Tin Burton: Sweeney Todd (2070)

[Chris Knipp]

Tim Burton: Sweeney Todd (2007)

A brush dipped in blood and soot

Review by Chris Knipp

Here's a great Christmas idea for you: a movie about a man who as revenge against a cruel judge in Victorian London kills dozens of people, whom his wife grinds up and bakes into meat pies that she sells from her shop to a satisfied and unsuspecting public. And you will lose count of how many times you see this hero sit customers down in his barber chair and slit their throats, with the necks opening up and the blood spurting out in bright red fountains in the dim gray room.

That doesn't sound very festive, does it? But this is a sophisticated modern musical, by Stephen Sondheim, adapted to the screen by Tim Burton with the assistance, among others, of his male muse, Johnny Depp, and his wife, Helena Bonham Carter (as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, his landlady, then wife, and baker of the pies)—not to mention that arch-villain, Alan Rickman (as Judge Turpin, the villainous magistrate) and that facetious bogeyman, Timothy Spall (as Beadle Bamford)—with a newly notorious comic scoundrel, Sasha Baron Cohen (as the mountebank Signor Adolfo Pirelli) thrown in for good measure. And they all sing, even though they're not singers by profession (though a couple of the cast members clearly are—or so you'd think to hear the lusty boy soprano of Ed Sanders (as the workhouse orphan, Toby).

Burton is an artist of hermetic imaginary worlds. Fortunately. Why there has to be quite so much blood, why there must be so many gleaming silver razors (they themselves key players, featured in the film's publicity) drawn across exposed throats I don't really know, but we grownups are well aware none of it is real. What it has is not the crude horror of some kind of numbingly endless snuff flick, but a unified vision, a world whose look has awesome artistic validity. And it's a vision whose artificiality, thank God, is further underlined by the prevalence of music and by how often the dialog is sung, not spoken. But more than a world of sound, it's a world of image, and if anything makes this a great film it's the fact that nobody west of Prague has ever painted so beautifully on film with a brush so heavily, voluptuously dipped in blood and soot.

The dark, gloomy, overcast, oozing, perfectly hopeless London is the real star of Burton's new film. Everything else is of a piece with it. It's remarkable even how much the faces of Depp and Carter grow out of it, like the face in Edvard Munch's The Scream, and grow out of each other. They have the same cheekbones, the same white pallor and grainy dark raccoon eyes. Without being digitalized or rotoscoped or motion captured, Johnny Depp's face becomes a thing as grainy and drawn-looking as an image by Edward Gorey or Charles Addams. But this is a world more fanatical and obsessive than theirs. It's not whimsical; it's driven. It's not spooky; it's horrific. I guess maybe Depp has always had the gift of negative capability, of being the more impressive for being not quite there, as much in the William Blake of Dead Man as in Edward Scissorhands. One of his gifts is that he's so powerfully present and conscious in every frame, and yet at one remove. His character is not a personality but a creature possessed by one object: annihilation, of others, and chiefly of his arch-enemy, and then of himself.

Helena Bonham Carter has a similar, if lesser, quality in seeming a busybody, busy with her work, her pie-making, her roach-squashing, always in motion, urging on, helping out, enabling, encouraging. Eventually they mate; they marry; but he is barely present, mumbling assent and slightly leaning forward with a little peck to acknowledge the knot is tied. And back to his work. He's like Jonson's maniac of greed, Volpone: "Good morning to the day—and next, my gold!" For this reason the film seems short and simple. Burton's achievement is that his work has never seemed less fussy. He has always been a master of detail, but it all fits into the whole here, as if everything happened inside a dark box—except for the wonderful short looks outside at the long vistas of narrow streets and the dark skies. (And it is said that the movie otherwise "opens up" the musical—with the insane asylum scene, for instance.) Anyway, what makes this a great movie is its focus, and its utter lack of distraction. And when the camera moves back a long way, those are the best, the most surprising, moments, freezing the scene into a painting. The final shot of Sweeney has been justifiably called a Pietà. Those are self-conscious tableaux, but the movement is swift, the editing is sure.

