Sweeney Todd probably ranks amongst my favorite musicals, and Stephen Sondheim is one of my favorite musical composers. His music is lush and challenging, and his lyrics are ever clever and surprising. After seeing it staged for the first time in the early 1980s, I memorized the libretto, learning how to sing every part, frustrated that my dramatic soprano voice could never quite reach Johanna’s highest notes.
I also like Tim Burton and have enjoyed most of his collaborations with Johnny Depp. Edward Scissorhands never fails to make me cry, due in large part to Depp’s sensitive portrayal of the fragile and tormented young man. And Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favorite films ever; the combination of musical theatre and bizarre surreal animation is pure Burtonesque genius.
So it was with all of this pre-existing knowledge and great expectation that I went to see Burton’s new film version of Sweeney Todd. There is much to like in it, and, sadly, much about which to be disappointed.
Dante Ferretti’s brilliant production design gifts us with an intricate blending of gritty, realism and the surrealism that is so much the Burton signature. The dreary London of the mid-19th century, complete with rats, roaches (huge roaches, actually), dust and grime seems to be lifted straight from a Charles Dickens novel. Even the upper-middle class figures like Judge Turpin (and his dwellings) seem consumed by the dankness of the age and place.
Unfortunately, the main characters of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett seem (at times) taken out of Kabuki theatre. Depp especially, as Sweeney Todd, seems almost marionette-like in white makeup and careful, wooden movements. That is not to say I didn’t like Depp’s performance. He is a terrific actor who, when he underplays, broods with the best of ‘em. And brood, he does. For there is hardly a more miserable character in all of musical theater than Sweeney Todd. But the highly stylized performance of Depp (and to a lesser degree Helena Bonham Carter) failed to make me weep for the tragedy of our anti-hero. I think I see what Depp and Burton were trying to do with the character, portraying him deeply in shock, immovable because of his grief, but I’m not sure that it works (at least not for me).
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