this review, MaryAnn! Agree 1000% - thanks!!