There's a trend going 'round film critics' circles all around the country positioning 2007 as the "Straights" vs. the "Bloods" year in film. In one corner, you've got the "Straights," all respectable, award-ready entertainments. Your "Great Debaters" and your "Atonement," if you will. And in the other corner, you've got the "Bloods," all intensely psychological, more experimental and daring, and often very violent.
File your "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" here. Not to knock the "Straights," but I prefer the latter category. And with "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," we "Bloods" now have our musical.
As of this viewing, I'm not completely keen on the flick, the cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's classic musical-thriller about a bloodthirsty barber slashing his way through the streets of London. But I respect this picture to no end. It's a musical that puts more emphasis on psychology and character than on spectacle and music. It's Tim Burton's most satisfying flick since 1994's "Ed Wood." And, unquestionably, "Sweeney Todd" is one of the bleakest big-budget entertainments ever released by a major studio.
I've always thought Burton to be somewhat overrated. When he's on, like in "Ed Wood" or "Beetlejuice," he's got a knack for portraying oddballs and misfits with uncommon sympathy and tenderness.
When he's off, and I'll point you to pretty much everything he's made in between now and "Ed Wood," he comes off as an extremely talented and extremely cold visual stylist with a predilection for drowning in his own excesses. That, and many of his films are co-opted by the poster children for Goths Inc. I swear, you can chart the evolution of modern goth fashion to "The Crow" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
For the most part, he's on his A-Game here. It's no surprise that "Sweeney Todd" is visually stunning; assisted by ace cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Colleen Atwood (other examples of their craft include work on "Dark City," "Gangs of New York," and "Gattaca," respectively), Burton crafts a gothic and immensely foreboding vision of 19th century London that owes as much to the Mario Bava and Hammer horror flicks of the 1960s as it does to Charles Dickens.
What I didn't expect was how intimate and claustrophobic the whole enterprise feels. We get some sweeping landscape work — the London skyline in the fog, a David Fincher-esque camera shot moving through the bowels of the city — but locations generally are limited to a few rooms occupied by only two or three people at a time. Most cinematic renditions of stage works avoid staginess by opening up sets. This one, oddly enough, accomplishes that by scaling back.
Burton reduces the pomp of the stage in favor of psychological exploration. He focuses on the actors, and while it's not often you think of Harold Pinter during a Sondheim musical, I did; this film version has the same kind of laser-like intensity on character.
Better that than Sondheim, though. His music is, by far, the most disappointing part of the flick. It's well-produced and well-sung (especially by Johnny Depp, who sounds the way I'd imagine Jack The Ripper sounding if Jack The Ripper sung like David Bowie), but after a while, every song starts to sound like the one before it. And I say this a fan of the musical. There's just nowhere near the musical variety in "Sweeney Todd" as you'd find in a "My Fair Lady" or a "Dreamgirls," and this is a problem when 75 percent of all dialogue is sung. Luckily, the actors are so good they (mostly) overcome the music.
Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, in particular, deserve some kind of medal for the work they do here. Sweeney Todd and his partner-in-crime, Mrs. Lovett, are impossible parts for any actor: an unredeemedly revengeful and savage murderer, and the wildly delusional and borderline-cannibalistic woman who loves him. And they're the heroes. But Depp and Carter are remarkably empathetic performers, and they manage to pull it off. Carter tearfully lulls a potential victim to sleep, and you feel her pain. Depp croons a song to his razor blades, and it's the most moving moment in the whole picture! In these two actors' capable hands, the flick becomes a study of madness — you may not like either character, but you'll always understand them.
As the nominal "villain" Judge Turpin, Alan Rickman brings the same sly charm of his Severus Snape and Hans Gruber and twists it ever so slightly — Turpin's slick veneer hides something far more perverted and twisted. He's a delight to watch, as is his loathsome toady Beadle Bamford, played by the great Timothy Spall. In fact, only Jamie Campbell Bower and Jayne Wisener really disappoint. They're saddled with the most trite part of the flick, the young-and-virtuous "kids in love" B-plot (Bower's character's name is Anthony Hope, which is even more cloying on-screen than it is in print), which I'd find tedious enough even without all the grisly happenings surrounding it.
Let's talk about said gristle for a moment. "Sweeney Todd" is violent. Really violent. We're talking the "Kill Bill" of movie musicals. When shed, blood sprays as if from a firehouse, dousing everything (other actors, the sets, the camera) in its path. I feel I should mention that for viewers expecting a gothic fairy tale a la "Edward Scissorhands."
More troubling is the unrelenting grimness of the flick. It's form mirroring content — as Todd is single-minded in his pursuit of bloody vengeance (those of you expecting the "fun" Johnny Depp of Captain Jack Sparrow fame should probably leave now — he makes Anton Chigurh look like Johnny Carson), so is the flick single-minded in conveying the bleakness of his world.
The look of the picture's desaturated to practically black and white, there's very little humor (save some brilliant character work from "Ali G" star Sacha Baron Cohen, a brightly-colored Mrs. Lovett musical interlude, and a throat-slashing montage that I found freaking hilarious. I should mention that no one else in the theater did, though), and what hope remains at the end exists in Anthony's last name.
In a year populated by downers (the aforementioned "No Country" and "Blood," and let's add "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and last month's already-underrated "The Mist"), "Sweeney Todd" may the most oppressively, relentlessly dour of them all.
And I don't know if that's a good thing.
Don't get me wrong — I like "bleak." "No Country for Old Men" is almost as dark as this one, and it's my favorite movie of the year. Yet "No Country" has more wisdom in its bleakness. "Sweeney Todd" is brilliantly made and psychologically disturbing, but I worry that all the craft on display may just be servicing tragedy for tragedy's sake, the old "Life sucks. Wear a helmet" mantra firmly in hand. I hope that's not the case — it's far too simplistic a reading and makes for a more disappointing movie — but I still need time to process that myself.
I can't swoon outright over "Sweeney Todd." I have some serious issues with it, and I'm still mulling over the appropriateness of the grimness on display. But the good stuff in it is really good, and three days later I'm still thinking about it. Any flick that's willing to push and challenge its audience regardless of content and studio pressure is worthy of respect, and "Sweeney Todd" is definitely one of those flicks.