SWEENEY TODD: A REVIEW

SWEENEY TODD The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

This is a stylized light opera put to film. It might have tragic dimensions, if any of the appropriate characters had any established magnitude. Its storyline bears a trace resemblance to 19th century adventures, as knocked out by Dumas, Dickens, etc. What am I referencing?

The storyline: A young, attractive family have their happiness dashed. A high court official, Judge Turpin (Rickman), lusting after the pretty, blonde wife, arranges for his beadle to arrest the husband, a promising barber named Barker (Depp), on false charges and thrown into jail for life. He woos the wife until such time as he lures her to his townhouse, where , in the midst of a masked ball, he rapes her. There is a passage of time. The husband escapes, apparently to sea, and is rescued by a lad named Anthony, who was part of a ship’s crew. Terse, revenge-minded and deranged, the husband returns to his old “stomping” ground. In short, Fleet Street is his “hood.” Once there, he takes in the old neighborhood bustle. He spots the beadle. His thoughts ever on slaughter, he finds his way to Mrs. Lovetts Pie Shoppe and takes a seat. The proprietoress, Mrs. Lovetts (Carter), takes a notice of the strange but “suitable” man and takes up a chatter. She is preparing “pies” and killing roaches, executing the latter with more skill and energy, perhaps because they are more plentiful. She offers the stranger a pie and gin. Soon, she is mothering him, while dreaming and, perhaps, scheming to eventually wife him. The stranger, Sweeney Todd, is chilly and distracted, possibly with dark thoughts of kill! Kill! Kill!. She recognizes him as “Barker” (Parker?) but is told by him that Barker is dead; I’m Sweeney Todd. They enter into an unofficial relationship that goes the primrose path for her from a bit of laxity to serial murder. Well, one adjusts to things as time goes by, seems to be her position. Sweeney never adjusts. From beginning to end he is a homocidal maniac. Well, Mrs. Lovetts no doubt appreciated his constancy, until the very end. From this initial relationship these two get involved in a snowballing accumulation of carnage. To offer other thematic conflicts, the story also relates the actions of the young Anthony, seeking Mr. Todd, unknowingly meeting the remnant of the barber’s pretty young wife in the form of a street hag (and seer), spying in a second floor window of a fine townhouse the pretty daughter, Joanna, of the barber and his wife, who is now a ward of the same Judge Turpin, and falling instantly in love with this pretty Joanna. He vows to “steal her.” The last important element is the growing lust of Judge Turpin for his ward. Also, he notices Anthony and first insinuates and then threatens the lad. The liberation of Joanna, the wifely dreams of Mrs. Lovetts, and the deranged “barbering” of Sweeney Todd propel the story forward, now black, now white, to a ghastly end. Yet, there is a bit of invisible sunshine at this end, for, although the moviegoer has witnessed a man kill the thing he loves in his madness, he is also aware that love has been rescued from bedlam elsewhere, as Anthony saved Joanna. Yet, as Joanna asserted: “You never escape your dreams” and, if they be nightmares, well, there will be a future of dark clouds even on sunny days.

However, perhaps she is wrong. Time also blurs.

The opening credits are fronting images that connote well the locale and the gorey expectations to come.

The film opens in foggy, dark, dank London, England. The moviegoer gazes at a masted ship approaching up the Thames River. After it steadys at its berth, two figures step forward onto the dock, moving forward. One is the lad the moviegoer will learn is “Anthony.” The other is Sweeney Todd. They had hardly gotten off the boat before they were singing their opinions of London and its people and their collective worth. Incidentally, the singing in this flick tends toward complexity with layered and/or echoic phrasing. Sometimes it indicates mental reflections, at other times it is conversational, and still others expressions of exuberance, rage and so forth.

These elements are woven together well enough, but there is a problem, and that problem is the lack of sympathy that Sweeney Todd engenders. I felt more sympathy for Larry Talbot, the Wolfman, than for Sweeney Todd. There is nothing that Sweeney says that offsets, or justifies, his deeds. If his murderous revenge were limited to Judge Turpin and his beagle, well perhaps one might say that it was a sort of vigilante justice executed against known villains. However, Sweeney Todd views all people as vermin. The sooner rid of them the better. One is really performing a positive service from any angle by hastening their end.

And Mrs. Lovetts, ever practical, remarks to Sweeney that it would be a shame to let all that good meat go to waste, when people “needs” there nutrients. Well, words to that effect.

Yes, there is woven into this plot that which all moviegoers are “dying” to see: cannibalism, albeit discreet.

I don’t view this as a “love story.” I view it as a “hate story.” You may be its real target.

The visual appearance is decidedly black/gray and white/off-white. The fleshly appearance of both Johnny Depp’s character and Helena Bonham Carter’s is pale. Each have ample supplies of dark hair surrounding those pale faces. The areas around the eyes are quite dark. Ms. carter “sports” dark lipstick. Each favors dark clothes set off by bits of white/off-white clothing. The whole vision is not so far in appearance from Tim Burton’s recent animated film inwhich a lad marriages a dead woman. The salient interruptions of color are provided by victims’ blood, Ms. Carter’s marital fantasies, and the typical scenes involving Judge Turpin, Joanna, and/or Anthony.  

I saw Angela Landsbury’s performance as Mrs. Lovetts in another production, and thought she added a certain appealing dash of frantic comedy.

This production is different. It is brooding in tone and very well-directed. It is interestingly “shot,” choreographed and composed. The sets and costumes seemed correct.

Johnny Depp seems to have done his one and only clearly above-average performance as a complex personalty, assuming deranged, monomanical and homocidal personalities can be accurately termed “complex.” I thought he was good in this role. His “singing” was more after the late Rex Harrison’s “sing-talking” fashion. I don’t think that he merits much applauding here. Americans are so accustomed to hearing singers with bad voices, doing lead singing with rock bands, that Depp may seem to be a somewhat “raw” Caruso. 

Finally, an important contribution to this film’s development is supplied by a boy actor. He is first encountered as a “barker” for a “show-biz” barber and elixir vender named Pirelli ( Sasha Cohen). He subsequently is taken “under the wing” of Mrs. Lovetts and put to work at her pie shop. This is a good thing, because his former boss was “lying low” and his own life was imperiled. The lad wasn’t all bad. However, when a delinquent vows that “no one is going to hurt you, not while I’m around,” he may be flashing a capacity for dark deeds, if unwisely provoked. Indeed, our lad here wasn’t a shrinking violet. And in this film does any character not hold within him barely restrained villainy?

Revenge is the force that kills from beginning to end of film. Are we, therefore, to infer that the movie is really an anti-revenge one in disguise? Let’s not favor Director Tim Burton, the Lord of Black & White, with unwarranted subtlety. Rather, let us say that Sweeney Todd isn’t the only character traipsing about with a mental disorder. Tis enough.

All rights reserved. Gobigfoot, 2007.