SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

By M.G. Wood

Release Date:December 21st, 2007 Tim Burton John Logan Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, Jamie Campbell Bowen, Jayne Wisener, Laura Michelle Kelly, Ed Sanders Paramount Pictures Rated: R for graphic bloody violence

What exactly is blood-curdling? Webster’s definition of curdle: to change into curd; coagulate; congeal. Something so horrifying, so shocking, that one’s blood actually congeals; like the blood-jello that settles beneath a piece of meat that has sat too long in the refrigerator.

Helena Bonham-Carter plays Mrs. Lovett; she owns a meat pie shop on Fleet Street in London. Mrs. Lovett makes “The Worst Pies in London”, and still she encourages Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) to try one. Sweeney Todd having just come back to London after years in prison was not privy to the baking of the meat pie Mrs. Lovett placed before him, he has no way of knowing whether the cockroach Mrs. Lovett squashed with her rolling pin is contained within the gray-gooey mass oozing from the flaky crust.

But, Sweeney Todd does indeed try the pie, all the while observing the surroundings he once knew as lovely and inviting, now black and bleak. Of course prior to entering Mrs. Lovett’s Meat Pie Shop, Sweeney Todd mused there’s “No Place Like London” to his fellow traveler Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower). Anthony Hope, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed is the thing with feathers of which Emily Dickenson wrote and of which shares his name. Sweeney Todd quickly quashes Anthony’s great expectations of a London full of opportunity and grandeur by explaining,

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit

and the vermin of the world inhabit it

and its morals aren't worth what a pin can spit

and it goes by the name of London.

For you see, Sweeney Todd was once a respected member of society, the most popular and best barber in all of London with a wife and a young daughter. Until something dreadful happened…

There was a barber and his wife.

And he was beautiful...

A proper artist with a knife,

but they transported him for life.

And he was beautiful...

Barker his name was.

Johnny Depp slices and dices his way through Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant and bloody musical SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET with a nicely calibrated voice to match his entertainingly operatic presence. Directed by Tim Burton, it’s hard to imagine any filmmaker more perfectly suited to stage a cinematic version of the wildly popular play. Burton has for over 20 years made movies that seem at once comic and comical (PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE) and at the same time animated and surreal (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY). But it was with ED WOOD in 1994 that many sat-up and took notice of a filmmaker that can wield a powerful theatrical baton to enrich his remarkable cinematic flair.

Tim Burton’s Goth cred was long ago solidified with gloriously gloomy gothic treats like BEETLE JUICE (1988), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990), THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993), ED WOOD (1994), and SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999). And now with SWEENEY TODD, Mr. Burton may well have marked his name in blood across the pantheon of the dark arts by appealing to yet another rabid group of creative soul: the black-clad patrons that haunt musical theatre.

What truly elevates SWEENEY TODD above anything else Tim Burton has created prior to this film is the deep emotional power of Sondheim’s music and lyrics . There is an undeniable melancholia that flows throughout every scene and every song. Tim Burton is an artist that understands there is a deep current of sadness and pain that runs beneath the darkest of souls. But, it’s to our great pleasure that he has only now been able to fully bring this beautiful thing to fruition. It’s as if everything that’s come before in Mr. Burton’s repertoire has been dress-rehearsal for this, his most powerful work.

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