Movie Review: Sweeney Todd
Tim Burton Film Based on Stephen Sondheim Musical Stars Johnny Depp
Tim Burton's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Grand Guignol musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is gruesome fun. 9/10
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is possibly Tim Burton's finest film. Considering Burton has other charmingly ghoulish flicks such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Edward Scissorhands in his oeuvre, that's a pretty bold statement. But Sweeney Todd is that good.
Bringing Stephen Sondheim's blood-drenched 1979 musical to the silver screen was reportedly no easy feat. Playwright Sondheim reportedly prowled the set like a malevolent ghost, ensuring his vision wasn't compromised by the Hollywood director. Either Sondheim's beady-eyed paranoia did the job or he needn't have worried: Burton has lovingly transferred every blood splash and cadence to cinemas, risking an 18A rating in order to do so.
The result is a misanthropic masterpiece that somehow conjures laughs from the image of a fresh corpse landing head-first on a cellar floor.
Sondheim, Burton Give Historical Murderer a Reason to Kill
Sondheim's original feat was to give the demon barber of Fleet Street (based on a real-life serial killer) a reason for his violent acts. Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) is actually Benjamin Barker, a barber with a wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) and baby daughter. When the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) frames Barker for a crime he didn't commit, sentencing him to be transported so that Turpin can ravish Barker's wife and possess his daughter, Barker vows revenge.
Barker, creating the character of Todd, sets up above a meat pie shop ("The worst meat pies in London") owned by Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). From there, he plots his revenge, using silver-chased blades that Lovett thoughtfully secreted for him. Looking like a cross between Depp's own Edward Scissorhands and Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein, Depp commits his violent acts with a dour intensity. His fixation is so all-consuming that he cannot even smile during a seaside fantasy sequence conjured by his would-be paramour, the sociopathically practical Mrs. Lovett.
Burton's signature cartoon-Gothic style is easily a match for Sondheim's blood-drenched spectacle. Using frequent collaborators like Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, who previously worked together on Corpse Bride, Burton creates a scabrous love letter to 19th Century London, a gothically gray, coal-choked Hades.
Johnny Depp Sings, The Cast Rocks
Yes, Depp can sing, and sings well. In his sixth collaboration with Burton, he unleashes another avatar of shattered innocence. A gray ghost with black-rimmed eyes prowling London, he is the soul of a city that has created its own industrial Hell. For the city's inhabitants, even the young lovers Johanna and Anthony (Jayne Wisener and Jamie Campbell Bower) and street urchin Toby (Ed Sanders), the only salvation comes from leaving this place.
For Burton, it's not the shock that someone like Sweeney Todd could exist in London, it's that this industrial hell hadn't created more people like him. When Todd receives his comeuppance, it's from a character who looks eerily like him. It's like the demon barber transferred a part of his soul to his killer.
Burton muse Helena Bonham Carter cranks out another reliable performance that reconciles an appalling study in contradictions. Her Mrs. Lovett is willing to risk it all in her unrequited love for Todd; equally capable of comforting someone one minute and plotting to kill them in the next. Even her sun-drenched dreams have a whiff of the grave about them.
Alan Rickman, as the elegantly venomous Turpin, inhabits a role he perfected in 1988's Die Hard. The surprise isn't that he can do this type of character in his sleep, it's that he doesn't. And he somehow conjures some sympathy for a magistrate who casually condemns a child to be "hung by the neck until you are dead." Incapable of separating lust from love, and unable to stop making mistakes, Rickman's Turpin would be pitiable if he wasn't so vicious. Timothy Spall, playing the judge's toady, is a simpering henchman.
And Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat) proves that he's no one-trick pony. Playing a rival barber with secrets of his own, Cohen delivers a nuanced performance, pulling a laugh from a single sung note.
The Final Analysis
Tim Burton is a brilliant director, who generally runs into trouble when he's not working from his own script (Sleepy Hollow, anyone?). Sweeney Todd snaps that streak: Burton was the only person who could bring that play to the silver screen, and he does so with a vengeance.
Taking his signature vibe to its ultimate conclusion, he creates a movie that is equally Threepenny Opera and James Whale's Frankenstein, and the dark mirror of flicks like Singin' in the Rain or Oklahoma. And yes, it is just as much a Hollywood musical as any of those films, and a heck of a lot better than recent offerings like Chicago or Moulin Rouge. Highly recommended.
