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| Monday, January 14, 2008 08:29 PM |
| On the Viewer - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street |
 by Fëanor |
A while back, I reviewed a film adaptation of my favorite musical of all time, Sweeney Todd, and lamented that I hadn't yet seen the recent one directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the titular barber. Well, the other night poppy and I finally got it together to go out and see that version in the theater. I'd been looking forward to it quite a bit, but then when it first came out, I began to hear things about it that led me to believe I might be disappointed by it. As I said, I'm a huge fan of the musical, and know most of the songs by heart, and I was afraid that a version lacking some of my favorite songs, and featuring many others sung by non-professional singers, would just end up irritating me. Thankfully, I was wrong. In fact, Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street seems to me to be the best of all possible film adaptations of the source material. It's really the movie Burton was born to direct. I was grinning from ear to ear pretty much from beginning to end.
It goes without saying that the story and music are excellent. And yes, some songs and parts of songs have been taken out, but that's an inevitable consequence of the adaptation process. And nothing that's been removed is a terrible loss. Obviously some of "A Little Priest" had to come out, as it's very long and most of it is unnecessary to the story. I could say similar things about most of the other edited or excised songs. Basically the musical has been cut down to its essentials, and transformed into a lean, mean film full of blood, gore, dark humor, and tragedy.
Although Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are not great singers, they do well enough, and even shine in certain sequences. And besides, their acting is top-notch, as always. Carter's Mrs. Lovett is smarter, tougher, and more believable than the character usually is, and Jayne Wisener's Johanna is similarly less naive and more realistic. (Admittedly, the character of Johanna was originally conceived of as deliberately naive and unrealistic, because she was a parody of the typical lead female character in a musical, but Burton goes a different direction with the character, and it works, too.) Alan Rickman is brilliant as always as the hideous Judge Turpin, and Timothy Spall is slime personified as his lackey, Beadle Bamford. Sacha Baron Cohen is hilarious and fantastic as Pirelli, and Ed Sanders does a credible job as the boy Toby.
Visually the movie is spot on, giving us a dark, filthy, gray London full of pale, dirty people, with only the occasional gout of blood or burst of flame to add color to the scene. Of course, the one exception is the bright, colorful fantasy sequence that accompanies the song "By the Sea." This scene is pure Burton, full of hilarious dark humor, with Depp trudging about and glaring in a dreamy paradise where he clearly doesn't belong. It's a masterful piece of work, and quite possibly the funniest scene in the film (although the barbering contest with Pirelli is perhaps tied with it for that honor).
So yes, I'm very pleased with the movie. I'm not sure it quite makes up for Planet of the Apes, but almost. I give it four gurgles out of four! |
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