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Sweeney Todd isn't as successful as it would like to be, and is sometimes too pleased with itself. Such is my judgement on the Tim Burton film of the Sondheim musical. I've seen a recording of the original stage production on television, many years ago, with Len Cariou (so Wikipedia tells me) as Sweeney Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs Lovett (there's a crossover - Jessica Fletcher finds herself in a nightmarish version of Victorian London, where she meets a pie-seller with an uncanny resemblance to her good self - will she expose Mrs Lovett to the authorities, or end up in the pies?) and had found the tone almost unbearably cynical then. Filtered through Tim Burton's worldview it's worse. The scene-setting framing device, 'The Ballad of Sweeney Todd', is lost, and we are straight into the arrival of Todd and Anthony in London. The film's London reminds me of the Victorian England of Steamboy, assembling an imagined city à la carte from desired elements; so we have Regency fops alongside Tower Bridge; the Fleet Street of Mrs Lovett looks nothing like Fleet Street ever did (and the house reminded me more of Paul Revere's house in Boston); and the City of London is remarkable for its absence of churches. This is perhaps appropriate and deliberate; Todd, thinking back to his youth as Benjamin Barker, sees his happy prosperity as naivety; he inhabits a world with no moral compass other than the desire for revenge.
The film finds its feet from the overtly theatrical scene where Todd challenges the mock-Italian barber Pirelli (an over the top but expertly so Sacha Baron Cohen) to a duel on Pirelli's cart; once we have seen the characters on a stage the artificiality of the whole became more coherent. The fantasy sequences where Mrs Lovett envisages seaside holidays and marriage to Todd underscore the character's delusions, particularly as Todd remains cold and withdrawn throughout.
I was really disturbed by the graphic bloodthirstiness of the throat-slittings and other violence - indeed, if you have ever sought to see Helena Bonham Carter burn alive for whatever reason, this is the film to watch. The film is even more bleak than the stage play - we don't see Anthony, the insipid hero figure, return for Johanna at the end, nor do we see Anthony, Johanna and the authorities find Todd dead at the conclusion. Toby's murder of Todd alone suffices for the restoration of moral order, if restoration there can be.
So: the bloodthirstiest Broadway musical becomes an even bloodthirstier film. I think my viewing companion enjoyed it more. Still, I think both of us were of the opinion that in their ways the trailers for Doctor Who series four and Mamma Mia (Meryl Streep singing Abba...) were more horrific still...
Does Tim Burton eat enough, I wonder? The last Burton/Depp collaboration was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I think (which I enjoyed more) - and both it and Sweeney Todd make their food themes central to the opening credit sequences. Maybe that's why he likes his lead characters to look both starved and yet thin at the same time.
The film finds its feet from the overtly theatrical scene where Todd challenges the mock-Italian barber Pirelli (an over the top but expertly so Sacha Baron Cohen) to a duel on Pirelli's cart; once we have seen the characters on a stage the artificiality of the whole became more coherent. The fantasy sequences where Mrs Lovett envisages seaside holidays and marriage to Todd underscore the character's delusions, particularly as Todd remains cold and withdrawn throughout.
I was really disturbed by the graphic bloodthirstiness of the throat-slittings and other violence - indeed, if you have ever sought to see Helena Bonham Carter burn alive for whatever reason, this is the film to watch. The film is even more bleak than the stage play - we don't see Anthony, the insipid hero figure, return for Johanna at the end, nor do we see Anthony, Johanna and the authorities find Todd dead at the conclusion. Toby's murder of Todd alone suffices for the restoration of moral order, if restoration there can be.
So: the bloodthirstiest Broadway musical becomes an even bloodthirstier film. I think my viewing companion enjoyed it more. Still, I think both of us were of the opinion that in their ways the trailers for Doctor Who series four and Mamma Mia (Meryl Streep singing Abba...) were more horrific still...
Does Tim Burton eat enough, I wonder? The last Burton/Depp collaboration was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I think (which I enjoyed more) - and both it and Sweeney Todd make their food themes central to the opening credit sequences. Maybe that's why he likes his lead characters to look both starved and yet thin at the same time.
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