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SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET Send This Review to a Friend
Tim Burton, the demon director of shock street, has slit the throat of Stephen Sondheim’s entertainingly macabre, operatic theater piece “Sweeney Todd,” turning it into strictly Grand Guignol drenched in blood. Drained away amid the emphasis on spurting blood each time a throat is cut are the glory of Sondheim’s score when sung by performers with excellent voices and not truncated as it is here, and much of the wit embodied in Sondheim’s lyrics when sung expertly and not obscured by a director’s vision of the work as mainly a chiller.
This is not to say that Burton doesn’t do what he does well. Johnny Depp acts superbly with maniacal menace in the title role of the barber who returns to London seeking revenge against an evil judge who, eying Sweeney’s wife, sent him to Australia and now has the barber’s grown daughter as his ward. Depp is wickedly vengeful as he takes his razors, slits the throats of those he shaves and dumps the bodies straight from the barber chair down a chute to the basement. But when it comes to singing, Depp manages but lacks the rich voice needed to do justice to the score.
Helena Bonham Carter is all witch as Mrs. Lovett, who teams with Sweeney to turn his victims into the meat pies that she sells in her emporium. There isn’t an iota of charm or wit in her obnoxiously scruffy performance—for the opposite think Angela Lansbury in the stage version---and she can’t sing with any panache or a score-worthy voice.
Perhaps all of this won’t make any difference for those who don’t have particular affection for the brilliant work as seen and heard on the stage, and Sondheim has reportedly given his blessing to the film. Given Burton’s vision, abetted by the screenplay by John Logan based on the musical by Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler from an adaptation by Christopher Bond, the result is successful within the director’s limited concept.
The look of the film is properly eerie, and the supporting cast feeds the style effectively, including Alan Rickman as the villainous judge, Timothy Spall as Beadle, Jayne Wisener as the pretty daughter Joanna, Jamie Campbell Bower as her ardent young suitor, and Laura Michelle Kelley as the mysterious Beggar Woman whose identity is ultimately revealed. Sacha Baron Cohen has the only hilarious role as the competitive barber Pirelli.
There is a nifty production sequence as Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett sing about going to the seashore, with the pair appearing in a series of shots in bathing and other attire. The film’s intensity can keep one riveted. Some may have to turn away from the gushing blood, and the thought of eating the human meat pies is more revolting than wryly amusing as in the stage productions I have seen. The final scene is so horribly bloody that one can barely see the actors behind the red.
Burton has given us his expertly delivered vision of Sondheim’s masterpiece. It may or may not be your vision. It isn’t mine. A DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Brothers Pictures release.
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