Sweeney Todd (18.)
Directed by Tim Burton.
Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen. 120 mins
My one worthwhile insight into the Great British Night life is that Goths, however dark and brooding they look, are inevitable harmless and it’s the blokes in bright coloured shirts that you have to look out for. It’s a theory I always used to extend to Tim Burton, a nocturnal film maker whose dark visions - the odd looped off head in Sleepy Hollow aside – were ultimately rather cosy. Now though he’s made a movie that is dark in more than just the set design, a genuinely disturbing vision. And it’s a musical.
This is a Demon Barber of Fleet Street without any moderation; Burton pushes everything to the extreme. Throats aren’t merely severed, they gush forth blood like the lift in The Shining; it isn’t Dickensian London, it’s a Victorian London more suited to Nosferatu than Oliver Twist; it’s not merely a musical, it’s a Sondheim musical that’s more in common with opera than Mamma Mia.
If the bloodletting doesn’t traumatise you, the score will. No nice show stopping, foot tapping tunes here, this is Sondheim at his most demanding. Indeed, one of the more audience-friendly, recognisable numbers, The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, has been cut. I think it’s only reasonable to caution that however many (fully deserved) raves you read, it’s not everybody.
Depp is Benjamin Barker, a wronged man who had wife and child stolen from him and returns to London in search of revenge and sets himself up as Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, dispatching customers with his blade and delivering them down through a trap door to Mrs Lovett below, who turns them into tasty pies.
Depp is absolutely magnificent; his Sweeney Todd is Edward Scissorhands through a glass darkly, a compelling vision of absolute nihilism, while his singing is one of the estrongets in the cast. Don’t expect something like Brando gamely mumbling through “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” in Guys and Doll.
It seems to me that Depp excels at the kind of stunt perfrormances that Brando loved to have a go at but usually fell flat. Give him an accent and a gimmick to do and always comes good. It’s simply one of the finest performances he’s ever given. It needed to be as well, anything less and I think Sweeney Todd might have floundered. As it is there are the occasional longuers but as it the extremity and sheer perversity of makes it work.
Directed by Tim Burton.
Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen. 120 mins
My one worthwhile insight into the Great British Night life is that Goths, however dark and brooding they look, are inevitable harmless and it’s the blokes in bright coloured shirts that you have to look out for. It’s a theory I always used to extend to Tim Burton, a nocturnal film maker whose dark visions - the odd looped off head in Sleepy Hollow aside – were ultimately rather cosy. Now though he’s made a movie that is dark in more than just the set design, a genuinely disturbing vision. And it’s a musical.
This is a Demon Barber of Fleet Street without any moderation; Burton pushes everything to the extreme. Throats aren’t merely severed, they gush forth blood like the lift in The Shining; it isn’t Dickensian London, it’s a Victorian London more suited to Nosferatu than Oliver Twist; it’s not merely a musical, it’s a Sondheim musical that’s more in common with opera than Mamma Mia.
If the bloodletting doesn’t traumatise you, the score will. No nice show stopping, foot tapping tunes here, this is Sondheim at his most demanding. Indeed, one of the more audience-friendly, recognisable numbers, The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, has been cut. I think it’s only reasonable to caution that however many (fully deserved) raves you read, it’s not everybody.
Depp is Benjamin Barker, a wronged man who had wife and child stolen from him and returns to London in search of revenge and sets himself up as Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, dispatching customers with his blade and delivering them down through a trap door to Mrs Lovett below, who turns them into tasty pies.
Depp is absolutely magnificent; his Sweeney Todd is Edward Scissorhands through a glass darkly, a compelling vision of absolute nihilism, while his singing is one of the estrongets in the cast. Don’t expect something like Brando gamely mumbling through “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” in Guys and Doll.
It seems to me that Depp excels at the kind of stunt perfrormances that Brando loved to have a go at but usually fell flat. Give him an accent and a gimmick to do and always comes good. It’s simply one of the finest performances he’s ever given. It needed to be as well, anything less and I think Sweeney Todd might have floundered. As it is there are the occasional longuers but as it the extremity and sheer perversity of makes it work.