This is a Victorian costume show--a horrible permutation of the Dickensian vision of the workhouse, the orphan, the perversion of justice, the greed of the powerful, the dominance of the wicked man, the long suffering of the weak, the reversal of fortune. I'm not clear why Sondheim is reckoned such a superior writer of musicals, so original. Is this original, or just a logical extreme? Isn't every ugly thing turned into a musical now; haven't musicals been dark from The Threepenny Opera to Les Miz and beyond? Sondheim's lyrics sometimes seem prosy and repetitious, his tunes lightweight. Is it a sign of sophistication that Sondheim's tunes aren't catchy—or just a sign that he hasn't the gift of writing catchy tunes? None of that finally matters though, because whatever failings Sondheim may have as a pure maker of musicals all the better enable Tim Burton to make Sweeney Todd his own: Sondheim's music does not overwhelm his film but simply blends into it.

There isn't much more to say. Why do I like this? I don't. It's horrific. Like another of the year's best American films that's also ugly and violent—No Country for Old Men—it's just wonderfully crafted. Cocteau said Art produces ugly things which most of the time become beautiful; fashion produces beautiful things that most of the time become ugly. Which is Burton's Sweeney Todd? Perhaps a work of art; and so even its horror in our topsy-turvy world will become beautiful.

[oscar jubis]

Very smart review, Mr. Knipp. Quite a pleasure to read.

[mouton]

First off, I second Oscar's coment ... great review, Chris. One thing, I don't think Todd and Lovett ever marry, except in her fantasy sequence. I was disappointed by the film - my review will explain all. While I wrote it, I was surprised by just how much I felt deceived. Anyway, still a great way to spend Christmas! Happy Holidays!


SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
Written by John Logan
Words and Music by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Tim Burton

Sweenney Todd: I can guarantee the closest shave you’ll ever know.

When the ensemble harmonizes the unsettling baritone with the glass-shattering soprano parts of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” at the opening of the stage production, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, the tone is not only announced but adamantly affirmed. You are in store for a truly bizarre tale that is the epitome of madness and you are being introduced to man burnt by an unjust system, robbed of everything and everyone that ever meant anything to him, who has now returned for his due vengeance and has brought with him a very unhealthy bloodlust. It would seem that there could be no one better suited to translate this haunting story to film than master of the dark and champion of the disenfranchised, director, Tim Burton. Burton begins by hastily deciding to skip the ballad and go straight to what he knows best. Bright red blood drips down walls and slips between the gears of a giant meat grinder, Stephen Sondheim’s potently explosive score driving everything forward. But just as the ballad foretells on stage of unbelievable vocal histrionics to come and amaze, Burton’s decision to remove it in favour of score and visual gore confirms that he will be relying on what he knows in fear of the daunting music he has failed to grasp.

For a director who has built his entire reputation on his creative visual style, it is genuinely surprising to watch SWEENEY TODD unfold in such an unimaginative fashion. It does not seem so at first. In fact, it is quite a twisted treat to dive in to the cobblestone streets of yesterday’s London, tainted blue and gray by cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski, to a saturation point that makes the patrons appear as though they are just waiting, if not begging, for their dull lives to end. Who can blame them really? The light of day rarely seems to rise on London as it is constantly shrouded in heavy cloud. And while the camera hints at the scope of London by weaving from the picturesque rooftops to a dizzying maze of streets, it quickly ceases to a halt on one particular street corner, home to Todd’s barbershop. Despite having so much room to move, Burton traps us here and allows the claustrophobia to set in. This is a fine way to make people uncomfortable but it also makes for some rather limited musical staging. Burton rushes through the musical numbers by slicing lines out (unfortunately some of the more hilarious ones) so that he can get to the action because he knows that their stunted staging slows the pace. Subsequently, he leaves us with nothing more than a bloody mess on the floor.

Further proving the unimportance of technical mastery in this musical is Burton’s decision (with the perplexing blessing of Sondheim himself) to cast untrained singers in the demanding leads. The character of Sweeney Todd requires a voice so powerful and fierce that it resonates fear through the bodies of all who hear it. Johnny Depp surprises with how well he can handle the material but his capable performance never ignites the passion of a mad man. Meanwhile, Todd’s counterpart in scheming evil, Mrs. Lovett, a woman so conniving and desperate that she will say or do anything to make sure her man is content and by her side, is played by Helena Bonham Carter, a woman whose voice is so weak that she is barely capable of communicating any of the colour in the character. Each actor carries the same drab expression on their face throughout the film as though they are bored or just completely unsure of themselves. They each have their moments but neither successfully demonstrates the depths of their treachery or the heights of their dark wit. As they watch each step, careful to avoid each other’s toes, Burton guides their performances into characters with soulless shells that barely frighten each other, let alone the audience.

