Tin Burton: Sweeney Todd (2070)

[bix171]

Tim Burton takes a deep breath and exhales: his most personal work and its presentation both come out in a rush and when it's over, the audience (at least the one I was with) makes a mad scramble for the exit. The triumph of "Sweeney Todd" is the curiously dour overview Burton displays--while Stephen Sondheim's musical was never the sunniest of works, Burton ramps up the bloodletting in the most graphically visual terms possible, forcing the audience's hand time after time. (In addition to the immediate dash to leave at the conclusion, several audience members left mid-performance.) When it's over, you're either congratulating Burton for his uncompromising attitude or condemning him for making you an accomplice. Where the film has its difficulties is in the execution: there's no time wasted in getting to the (sung) backstory, leaving the viewer little opportunity to buy into the mood and rhythm of the work (the musical's opening piece, sung by a chorus to establish Sweeney's character, has been eliminated); it's difficult to find the time to enjoy Dante Ferretti's dank, claustrophobic production design while being forced to concentrate on Sondheim's endlessly complex and beautiful wordplay. Additionally, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, as his accomplice in murder, the piemaker Mrs. Lovett, are not particularly good singers (though Depp's voice gets stronger as the film goes along) and the music whizzes by in a disorienting blur. But somewhere around the middle, with the appearance of the incredibly versatile Sacha Baron Cohen as Todd's rival and the beginning of the bloodletting, the film finds its legs and evolves into a fascinating insight into Tim Burton and the apparent stock he's taking of his career thus far and the appraisal he makes of his commercial body of work is more naked and brutally honest than any filmmaker working today. As a film, it's a better stage musical; as a comment on the state of commercial filmmaking today and one man's involement in it, it's a highly intelligent and troubling piece of art.

[bix171]

mouton wrote:

The character of Sweeney Todd requires a voice so powerful and fierce that it resonates fear through the bodies of all who hear it.

I agree completely. The only time I've seen "Sweeney Todd" onstage was done by the Lyric Opera of Chicago with the powerful tenor Bryn Terfel in the lead.

Oscar Jubis wrote that Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:

He compares Depp, Bonham-Carter, Rickman, et.al. to Brando and Jean Simmons in Guys and Dolls in that they "dissolve the distinction between singing and acting". There's something they bring to the table in terms of performance, and what I'll call presence, that a pure singer would hardly be able to contribute.

Here I disagree. I felt Brando in "Guys And Dolls" was one of the biggest miscasts in Hollywood musical history. (Jean Simmons didn't affect me as much.) Brando is so completely out of his element here, especially in the Cuban dance number, that I was distracted by how they staged the number around his lack of musical ability. If you're looking purely at "presence" then yes, I'll agree that using Brando was effective--after all, he's Brando, he's going to overshadow everything he does. But for me his appearance in "Guys And Dolls" was merely a distraction in a movie that wasn't very good to begin with.

Depp's okay in "Sweeney Todd" but this shouldn't be the role he's rewarded with awards for, despite his ambitious risk-taking. Given my belief that Depp is, along with Tom Hanks, the finest actor working today, that role is still to come.

[Chris Knipp]

bx171:

I agree with a lot of what you say (in your first statement about the film). One thing you said about things whizzing by in a blur stood out when I read your very nice description. I'm not quite qualified to say how much this is a comment on his career thus far by Tim Burton, because I'm not a Burton fan or expert. I found time to focus on the production design and it was the moody dark look of the film obviously(if you read my review above) that most impressed me, but in retrospect the film is somewhat fading, as if I too ran out of the theater as you say your audience did, and I forgot it quickly, perhaps because I don't want to remember all thost slit throats. It seemed such a perfect, unified, darkly beautiful piece of work (and I guess it is) and yet for a variety of reasons I am not entirely moved now to want to list this among the year's best, and I somewhat regret saying that it was "a great film." But otherwise I don't think my description of it was wrong. Maybe it's so perfect (and neat) a film that we don't appreciate it. We appreciate more a movie that declares at every moment what a great ambitious project it is--hence the overwhelming raves for THERE WILL BE BLOOD. In the same way a laborious, self-conscious, mannered performance like Daniel Day-Lewis' is deemed the performance of the year, or even, one critic said, of "the century"! While Depp seamlessly slips into this role of the revenger murderer like a singer doing an old song he's always known, wearing it like an old shoe.

As I was writing this, you posted your replies to mouton and Jubis.

I don't know about GUYS AND DOLLS.. I also think that Depp is a "great actor" in a special sense. As I said, his capacity is his "negative capability," his ability to disappear. I'd say EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is more memorable, and Jarmusch's DEAD MAN. You cannot dissolve the distinction between singing and acting. That is a pretty meaningless statement. It interests me that you say in Chicago Bryn Terfel performed the lead, which his powerful voice. That makes one think. But Burton knows how to process a set of materials and make them into Burton, and it's no mean feat.