If Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
does anything revolutionary, it’s that the picture allows
filmgoers to see the result of director Tim Burton finally being
permitted to physically depict his usual set of unrelentingly
violent themes. Burton has long been a filmmaker associated with
violence, despite the fact that he has never tackled truly
gruesome material (aside from Sleepy Hollow, which seemed
too classical to be deemed “graphic”) before making this movie.
Viewers merely had to imagine the metaphysical violence implied
between Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka, Batman and the Joker,
and Pee-wee Herman and (I suppose) his Audience. But—fear not—Sweeney
Todd allows Burton to work out any repressed tendencies that
he may have felt when making his previous films. The corpses
stack up and the blood flies.
How disappointing that, handed such
creative freedom, Burton has essentially made the most boring
film of his entire career. Sweeney Todd may be
horrifically violent—even I cringed at a particular montage
involving one head being severed after another—but it’s also
lacking any provocative edge to speak of because it is so
utterly redundant. Once the shock initially thrust upon the
viewer by the film’s outrageous premise wears off, there really
isn’t anything especially engaging about the film. To compensate
for its stunning blandness, the picture tries to wow the viewer
by being a visual wonder, but cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s
nearly-colorless vision for Sweeney Todd only works to
further the viewer’s disinterest in the trite material.
The barber of a protagonist is played
by Johnny Depp, who, along with also-engaging co-star Helena
Bonham Carter, injects Sweeney Todd with nearly every one
of the few faint signs of life that it displays. While he does
not deliver the Oscar-quality work that many have rumored of,
Depp certainly nails the difficult task of making Sweeney both a
sympathetic main character and a terrifying villain. Sweeney’s
tortured back-story certainly helps this cause. In the film’s
first scene, he has just escaped from an undeserved
prison-sentence handed down to him by the corrupt Judge Turpin
(Alan Rickman). Turpin sent Sweeney away in order to steal
Sweeney’s wife from him. When he gets tired of her, Turpin sets
his lustful sights on his new ward, Sweeney’s beloved daughter
Johanna (Jayne Wisener).
Once he discovers of what Turpin did
while he was away, Sweeney vows to murder Turpin and bring an
end to Turpin’s abuse of power. He plots to do this, using the
weathered and unrecognizable appearance that jail cast upon him
as his disguise, by encouraging Turpin to stop by his shop for a
shave and then slaying Turpin with his razorblade. Much to
Sweeney’s disdain, things don’t go as planned. Despite restoring
his name as the best shaver in all of London (after a
head-to-head challenge with Sacha Baron Cohen’s since-reigning
champ, Signor Adolfo Pirelli), Sweeney’s service is doubted by
Turpin in an unfortunate encounter between them. Sweeney must
resort to reformulating his plan of attack and, in the meantime,
goes on a killing spree of his clientele. His victims’ remains,
of course, are grinded and injected right into the meat pies of
cohort Mrs. Lovett (Bonham Carter), who runs a pub just under
Sweeney’s shop.
It should be noted, of course, that
the film was adapted from a beloved Broadway musical, and that
composer Stephen Sondheim’s musical numbers are crucial to the
story. Burton does a serviceable job of capturing the joy of the
songs, which usually offer reprieve to the story’s non-stop
moroseness. Regardless, these can’t help but feel restrained in
their recorded state. I suspect that much of the delight of
seeing Sweeney Todd onstage was the viewer’s involvement
in the live music. Because this actor-audience connection is
missing from the movie, the movie can’t help but seem bland in
its straightforwardness. The material may have been a spectacle
on Broadway because of the involvement provoked by the lyrics
and melodies; Burton’s film needs something more in order for it
to achieve this status, and it regrettably never finds it.
I am likely coming down a bit hard on
Sweeney Todd because of the expectations that I had for
it given its notable pedigree. After all, its source is
much-admired, its director always manages to be intriguing (even
when he fails), and its lead actor was the perfect choice for
the role of the protagonist – how could I not have expected
something magnificent? Unfortunately, I fear that this version
of Sweeney Todd just wasn’t meant to succeed: the movie’s
small pleasures never overcome its one-note execution. Burton
may have gotten his chance to make a film as repulsive and
spine-tingling as he could’ve possibly hoped, but it certainly
didn’t turn out to be anything worth talking about.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 12.24.2007
Screened on: 12.22.2007 at the Edwards San Marcos 18 in
San Marcos, CA.
