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Sweeney Todd
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It’s fair to say that Sweeney Todd (R for graphic bloody violence) is the bloodiest musical ever to splatter the silver screen. This film is not in the same genre as West Side Story or Hairspray. It’s a horror film that happens to be backed up with a brilliant musical score.
The story concerns a barber named Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp, who can actually sing), who is robbed of his beautiful wife and baby by a jealous, deviant judge (Alan Rickman), falsely convicted, and sent to prison. After fifteen festering years, Barker – now calling himself Sweeney Todd - returns to London, ravenous for revenge, and returns to his barbershop in his old garret above a meat pie shop run by Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). “We all deserve to die, Mrs. Lovett,” he grimly sings, and he and his razor will gruesomely help the matter along, and with gusto. Business starts going like gangbusters, both for him and for Mrs. Lovett, who finds that the exorbitant price of meat for her pies is now irrelevant, and not because profits are up.
This film retains much of the legendary Sondheim score, but fans of the musical might be disappointed at the disappearance of several songs, including “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”. There’s a purpose to the exclusion; director Tim Burton has made a movie based on a musical, rather than simply adapting a musical for film, resulting in a stronger narrative flow and little to distract from the central premise. As a result, it’s darker, less funny, and angrier than the original. Burton’s visual style has reached maturity – monochromatic, gothic, and a little crazy, and in his finest work to date, he has pushed this legend into its darkest corners. Depp’s palpable rage, in his singing and especially his eyes, is downright terrifying.
“Freely flows the blood of those who moralize,” sings the chorus in the stage version. Point well taken. If there’s a moral to Sweeney Todd, it’s that revenge poisons the mind beyond reason and destroys indiscriminately. No man is uncorrupted.
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A matter of life
To post this blog message for the Christmas season is seriously sick, dear Alissa.
I love it.
It may be seriously sick, RN–I’m familiar with the musical–but I gotta see it! Johnny Depp singing? Oh, yes!
I don’t know that it’s “seriously” sick. Who needs to remember the birth of Christ more than the corrupt?
Would I go to see this movie on Christmas day or during the holiday season? Probably not. But I would have to agree with Alissa that revenge will poison a person. When I run into an angry or a vengeful person, someone who tries to undercut another, I can only wonder what happened to them to make them lash out the way they do. What amazes me even more is that they don’t realize that others see right through them. It’s sad that they won’t break the cycle and remain in their miserable state.
My college roommate played the saxophone in a production of Sweeney Todd. I was going to attend and hear her, but when she described the story even I, a much more jaded than I am today, drew back in horror at the story line.
I listened to her practice instead.
Depp and Bonham Carter are interesting actors and we loved Burton’s Big Fish, but I’ll be passing on this one. I can’t deal with the violence and blood.
I’d watch Depp chew bubblegum if Burton was filming it.
I’ve even watched Depp when Burton wasn’t filming him.
Singing is more than carrying a tune. Anyone can sing.
The single biggest reason people have lost interest in movie musicals is because big name stars are cast who can’t sing. Some examples, Lucille Ball in Mame. Rosiland Russel in Gypsy. Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Only a few musicals have been made in the last 40 years. The good ones have good singers. Cabaret, Chicago, Victor Victoria, Dream Girls.
It’s hard enough making a movie people will want to watch, but putting crummy singers in musicals is a sure flop.
Just from the comercials and the trailers on the internet, no way I will endure two hours of whispered singing.
RDEAN, you are on a roll, this Christmas.
I cannot sing worth a lick. As I don’t have a bit of acting ability, either, I am not tempted to inflict my singing ability on a captive audience, and I will shortly swear off inflicting my blogging on a captive audience at worldmagblog.
I will bet you about 10,000 to 1 odds that none of those detractors who say Random will be back will ever say By golly, he actually stayed away for six months.
Well, Rdean,
There’s singing and then there’s singing, I agree. I’m an opera fan, really, so I’ve heard others sing Sondheim, but I’m not a snob and I am a Johnny Depp fan.
And I am a BIG fan of Bruce Willis. Love the Die Hard movies. They are the best. Remember when he thought he could sing? Horrible.
Being a fan of an entertainer is fine, but that doesn’t mean they can do “everything”. Big name actors are surrounded by people that constanly tell them they are SOOOO good. After a while, some begin to believe their own press.
Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne were initially touted and then advised not to bill themselves ever as…
VOCALISTS!
MGM made all of it’s stars sing at one time or another. Who can forget Clark Gable singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz”?
Rdean, I would say that the real reason movie musicals aren’t popular is not because of poor singing, but because (with the exception of Chicago) they’ve been poorly adapted from the stage. Burton’s Sweeney Todd is remarkable in that it successfully and brilliantly narrowed the enormous scope of the stage production to fit the silver screen, which actually justifies the poor singing. I would be complaining from here to judgment day if Depp or Carter (BRILLIANT in this movie, btw) were ever cast in a stage version, but for Burton’s gritty, nasty Sweeney Todd, their thin and raw voices were admirably suited to the material. Depp’s “Epiphany,” while not as blood-vessel bursting as George Hearn’s on the DVD of the touring company, scared the begeezes outta me and Carter’s “Not While I’m Around” was one of the highlights of the film.
The thing about musicals is it’s not so much about singing the songs as it is about ACTING them. Burton understands that. Listen to any old cast recording and you’ll notice that they’re voices aren’t particularly good, but they won audiences over by SELLING IT. And Burton & Co. do a darned good job of selling it.
#13: they’ve been poorly adapted from the stage.
You are right there and for me, one of the reasons has been bad singing. Who is the best performer in Dreamgirls? Is it coincidence that it’s also the “best singer”?
The Broadway soundtrack of My Fair Lady has for outsold the movie soundtrack. Anyone comparing Julie Andrews to Marnie Nixon understands why. Rex Harrison didn’t even try to sing and it served him well. He sold the part for all it was worth, but who want’s to listen to him talking songs. They do that now, it’s called “rapping”.
Sorry, to each is own. If I’m going to listen to music with people singing, I want them to be singing really good, otherwise, I’ll pass.