Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Apparently 2007 is the year in which Hollywood set out to shut general malcontents like myself up and release a career summing masterpiece once every three weeks on the dot. Faithful readers, you probably think me a whore, or easily pleased. Not the case, at least I don’t think. Since writing for my little site though, the films have just happened to be, generally, pretty damn good. Come to think of it, maybe I should take some credit for that. I’m more than happy to assume some sort advisorial position on any film in which the producer would have me.
And so now we have Tim Burton, and his reworking of the famed production Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In terms of comparing one production to the other, I’m afraid I’ll be of little service. My familiarity with the source material is limited to the knowledge that the stage had two levels. I also knew of Sweeney’s preoccupation with ventilating people’s throats and of a certain Mrs. Lovett who happened to have a practical and sound business solution to all the bodies piling around.
I do know, however, that Burton has made a wonderful film: robust, lean, vicious, extraordinary. Burton may have been leasing his talents in the service of another’s vision, but what arrives on the screen seems to be vintage Burton, only tempered with a refreshing, newfound discipline. Sweeney Todd is pitch black demonic outrage, undiluted by the John Waters Light satire that has aged some of Burton’s earlier work. Sweeney Todd, as embodied by Johnny Depp, gets to finally indulge in what was truly meant to be Edward Scissorhands’ vocation: cut the living shit out of the fat, the pretentious, the comfortable, the false.
One would think that a film like Sweeney Todd would be an excuse for an eccentric like Depp to really cut lose and chew the scenery. Not so. Depp’s thing has always been his unpredictability, but even that, obviously, can be predictable and comfortable after awhile. Depp senses this and withdraws, his Todd is aloof, barely tangible, barely a character really. The film is starkly unsentimental in his complete, total insanity. The notion that Todd will be a classically wronged character is abandoned early on when he slits the first total innocent’s throat, and gleefully sends them tumbling down to Mrs. Lovett’s oven. Todd only asserts himself in cold blooded murder, and in delivering ironically beautiful ballads that don’t seem to belong in the film…until you begin to actually take in the lyrics. Depp’s voice clearly wasn’t built for musicals, but that’s precisely the point: the barber Todd isn’t built, or meant, for anything.
Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) seems to think she’s built for Todd, and this becomes the most unusual and surprisingly moving unrequited love story in the Burton cannon. Carter has been criticized in certain circles for this performance, but I think she’s terrific: the perfect human embodiment of the sort of distorted gothic China doll that Burton almost always strives for. She may actually be why Sweeney Todd is so effective; right in the center of all the constricted brutality lays a perfectly sweet little romance between a cannibal and a mass murderer. Lovett’s appeal to Todd’s romantic side, “By the Sea”, stays with you as you walk out of the theatre.
So does Ed Sanders’ Toby, a little boy caught in the middle of Todd’s warfare with London, Lovett, and a barber named Pirelli (Sasha Baron Cohen.) Sanders has a dazzling number himself, “Not While I’m Around”, that manages to go for the heartstrings without being cloying or compromising the decay of the rest of the Burton production. Cohen’s Pirelli is also a near showstopper, confirming the Sellers comparison to be quite apt indeed.
But I seem to be writing in circles here, listing like a ticker tape the various things I enjoyed about Burton’s film. Sweeney Todd hit me in way I can’t quite articulate. Todd, again like many films this year, feels like the picture the director in question has been marching toward his entire career. The film is an intense, emotional, bloody, very bloody, intangibly brilliant filet mignon of a gothic musical, and a major return to form for a director I used to revere.
★★★★
December 28th, 2007 at 9:52 am
There were a handful of people whose reactions to this movie I’m really curious about and yours is one of them, Chuck.
Perhaps because you’re a horror fan and Sweeney has horror elements to it. It’s not a horror film, clearly. It could’ve been played that way I think, but Burton avoids most of the tropes that would really make it a horror film. Suspense for one.
Anyway, I just got started and I’m rambling already
I’m glad you liked it and I agree that HBC is a large reason why it works so well, despite what some of her critics are saying. Yeah, she’s got a weak singing voice that will probably irritate the true fans of the original production, but she’s got such personality. Her sardonic take on the material is a funny and much needed counterpoint to the very dark Johnny Depp and the gloomy production design.
Sweeney really isn’t that much of a character. He himself sings “I am vengeance” (or words to that effect) and it’s true. I don’t think he steps off the boat completely insane, but he’s clearly a changed man, new name and all. The first 45 minutes leading up to the first blood letting are his final downward spiral.
By the time the fountains of blood come along, it’s cathartic. Disturbing, but earned.
And how can you not be moved by the simple tragedy of it all? The way Sweeney’s madness itself ultimately destroys any chance he could find happiness in the cobbled together family that forms around him, even though happiness is there for the taking.
It’s true, anyone paying attention can see the final irony coming a mile away, but I don’t think it was meant to be hidden from the audience and clearly most people who see the movie will already be familiar with the story. The point is, it’s hidden from the character and his realization is no less startling than if we were surprised ourselves.
My favorite bit was also “By the Sea”.
Nice review.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:01 am
I saw the final irony coming, but, as you say, the surprise isn’t the point. I think I do consider Sweeney to be a horror film though, particularly the final third which, in a strange way, reminded me of Cronenberg’s The Fly, in that all of this romantic tension explodes in this little room and resolves itself in as extreme and brutal way as imaginable.
I agree with you on the catharsis of the violence, which is as stylized as the killings in Sleepy Hollow but played in an entirely different key. I feel like this is the first film of Burton’s that plays with the gloves totally off.