Sweeney Todd (Review)

For the legion of hardcore fans of composer Stephen, the wait for the film version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has been excruciatingly long. There have been precious few true Sondheim musicals that have made the transfer to the screen and this grand guignol piece has been a long time in coming. Earlier this decade Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) was to direct and numerous names were bandied about for the infamous roles of the demon barber and his accomplice Mrs. Lovett. The wait for the film version has also been more than a little frightening (who would direct? Who would star? Who could possibly due it justice?) as perhaps befits the horrific tale of a man who slits multiple throats in gory unfocused vengeance and the woman who bakes the bodies into meat pies to dispose of the evidence.

Once Tim Burton took over the reigns, auditions continued for reasons unbeknownst to many who found it impossibly obvious (in retrospect) which way the casting would go. The famously whimsical and gothic-loving auteur settled on the two actors he always settles on: Sweeney would be inhabited by Johnny Depp (his six-time leading man and friend) and Mrs Lovett would be played by Helena Bonham-Carter (his five-time co-star and lady love). That neither could sing didn’t seem to worry the director though it worried Sondheim disciples not a little.

"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," the glorious choral number that opens the original stage show foreshadows the narrative while painting a rather thrilling and shrieky picture of the man in question (Sondheim has acknowledged the influence of Bernard Hermann, of Psycho fame, in his work on his arguably most acclaimed score). Burton’s first move is to slash it from the film version (it’s the cut that will be most obvious to Todd fanatics) in favor of a slower reveal of this bloody man through expository dialogue, general close up visualization --you can't get that on stage -- and sung through flashbacks, perhaps to surprise the uninitiated. To quote the tale end of the original number

What happened then, well that’s the play,
and he wouldn’t want us to give it away…

Not Sweeney
Not Sweeney Todd
The demon barber of Fleet
Street

Thankfully the number remains in spirit and is used admirably well in the underscoring. Though it’s my personal favorite song in the show I found that I hadn’t really missed it once the tale was told.

The first song in this version then is “No Place Like London” , a mournful and then angry number from Sweeney himself as he arrives on a ship to the city he’d long since been torn from. (You’ve probably already made note of the fact that the marketing cleverly uses the image of the ship emerging in the fog and a close up of Johnny Depp, subconsciously reminding the masses of Depp’s greatest hit to get them to buy a ticket to this far more challenging piece) Sweeney is returning to the city that he once loved, only he’s a new man. This is no happy homecoming. He feels not so much love as a mad certainty of purpose (revenge) and bone chilling misanthropy.

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit!
And the vermin of the world inhabit it

Once on land at song’s end there’s a brief moment where the camera zigzags with great speed through the streets of London to arrive at Fleet Street, Todd’s former home and the setting for most of the film. As the shot began I worried about Tim Burton steering the ship. The director once delighted audiences and critics alike with his now familiar cinematic flourishes but in the past several years they seem to have calcified a bit, feeling more like whimsical tics or soulless personal branding than a wondrous example of style. My fears were soon allayed. The shot ended almost as soon as it began and for the rest of the film I noticed the same effect: This Sweeney Todd is a Tim Burton film through and through (who else would include a collage of Sweeney building his barber’s chair, Burton loves watching gears spin and machines work) but none of his familiar flourishes overtake the film, so much as serve it briefly, stylistic choices as efficient storytelling rather than window dressing. Sweeney Todd is often a long stage production, usually clocking in well over two hours, and though Burton doesn’t rush through it, he wraps up just before the two hour mark. This Sweeney lags on occasion (usually connected to unthrilling singing) but that said, it’s one of the best paced movies in the entirety of the Burton filmography. Whether it’s charging murderously forward or creeping through its more disturbing elements (the choice to make Toby a younger child is rather brilliant), it’s always moving. Better yet, it’s always moving towards its inevitable and ghastly conclusion. This is Tim Burton’s most focused, alert and satisfying film since Ed Wood (1994).

It’s no surprise to suggest that a Burton movie looks great but Sweeney Todd’s almost monochromatic color is striking and sets off the bloodletting well. Though Burton is still in his comfort zone with actors, editor (Chris Lebenzon) and costume designer (Colleen Atwood) there’s fresh blood in this thing, too: The music is all Sondheim (no new Danny Elfman underscoring is advisable or necessary); Dariusz Wolski does a fine job with the cinematography and I love the way his lighting plays off the ghostly white of Helena and Johnny's faces and the sets too; Finally the acclaimed production designer Dante Ferretti is also new to the Burton world. His efforts with the monochromatic gloom and rooms with a whiff of decay are beautiful without being overly so. You’re not so mesmerized that you can’t also be repulsed. A particular favorite visual of mine, which unites all the best technical contributions, is the repeated shots of Mrs. Lovett rapidly descending and ascending the steps to the pitch black of her notorious furnace.

Sweeney Todd the musical is filled with death but it will never die. No matter which production you see: the grand and comically-tinged Harold Prince original Broadway production; the recent John Doyle Broadway revival which used minimalism and haunting abstract suggestions; and now Tim Burton’s (mostly) deadly serious and macabre telling, you’re still seeing Sondheim’s masterpiece. They say that great works of art are always flexible, revealing themselves anew with each new rendering or point of view imposed. (Shakespeare plays are perhaps the most famous example of works that are eternal, always bending but never snapping) Sweeney Todd proves this point again. This is Tim Burton’s best film in years… and in every way it’s a Tim Burton film. But Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is still blessedly always the work of the greatest living musical theater composer, Stephen Sondheim.

While both Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter are fine screen actors and physically serve the directors unique style as well as we’ve come to expect, neither are accomplished singers and on occasion it distracts --the most problematic scene is an early one, “The Worst Pies in London.” Mrs. Lovett’s usually memorable introduction is still amusing but it’s far too complex musically for Helena Bonham-Carter’s tiny voice. She struggles whenever the song leaves her speaking register and she doesn’t have her co-stars easier out. Mrs. Lovett isn’t a furious screamer like Sweeney. Depp can cover it up when he can’t handle a particular phrase by foregrounding Todd’s curdled fury which works for the character. She can’t. The bad news is, oddly I know, also the good news: in a film that could easily have been a disaster, the casting of insufficiently talented singers turns out to be its only major misstep. The final film is better than one can possibly expect given the musical handicap at the center. Attend this tale. There’s no play like Sweeney Todd. Even when it's a movie.