Film Review: Sweeney Todd (2007)
Violence, Vengeance, and Vapid Melody in Burton's Musical Letdown
Feb 13, 2008
Brian Orndorf of DVDTalk.com said of Sweeney Todd, "Either audiences will lap up the exaggerated ... theatrics with a nervous smile or they'll cower in their seats hoping to switch their tickets to the next available showing of Enchanted." One couldn't have thought of a better description.
Based on the 1979 Stephen Sondheim (West Side Story) musical, the Burton-Depp-Bonham Carter triumvirate once again unite to bring us an extremely well-directed, well-filmed, yet ultimately unsatisfying, anti-Christmas work of grim misanthropy.
Coming straight off his own swashbuckling coattails of the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy, Johnny Depp has brought his charisma down many a notch in order to fit into the brooding, yet maniacal role of Sweeney Todd. Yet even within the context of this Tim Burton concoction, Depp's performance here seems much less thoughtfully nuanced than the character he ingeniously created in Pirates.
For the most part, the performances in the film may very well have been strictly dictated by Burton's atmospheric and mise-en-scene considerations, yet the best actors do let their talents shine through. Helena Bonham Carter, looking as Fight Club-ingly slovenly as ever, prowlingly moves across the scenes like a curiously devilish child, often fidgeting and hiding her lithe arms behind her to mask her delusional, self-serving intentions. Meanwhile, THE character actor of them all, Sacha Boren Cohen (Borat), lends a hilarious comic relief to his faux-Italian elixir swindler.
The music, of course, was, well, musical. Of the typical musical variety. All purposes considered, though Depp's and the others' singing very adequaltely sufficed for this cinematic release of the musical, it all held a somewhat monotone quality; not deplorable, yet nowhere near remarkable as say, 2002's Broadway-to-silver screen hit, Chicago.
Trying as much as possible to not sound like a film review from The Christian Observer, though, this reviewer had a difficult time coming to terms with the movie's explicit, gratuitous, and wanton murder. It's hard to sympathize with a wronged man's plight when he reacts with such unwarranted and brutal violence toward complete strangers. It's one thing to "righteously" and explicitly slit the throats of those who have directly harmed you; it's another thing entirely to smile and sing to innocent people behind the chorus of catchy music and stylized cinematography in order to glamorize gruesome murder. Burton deliberately uses an off-shade of red to depict the copious amounts of dripping, flowing, oozing, spilling, gushing, spouting blood, most likely to soften the effect of the film's brutality. Yet even then, one can't help but squirm in his/her seat when witnessing Depp's razor blade strenuously slicing into an innocent old man's esophagus, redness spurting forth like a ruptured water main, then watching the corpse being thrown down into a meat-grinding furnace landing head-first onto the grimy stone floor below in a completely contorted position.
In the end, Depp, of course, receives his inevitably poetic comeuppance. Camera fades, operatic music chimes in, and all injustice is unresolvingly resolved. Leaving the theater, on the other hand, was a bit of an unnerving trip to the barber's in and of itself.
 |
 |
 |
 |