In what will hopefully be his last musical outing, Burton breaks a golden musical rule. The musical numbers should never be rushed. That’s why we’re there – to appreciate the beauty of Sondheim’s layered and dense masterpiece. Only that isn’t why Burton is there. Clearly, Todd’s penchant for slashing throats is what most fascinated the man at the helm of this horror story. And while the blood gushing out and splattering against the camera and the walls is both disgusting and exhilarating at the same time, it amounts to very little more than gorgeous torture porn. Who knew that SWEENEY TODD would be so maniacal that even the insane genius of Tim Burton could not fully comprehend the man himself?

www.blacksheepreviews.com

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, guys.

mouton, i can understand your point of view perfectly well. I am a little surprised that you don't respond more to the film visually. But obviously those who know the music have at best mixed feelings about the choice of non-singers for the main roles, or most of them. i don't pretend to know anything about Sondheim of to have seen the Broadway production or productions of this, and musicals really aren't my thing anyway. As you can see from my review, I am just as happy that the musical aspect is played down. I'm not exactly in agreement that the songs feel "rushed," because as I said, I find the lyrics often repetitious--that's a criticism of the music, too, I guess, because in an operatic aria there is repetition but I don't mind it because the music is wonderful.

I underfstand now several of the scenes were fantasies that I just thought were oddly realized sequences of the story--the picnic o not on the beach and the wedding. I understand Helena Bonham Carter is also not only not Todd's wife in the story but also not Tim Burton's wife, just his girlfriend and mother of his children. So there's plenty I didn't get right, but I don't think I got wrong the sureness and unity of the film and its wonderful rich dark look. I agree that the scene is mostly closed down rather than traditionally (for film adaptations) "opened up," but David Edelstein in New York Magazine--I'm perusing the latest issue--also notes that but with favor.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by mouton
In his first (and hopefully last) musical outing, Burton...

Oops, big boo-boo. Burton's masterpiece is the very musical The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was released on a digital 3D version last year, and re-released this year. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride also contains choreographed numbers and is often described as a musical.

[mouton]

You're right, Oscar. I don't know why I forgot about those. Well, technically, Nightmare is not a Tim Burton directed film but rather a production. It is also one of my favorite musicals on film actually. Meanwhile, I should have remembered Corpse Bride, if only to reference a film that should have hinted at Burton's difficulty with the genre. Funny though as I felt Burton rushed through the musical numbers in Sweeney, he used them to pass time in Corpse Bride. Both were beautiful films but neither was a well executed musical.

[oscar jubis]

Indeed, we're dealing with a unique case here in that the director is not the auteur. Burton did not direct the film but the characters and the story are entirely out of his head, and the "vision" is his. The complete title of the film is Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for obvious reasons. And it is, by now, a classic.

Jonathan Rosenbaum makes a very apt analogy. He compares Depp, Bonham-Carter, Rickman, et.al. to Brando and Jean Simmons in Guys and Dolls in that they "dissolve the distinction between singing and acting". There's something they bring to the table in terms of performance, and what I'll call presence, that a pure singer would hardly be able to contribute. Your criticism of the principal's voices fails to account for the power and nuance they bring to the characterization. Granted, Bonham-Carter's voice is indeed "weak". But this bothered me significantly less than its effect on you.

[mouton]

Actually, my criticism of the lead's singing is followed directly by attacks on what I felt to be a lack of presence in their acting as well. Both actors failed to bring depth to their extremely layered characters. Where was Mrs. Lovett's desperation and fear? Where was Sweeney's rage and insanity? Burton relied too heavily on how beautiful everything was to account for these elements.

Oh and I know a few actors in my personal circle that are phenomenal singers as well as actors. And good stage performers can bring characterization to the vocals themselves. Take for instance Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone, the Sweeney and Lovett of the most recent Broadway revival. These two are formidable actors but also show their hands in the colour of their voices.

[oscar jubis]

Two problems:

*The idea that having experienced a character by reading a book or having seen a theatrical staging based on the same source can create a very fixed idea of who a character is ("Sweeney Todd requires a voice so powerful and fierce that it resonates fear through the bodies of all who hear it"). In order to be able to judge a different performance based on the same fictional character, the actor deserves a certain flexibility on the part of the critic, a bit of room to allow the actor to give the role a new spin, so to speak. One needs to ascertain what is it that this version, the second experienced by the spectator/critic adds to the role that was not characteristic of the first performance.

