Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Alan Rickman, Edward Sanders, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Timothy Spall Director: Tim Burton Brand: DEPP,JOHNNY Cinematographer: Dariusz Wolski Composer: Stephen Sondheim DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1 Format: AC-3, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.85:1 Running Time: 116 minutes DVD Release Date: 2008-04-01 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Dreamworks Video |
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Movie Reviews of Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
Movie Review: Violently Confounding
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a great admirer of Sondheim and this work. I saw the original production a few times, and thought the filmed version of the performance with George Hearn (more human, less monster) replacing Len Cariou was even better. However, I also have enjoyed other versions of it and in fact think the BBC radio broadcast with Denis Quilley is the best, based on a small London production I didn't see.
The film is often beautiful, and the score is orchestrated and performed instrumentally beyond any other version. The actors, most of whom were not chosen for their voices, do act the songs and sing effectively though Helen Bonham Carter is too young, too pretty and as a singer too breathy for Mrs. Lovett, nearly Marilyn Monroe-ish. That part has been played many ways, from Angela Lansbury's hilariously ridiculous middle-class wanna-be to Julia McKenzie's abrasive guttersnipe Lovett with Quilley. Tim Burton's gothic films consistently have the Halloween conceit of dressing up young, pretty actors as ghouls; Johnny Depp transcends this with real weight but for me Carter, Burton's wife, though she does well with what she has, is very miscast. She does add the one really felt element, a quickly discarded concern for the boy they casually adopt. Lansbury did it with one brief look sitting down on stage and silently (which you usually attribute to film acting). Carter gets a big whopping closeup and a few added lines to achieve it.
A note on Depp's technique. Coming to acting as a rock singer, Depp's acting approach is to mimic, much as he surely did trying to find a style to become a rock star. He chooses someone to mimic and model his entire performance on, then riffs. The Rolling Stones have said Jagger was trying to sound like Muddy Waters and failed badly but that became their signature style. Depp modeled pirate Jack on Keith Richards for instance. Here he models himself on David Bowie; vocally he never transcends the mimicry. It works but for me once I figured this out it was a distraction. Bowie actually would have been an interesting choice for Sweeney; but Russell Crowe and Meryl Streep (who were slated to do it at one time) would have lifted it another level for me. Streep (Mrs. Lovett is supposed to be older, part of the ridiculous romance) would have pulled Depp up another level all by herself. She probably isn't here because she would have been the best thing in it.
I think what Burton really wants to create (and no doubt he's very happy with this film) is silent director Murnau's rich and emotional expressiveness and I wish Murnau (the silent "Nosferatu" and "Faust", very much the same mileau as this) was alive to have directed this. With Charlie Chaplin in the lead. I guess if I'm reaching that far back to compare it's an achievement. My problem is with the humor, wit and chorus largely and completely cut (a ghost chorus of Sweeney's victims was abandoned, which I think would have helped) and with the choice to film the brutality straight on with pornographic glee, "Sweeney" becomes too much (for me) a film of this horrible time. It's an Abu Grab musical, a Dick Cheney musical, a slaughter them before they do it to you musical bromide, a Bushian sociopathic musical. I was always afraid that the real heart of both Sondheim and the work was this gory, dark vicious hatred of all humanity, including himself, and Burton has gone out of his way to expose that truth of Sondheim and himself as well. I suppose it is cathartic, I cried walking home, but I fear it may also carry a contagion, a numbing to gore effect. Which is to say that art at its best is white magic. I think "Sweeney" isn't. It doesn't respect itself enough to fear its effect; pardon me if I sound like Louis B. Meyer or the Hays office. It doesn't believe in magic of any kind, even as it creates beauty around its own brutality.
Human beings aren't just meat, I'm not and most of the people - not all - I know aren't. Shorn as it is, that is all this "Sweeney" comes to in the end, like a motto sewn into a pillow. It's grotesquely sad that anyone, much less talents like these, could think we and they are. There is compassion, as the throats were cut (including Michael Palin's if my eyes didn't deceive me) I felt my own slit even though I was just watching light shadows on a wall. A touch of real compassion would level this film a lot.