A dark cityscape opens Sweeney
Todd, Tim Burton's
adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical, but a baby-faced sailor (Jamie
Campbell Bower) seems not to notice the gloom. Dismissing all the glories he's
seen in his travels, he cheerily decides that there's "no place like London,"
in a voice chipper enough to force the sun to shine. But Sweeney Todd isn't that kind of musical. It needs a
different kind of hero, and Bower is soon forced out of frame by the more
troubled face of Johnny Depp, who sings, "You are young. Life has been kind to
you… You will learn."
Life was once kind to Depp's Sweeney
Todd. As a younger man, he was a successful barber with a beautiful wife and
child. But the evil Judge Turpin (a perfectly cast Alan Rickman) decided to
take Depp's family as his own, and had Depp arrested and deported. After more
than a decade in exile, the newly bloodthirsty Depp returns to reclaim what's
his, or failing that, punish those who took it away. He soon finds an ally in
Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett, proprietor of a filthy bakery famed for
"the worst pies in London," which she conveniently makes below Depp's old shop.
The character of Sweeney Todd has
been slicing up victims—and sometimes having them baked into pies by Mrs.
Lovett—in pulp literature, films, and plays since the 19th century.
Inspired by a 1973 play by Christopher Bond, Sondheim's 1979 musical turned him
into a pitiable monster whose thirst for revenge went beyond understandable to
become sympathetic. Enveloping the tale in dark humor and lush, sometimes
frighteningly romantic music, Sondheim's musical made Todd's story into an
inspired, tuneful wallow in the darkest depths of human experience. Burton
brings his signature visual style, and a pair of stock players for his stars,
into this film adaptation, but he wisely follows Sondheim's lead, letting the
music and spirit of the original piece show the way.
It goes to some pretty dark places.
Though it took 28 years to make it to the screen, this musical about revenge
and its repercussions seems fitting for our revenge-steeped times. Depp and
Carter commit beastly deeds, but they keep their characters' humanity front and
center. Even Rickman's villain projects a surprising vulnerability, and though
all three stars have clearly been chosen for their acting skills rather than
their singing voices, the earthiness of their vocal performances keeps the film
grounded in the grit and grime of a world that grinds up the innocent and the
guilty alike. Those who try to turn the crank themselves get the worst of it in
the end, but even they deserve a chance to sing about the love and hope that
brought them so low.