Sweeney Todd

Overall score:

Starring Johnny Depp, Helen Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman Directed by Tim Burton Based on the musical by Stephen Sondheim

The latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp project is a gothic musical full of beautiful images, world-class acting, and blood by the bucket load.  The story is deranged, gory, expressionistic and darkly humorous.  To put it another way, Sweeney Todd represents the Burton/Depp team in their element.  The result is a work of art that may well surpass their previous projects.

Depp plays Sweeney Todd, a London barber who is wrongly imprisoned by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Returning to London after fifteen years, Todd finds no wife and child waiting for him, and all he can reclaim from his old life is his old razorblade. Frustrated, he decides to take his vengeance on all of London, while his practical landlord Mrs. Lovett (Helen Bonham Carter) bakes the bodies into the best meat pies in London.

The film shows off the best of Tim Burton’s expressionistic style. It opens with a visual quote--a CG sequence exactly like the one that opened Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--only instead of a river of chocolate, we see a river of blood dripping down the gears of the meat grinder and into the sewer. At this point, you should feel you are being prepared for something. There is a lot of blood spilling (and spraying) in this film, but Sweeney Todd marks itself away from other slasher gore-fests. Each image of death and blood is wonderfully and carefully composed, as if each murder were an art. The colors throughout most of the film are desaturated:  the film is almost in black and white, were it not for all the vivid red.  This combination creates a special emphasis and makes the blood spilling that much more poignant, giving the audience a more brilliant--and more revolting--spectacle.

For fans of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical, this adaptation should delight. Although a few songs are missing, and other minor alterations were made, the characters and themes make it to the silver screen seamlessly. The play’s terrific character arcs are preserved, as is the tragic flow of the film. The characters are not made into Hollywood heroes. It is actually quite relieving that Burton did not feel the need to alter any of the characters into his “misunderstood monster” motif (like he did with his adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

The center of the film is the relationship between Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett.  The characters become extremely complex as we watch them form relationships. Todd’s obsessions keep him distanced from everyone, while Mrs. Lovett is a kind and very sympathetic character, complicated by the fact that she is an accomplice to Todd’s serial killings. Their relationship becomes more nuanced and complex as the film progresses, to the point where we can really feel the plight when we’re revolted by it.

The film is rated R for graphic bloody violence--and it is one of the bloodiest films I’ve ever seen. If blood does not normally make you queasy, then you might get queasy anyway.

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Written by gardenninja on December 13th, 2007