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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Directed by Tim Burton.

posted December 2007

What do you make of Sweeney Todd? For the usual musical theatre aficionado, the gore factor is from Hell, suitable, I suppose, for those slasher movies the disaffected are fond of. For the slasher movie aficionado, what the hell does music have to do with the blood flow? For the Tim Burton aficionado, what the hell is his horror-fest doing in the company of a most refined and sophisticated Broadway musical theatre creator? We are used to Burton’s grotesque but sweet characters (you remember Edward Scissorhands), horror (Sleepy Hollow , et.al.), lush move-making, but what is Burton doing amid Stephen Sondheim’s lush, layered, beautiful, haunting music and lyrics?

Coming out of the theater it hit me. I have just experienced art: unsettling, beautiful, shocking, but making me think about all those messy (and I’m not talking about slashing and blood baths) that confront all of us in own lives and those of the people inhabiting our world, and mostly about what is beautiful (and we’re not talking just about Johnny Depp’s face.)

But then, who better to do a revival of Sweeney Todd? Who else could bring this disquieting Broadway musical to film but Burton? The fact that many of you have never heard of Sweeney Todd says more about how difficult the material is to revive in any meaningful way, than whether it is worth the bother. Burton is brave enough and, as my brother observed, warped enough, to revive it and to stick to the original. Broadway has not been so adventurous.

I went to see Sweeney Todd with my brother and his kids. I loved it as did my discerning Broadway-bound 15-year-old niece. My brother, the slick-talking salesman, is still in shock and hasn’t spoken in four days. He didn’t get it. My niece absolutely got it, blood and all.

What this Sweeney Todd is, is a gorgeous bit of filmmaking and an affecting artistic achievement.

The music and lyrics are operatic and a triumph — Stephen Sondheim of course, where the men and women are never quite content with each other. Always with Sondheim, one of them wants something impossible from the other. Mrs. Lovett thinks our boy Sweeney, he of the brooding eyes, is good happily-ever-after husband material. She is as wrong as her meat pies.

It is Tim Burton taken to a new higher level and in case anyone is still in doubt about Johnny Depp’s position in the acting hierarchy, this film puts him at the top of actors working today. It is certainly Tim Burton's best work yet. Even though it drags you through some pretty horrifying blood baths (my other niece, the Sorority-Grrrrl’s characterization – she did not see any art or beauty at work) the movie is beautiful. The look of it is dark, brooding. Set against this background, the music, with gorgeous movie-theater orchestrations playing against the horror, is even more beautiful.

This is art, pure and simple, yet complex, proving once again that art is not for the faint of heart. (Just ask my nephew the artist.) The gorgeous music set against the horror is most disturbing, unsettling, the way art can be. It shakes you up, heightens emotions, leaves you thinking about it and feeling it long after the credits roll.

I need to see this again. I'm not sure I can recommend it, but if you can stomach all the throat-slitting and blood and bugs, it is marvelous. Unforgettable.

Beautiful.

written by Mary D. Turner

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