*Film acting is, for many reasons, different than acting for the theater. I bet Michael Cerveris' performance would look very odd, perhaps silly or hyperbolic, if it was incorporated into Burton's film. A film based on a play should not be a filmed play.

[mouton]

I believe in interpretation of character. And yes, Cerveris' performance would be out of place on film. Still, without placing too much restriction on performance, I do still feel that there are some inherent qualities that need to come through in order to lend the necessary weight to the story. A musical also allows for a whole other level of expression in the vocals themselves and that possibility was squandered here. Regardless of comparison to the stage performances I was fortunate enough to witness, I found Depp's and Bonham Carter's performances to be bland and colorless. It's as though all the color was sucked out of them and injected back into the elaborate art direction.

[oscar jubis]

Both Depp and Bonham-Carter are nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress at the Golden Globes. Obviously many would disagree with you.

[Chris Knipp]

One needs to ascertain what is it that this version, the second experienced by the spectator/critic adds to the role that was not characteristic of the first performance. What he or she adds--or takes away. What mouton was noting is that there's less there. It's pretty obvious that Helena Bonham Carter isn't much of an acrtress, or a singer. I focused on the visual aspect of the new film, which I think is wonderful, and hence I emphasized how similar (and appropriate in their way) Depp and Carter look. I can't say much for their singing, though Depp's delivery at least is clear. Her's isn't. It's hard to make out the words when she's singing. What the two do bring is a certain dreamlike quality, which blends into the emphasis on the beauty of the whole thing, I agree with mouton that a musical stage production of this or an opera, etc., could have much more nuanced and complex personalities, despite the emphasis on singing. A good opera is more complex in performance than what we get from Depp and Carter in Sweeney Todd. i still found the movie masterful and memorable, though I liked it more than mouton did, even though when you come down to it, he's not wrong about the performances.

It's hardly even necessary to mention that a stage performance "would look very odd, perhaps silly or hyperbolic" if transferred directly to the screen. But after seeing Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, the idea that movie peformances are less histrionic than stage ones seems one that doesn't always hold up.

[mouton]

Oscar, I don't care that both actors are nominated for Golden Globes. What is your point? John Travolta is nominated too; does that mean I should love him too? People are always going to disagree with me, no matter whether I praise or criticize. I'm just stating my opinion. I didn't like them. I have my reasons and they are just as valid as yours, and the Hollywood Foreign Press's reasons for liking them. Let's just say, if I were a member of the HFP, they certainly wouldn't get my vote. There is no right or wrong, only opinion.

Well put, Chris. The manner in which the actors are portrayed visually is their most significant addition to the overall aesthetic of the film. They look right; they just don't sound it ... especially her. She took lessons, damnit, and that's still the best she could do. Ugh.

[Chris Knipp]

Both Depp and Bonham-Carter are nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress at the Golden Globes. Obviously many would disagree with you. That's a tribute to the magic generated by the film, to which the principals obviously contribute. Carter (her name isn't hypenated) has been nominated for major film acting awards before as has Depp. And their striking looks certainly don't hurt. Sometimes the awards folks go wrong, and occasionally they go badly wrong. But I''m not saying their performances are as weak as mouton says, just that his calling them "bland" and saying they lack nuance or complexity isn't too far off, even if it may seem a bit unfair, given the success of the movie as a movie.

[Chris Knipp]

i agree with mouton on Carter's singing, not so much for the weakness of the voice itself (most of the main characters were actors who aren't really singers) but because I could not make out what she was saying in her songs. With the others I could. She seemed to slur her words.

