I don’t consider
myself a fan of director Tim Burton or his films but when it comes
to create an appropriate atmosphere, style, mood or tone for motion
pictures, I do recognize him as one of the best. I’m also not very
keen on musicals and although I know that it has been a very popular
genre throughout the years of cinema history and there has been a
few good of them like Fiddler on the Roof or The Sound of
Music, their spectacular numbers have never specially appealed
to me. I can’t compare Sweeney Todd with the former Burton
productions –some like Corpse Bride already contained
glimpses of musical- because I haven’t watched too many, but
I can firmly state that he’s created a musical with a compelling
story which works better than the average movie of its ilk. Burton
teams up again with his fetish actor, Johnny Depp –with whom he has
worked in six films now- and shows evidence of his talent by
effectively adapting the Broadway musical hit to the big screen.
The movie is set in
the late nineteen century London and opens with Sweeney Todd (Depp),
a barber who’s just been released from jail after fifteen years who
is now looking for his wife and daughter to restart his life. He
returns to his house just to find a strange lady, Mrs. Lovett
(Helena Bonham-Carter) living in it instead of his family. Sweeney
Todd is not really the barber’s name but Benjamin Barker is; he was
outrageously condemned to prison by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) and
his sidekick Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall) because the former was
in love with his wife. Barker has changed his name because he’s
determined to take revenge and kill the two villains. His desire of
payback is only increased when the weird woman tells him his wife
took arsenic and his daughter has been kidnapped by Turpin. Mr. Todd
reopens his establishment in Fleet Street, just were it used to be,
above Mrs. Lovett’s and starts killing most of his customers who end
up as part of the meat pies prepared by her.
Of course, the most
remarkable aspect of Sweeney Todd is cinematography, art
direction and direction itself. Tim Burton manages to create a dark
and creepy London making it an undesirable place to live in and
characterizes the city so well that it feels like another
protagonist. Even after watching the trailer one knew art direction
was excellent and the film certainly deserved the Academy Award it
received in that category. The problem is, some of the best scenes
of the movie, like Todd holding his razor blade for the first time
in fifteen years and announcing his arm was finally complete, were
shown in the trailer so I started watching the flick waiting to
watch those shots and at least a couple more of their quality and
unfortunately, I got just those. Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski
also helps Burton recreate the dark atmosphere he needs and express
the pessimistic view of the world Sweeney lives in. At the
beginning, when the barber has just returned to work and is still
depressed because he hasn’t yet plotted the way he’d have vengeance,
we get some almost black and white shots which resemble the
protagonist’s feelings which alongside with the excellent score,
create an amazingly fascinating atmosphere.
The movie contains
some of Burton’s witty, ironic and black humor, the most important
example probably being Mrs. Lovett’s establishment, which was almost
bankrupted, successfully re-launched using meat pies prepared with
human flesh. The killings of Todd’s costumers are stylized to the
point that the chair he uses to toss the dead bodies to the basement
looks like a Saw movie mechanism; some may be too stylized and might
hurt susceptibilities due to their gory look. Other times, like in a
scene where a bunch of crazy woman attack –and almost eat- the
warden of their mental institution, Burton also goes too far with
black humor but, as Sweeney Todd must not be an easy movie to
direct, he evidences his talent by doing it well.
The screenplay by John
Logan is also fine and most of the songs in the flick are good and
entertaining –the first one mentions Peru a couple of times-.
Nevertheless, a few other songs aren’t as good and are played too
often, feel repetitive, and overstuff the viewer. The script has
other problems as well, the side story of Johanna (Jayne Wisener),
Sweeney’s daughter, and Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), a young man
who came with Todd to London, falls in love with his daughter and is
determined to set her free of Judge Turpin’s house, aren’t nearly as
interesting as the barber’s revenge tale. Although love and
vengeance are often linked, the film sometimes focuses more in Mr.
Todd helping Anthony than in his revenge attempts and at these times
is when the movie drags a little. Fortunately the ending is not
predictable and –I don’t know if this is a plot hole- doesn’t answer
all the spectator’s questions about the two lovers.
A great deal of
responsibility for Sweeney Todd’s success lies in the acting
department, and especially in actors Johnny Depp and Helena
Bonham-Carter. Most of the character development of Todd is done by
Depp, he almost never feels like Captain Jack Sparrow from Gore
Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean flicks and is able of
representing well such a complex character as Sweeney, frustrated by
his wife’s death and social injustice. The same happens with
Bonham-Carter’s character, Mrs. Lovett, who remains a mystery
throughout the story is also portrayed in a believable way. The
supporting cast’s performances are OK and every character in the
film seems capable of singing appropriately. Alan Rickman –one of my
favorite British actors- as an evil judge is good but his character
is not very different than Harry Potter’s Professor Snape, some of
his mannerisms are also the same. Timothy Spall –Peter Pettigrew,
also from the Potter movies- is better than Rickman (although he has
too little on-screen time) and Sacha Baron Cohen as Mr. Pirelli, the
second most skilled barber in London, and Ed Sanders as his young
assistant (who later on becomes Sweeney’s assistant) add more decent
performances to the film.
Sweeney Todd: The
Demon Barber of Fleet Street
is an entertaining
motion picture which combines a good and unconventional director as
Tim Burton with his favorite actor, Johnny Depp, and other good
British actors to create a compelling musical with glimpses of gore
movie. It’s not the perfect film and it might be too bloody for the
skeptic viewer but its protagonist is definitely an interesting and
original one. The movie is visually captivating, its musical numbers
are fine and its ending is unexpected and dramatic. Is it the best
movie Burton has ever made? I can’t state it with absolute certainty
but it definitely has all the elements he’s made a name for.
