Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
I often feel as though some musicals cover up a multitude of sins through the medium of song. Don’t get me wrong, there are a heap of stage and screen musical ventures that are superb beyond belief. What I’m talking about is the movies that have many flaws but cover them up with a bunch of songs so we merrily sing along. It doesn’t happen too often but when you strip away the soundtrack, you uncover all the mistakes and no matter how jaunty they are, it irks you discovering their secrets. In this case, definitely, the songs of Stephen Sondheim is like plaster covering up the cracks of the overall product of the film.
Based on Sondheim’s seminal stage show, best seen with Angela Lansbury and Michael Ball in the film’s main, Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street roles revolves around Benjamin Barker who is taken away from his wife and child by the ruthless Judge Turpin who has taken a fancy to his spouse. Yelp. Barker returns to London years later in the guise of the ghostlike looking Sweeny Todd to exact his revenge, especially when he finds out that his wife is dead and the child is under the charge of Judge Turpin. Alongside baker Mrs. Lovett, the pair concoct a scheme to get the Judge as well as rampage through the dirty streets of London, looking for pie filling from the general public…
Why Is It Bad?
Coming at a time when Tim Burton had exhausted his resources and continuously used his then wife Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp so the film was already set up to have a lukewarm reception. Particularly, when it’s jarring to her the non-natural singers belt out a whopping tune. Drenched in darkness, the films Gothic aesthetics are often hidden behind tones and shadows making it a hard watch when even the daytime looks covered in a deep smog. With only one song illuminating colour, this is a spectrum of white, black, and obviously red for the lavish amounts of gore that saturate the screening. It’s unpleasant. You may say it’s natural for the bleeding bleak story that has literally one happy ending (and bouts of mental torture) but, for many, this is over the top unhappiness, drowning in Victorian style and off key singing.
Why Is It Good?
Time has been extremely kind to Sweeney Todd and the themes and aesthetics of the film have found a new lease with this equally bleak and dark. Age and maturity, plus a critical eye, has found that all its pithy faults are genuine commentary on the time and era and Sondheim’s music certainly needs an air of elevation to make it work in cinema. Also, whilst there may be a few bum notes in the singing, the emotional arc and sinister elements work remarkably well when placed in the hands of Depp, Carter, Alan Rickman, and Timothy Spall. Bonham Carter’s wide-eyed conniving Lovett steals most of the scenes as both an admirer of Todd and a skilled cannibal peddling pie-maker. The brutality and ballads work together and Burton does wield it well.
Perhaps Sweeney Todd is not for you and, for that reason, I am still tagging it as a stale one; you have to be a real fan of Burton and the almost Edgar Allen Poe imagery of the Victorian era. And, whilst I hate comparing different mediums, the stage show works much better by stripping back the visuals in order to sell the story. That being said, Burton does a marvellous job at mastering the macabre and with actors who definitely flesh out their characters, A stale treat that does lean more towards the treat side, Sweeney Todd is like biting into a big succulent pie filled with human meat and washed down with a pint of ale.
Hmmmmm human meat.