[bix171]

Tim Burton takes a deep breath and exhales: his most personal work and its presentation both come out in a rush and when it's over, the audience (at least the one I was with) makes a mad scramble for the exit. The triumph of "Sweeney Todd" is the curiously dour overview Burton displays--while Stephen Sondheim's musical was never the sunniest of works, Burton ramps up the bloodletting in the most graphically visual terms possible, forcing the audience's hand time after time. (In addition to the immediate dash to leave at the conclusion, several audience members left mid-performance.) When it's over, you're either congratulating Burton for his uncompromising attitude or condemning him for making you an accomplice. Where the film has its difficulties is in the execution: there's no time wasted in getting to the (sung) backstory, leaving the viewer little opportunity to buy into the mood and rhythm of the work (the musical's opening piece, sung by a chorus to establish Sweeney's character, has been eliminated); it's difficult to find the time to enjoy Dante Ferretti's dank, claustrophobic production design while being forced to concentrate on Sondheim's endlessly complex and beautiful wordplay. Additionally, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, as his accomplice in murder, the piemaker Mrs. Lovett, are not particularly good singers (though Depp's voice gets stronger as the film goes along) and the music whizzes by in a disorienting blur. But somewhere around the middle, with the appearance of the incredibly versatile Sacha Baron Cohen as Todd's rival and the beginning of the bloodletting, the film finds its legs and evolves into a fascinating insight into Tim Burton and the apparent stock he's taking of his career thus far and the appraisal he makes of his commercial body of work is more naked and brutally honest than any filmmaker working today. As a film, it's a better stage musical; as a comment on the state of commercial filmmaking today and one man's involement in it, it's a highly intelligent and troubling piece of art.

[bix171]

mouton wrote:

The character of Sweeney Todd requires a voice so powerful and fierce that it resonates fear through the bodies of all who hear it.

I agree completely. The only time I've seen "Sweeney Todd" onstage was done by the Lyric Opera of Chicago with the powerful tenor Bryn Terfel in the lead.

Oscar Jubis wrote that Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:

He compares Depp, Bonham-Carter, Rickman, et.al. to Brando and Jean Simmons in Guys and Dolls in that they "dissolve the distinction between singing and acting". There's something they bring to the table in terms of performance, and what I'll call presence, that a pure singer would hardly be able to contribute.

Here I disagree. I felt Brando in "Guys And Dolls" was one of the biggest miscasts in Hollywood musical history. (Jean Simmons didn't affect me as much.) Brando is so completely out of his element here, especially in the Cuban dance number, that I was distracted by how they staged the number around his lack of musical ability. If you're looking purely at "presence" then yes, I'll agree that using Brando was effective--after all, he's Brando, he's going to overshadow everything he does. But for me his appearance in "Guys And Dolls" was merely a distraction in a movie that wasn't very good to begin with.

Depp's okay in "Sweeney Todd" but this shouldn't be the role he's rewarded with awards for, despite his ambitious risk-taking. Given my belief that Depp is, along with Tom Hanks, the finest actor working today, that role is still to come.

[Chris Knipp]

bx171:

I agree with a lot of what you say (in your first statement about the film). One thing you said about things whizzing by in a blur stood out when I read your very nice description. I'm not quite qualified to say how much this is a comment on his career thus far by Tim Burton, because I'm not a Burton fan or expert. I found time to focus on the production design and it was the moody dark look of the film obviously(if you read my review above) that most impressed me, but in retrospect the film is somewhat fading, as if I too ran out of the theater as you say your audience did, and I forgot it quickly, perhaps because I don't want to remember all thost slit throats. It seemed such a perfect, unified, darkly beautiful piece of work (and I guess it is) and yet for a variety of reasons I am not entirely moved now to want to list this among the year's best, and I somewhat regret saying that it was "a great film." But otherwise I don't think my description of it was wrong. Maybe it's so perfect (and neat) a film that we don't appreciate it. We appreciate more a movie that declares at every moment what a great ambitious project it is--hence the overwhelming raves for THERE WILL BE BLOOD. In the same way a laborious, self-conscious, mannered performance like Daniel Day-Lewis' is deemed the performance of the year, or even, one critic said, of "the century"! While Depp seamlessly slips into this role of the revenger murderer like a singer doing an old song he's always known, wearing it like an old shoe.

As I was writing this, you posted your replies to mouton and Jubis.

I don't know about GUYS AND DOLLS.. I also think that Depp is a "great actor" in a special sense. As I said, his capacity is his "negative capability," his ability to disappear. I'd say EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is more memorable, and Jarmusch's DEAD MAN. You cannot dissolve the distinction between singing and acting. That is a pretty meaningless statement. It interests me that you say in Chicago Bryn Terfel performed the lead, which his powerful voice. That makes one think. But Burton knows how to process a set of materials and make them into Burton, and it's no mean feat.