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AT THE MOVIES |
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Reviewer:
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Jim "JR" Rutkowski
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Writer:
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John Logan, from the Stephen Sondhiem musical:
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" |
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Starring:
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Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen |
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Rating:
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R for graphic bloody violence. |
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"...Burton has cranked up the Grand Guignol aspect of Sondheim's story and tones
down the social commentary"
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Tim Burton's adaptation of Stephen
Sondheim's masterpiece "Sweeney Todd" is a funny, moody musical
blood bath. It's also notably more attractivley cast than its famous
theatrical predecessors -- which I guess is what happens when you
cast Johnny Depp as the serial throat-slitter and Helena Bonham
Carter as his cannibal pie-making accomplice.
"Sweeney Todd" may be the most outrageously macabre piece of musical
theater ever created, but Burton can't help but make it pretty too
-- from the gloomy, rain-slicked streets of Victorian London, to the
moony Goth stylishness of its leads, to the split-open pomegranate
throats of Sweeney's unsuspecting victims and the various torrents,
geysers and wellsprings of glow-in-the-dark blood that spurt from
them.
Scaled down and simplified with Sondheim's blessing, the Burton
version reduces both the number of characters and the number of
songs. That means no detached chorus of observers commenting on the
action in the "Ballad of Sweeney Todd," though the song does play
under the credits. With the mob thus eliminated and the dolled-up
principals shot close up and lovingly, the perspective shifts as the
lunatics take over the asylum.
Depp and Bonham Carter are a far cry from George Hearn (who plays
Sweeney in the television version of the original Broadway
production) and Angela Lansbury. At the same time, Burton has
cranked up the Grand Guignol aspect of Sondheim's story and tones
down the social commentary -- or maybe the moral themes of the story
(social injustice, alienation, the moral cul-de-sac that is revenge)
just can't compete with the exhilarating camera moves and the
buckets of jugular overflow.
Based on the 1979 Broadway musical originally staged by Harold
Prince and starring Lansbury and Len Cariou, "Sweeney Todd" is the
gruesome story of a man ruined by injustice, driven mad by revenge
and summarily exploited by a capitalist system untroubled by scruple
or taste. Benjamin Barker was a talented young barber with a pretty
wife and a baby daughter when he was wrongfully arrested by a
corrupt judge who coveted the wife for himself. Sent away to rot in
an Australian penal colony, Benjamin, now going by the name of
Sweeney Todd, dreams of revenge and returns to London for that
purpose.
Back home, he is recognized by Mrs. Lovett, the widow who owns the
meat pie emporium under Todd's barbershop. She fills him in on what
happened to his family in his absence (his wife drank poison and his
daughter became the ward of the judge) and reintroduces him to his
treasured silver razors. When Todd's first attempt at killing the
judge fails, he expands his murderous rage to encompass all of
society, furnishing the vile Mrs. Lovett with an endless supply of
fresh meat.
Alan Rickman plays the twisted Judge Turpin, and Timothy Spall
appears as his repugnant henchman, the Beadle Bamford. Though
Rickman is denied his lech's version of the love song "Johanna" (a
shame), he's still suitably nasty -- there's something about the way
he acts almost entirely through his nose that lends a perfect
sinister snootiness to the part. Spall, meanwhile, does something
twisty with his tongue when he sings that couldn't be more
repulsive. But the supporting character who steals the show is
Sweeney's first -- incidental -- victim, Signor Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha
Baron Cohen), a rival barber and trouser-stuffing fake Italian who
recognizes him and threatens him with blackmail.
Of course, everyone is corrupt or ruined in "Sweeney's Todd's"
London ("There's a hole in the world like a great black pit / and
the vermin of the world inhabit it / and its morals aren't worth
what a pig can spit / and it goes by the name of London"), except
for the unsullied few protected by their youth or isolation. Jamie
Campbell Bower plays Anthony Hope, a young sailor Todd befriends on
the voyage back to London who falls in love at first sight with
Judge Turpin's ward Johanna (Jayne Wisener), whom he doesn't know is
Sweeney's daughter. Bower and Wisener have odd, birdlike faces,
though they're not half as goofy as Laura Michelle Kelly, who plays
Sweeney's young wife, Lucy, a flared-nostril mouth-breather if ever
there was one. You get the feeling that Burton's impulses are not so
different from Turpin's -- his innocent characters are annoying to
the point of distraction.
Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett should look like a pair of depraved old bags
next to the young lovers, but under the circumstances they look more
like casually debauched rock stars. Sporting a Susan Sontag streak
in his Beethoven mane, Depp slinks around glowering at the world,
causing an understandably smitten reaction in Mrs. Lovett. She's a
voluptuous corpse bride with a romantic streak. (In a hilarious
fantasy sequence set to the song "By the Sea," she imagines a
blissful future for herself with Sweeney, who, even in her fondest
fantasies, never stops scowling.)
It's not entirely surprising that Burton's "Sweeney Todd" feels
heavier on style than on substance -- so much that the style almost
subverts the story. Still, it's a gorgeous artifact and fairly
enjoyable in all. |
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SWEENY TODD © 2008 DreamWorks SKG, Warner Bros. Pictures
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2008 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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OTHER REVIEWS... |
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ALICE IN WONDERLAND |
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"...drab feature molded with garish CGI and acted as if there wasn’t a director"
(JR) |
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RANGO |
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"...an exercise in cleverness,
and that detachment robs the picture of the joy it craves. " (JR) |
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9 |
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" It shows so much promise,
but then wastes it on the same old fuddy duddy future shock storyline" (JR) |
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