He feels pretty and witty and insane...

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2008)

A story involving revenge, 19th Century London (wonderfully reconstructed by Italian production designer Dante Ferretti), madness, cannibalism and repeated throat-cutting - is it any wonder Gothic maestro Tim Burton fell in love with Stephen Sondheim's politically incorrect musical right off the bat? In fact, who else but the visionary who gave us Batman and Sleepy Hollow could have done this gory tale justice? That said, is Sweeney Todd Burton's best film? Not quite. And it isn't his greatest collaboration with Johnny Depp either: both titles are still shared by the combined magic of Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. It does, however, rank a close second on either list: such is the visual, aural and emotional power of the tragic, violent love-story-cum-horror-movie.
The mood of the picture is elegantly set in the opening credits, made in typical Burton fashion: company logos (Dreamworks and Warner) set to dramatic music (no Danny Elfman, though: all the tunes heard in the movie are Sondheim's creation) and the camera following a productive process inside a building. Imagine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with added blood, and there's the intro, followed by Todd's (Johnny Depp) return to London after 15 years of incarceration. Not that he's very happy to be back: he calls the city "a big black pit filled with people who are filled with sh*t", a description that is hard to dismiss, given the bleak weather and bleaker houses. One of the latter used to contain Sweeney's barbershop, but is now the home of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman who earns her living by making "The Worst Meat Pies in London". She recognizes Todd as Benjamin Barker, a successful barber who was imprisoned so that the sleazy Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) could freely seduce his wife and raise his daughter. Now, with the missus dead and the girl in Turpin's grasp, the grief-stricken man has only one thing on his mind: revenge, even if that means murdering innocent people along the road. From that simple idea stems a sinister plan, one that will appease Todd's lust for blood and improve his accomplice's business.
Given the director's previous trips in musical areas (The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride), one might expect a similar lightness of touch in Sweeney Todd. Nothing further from the truth: if there's one thing that makes Burton a genius, it's his ability to understand what works and what doesn't in a specific kind of movie. Back in 1989, he justified his take on the Dark Knight by saying: "If you want to do it bright and light you either do Superman or Cotton Candy Man, you don't do Batman!". His vision of the Demon Barber is backed by the same frankness: "I had seen several stage productions where they toned down the blood, but you can't be politically correct with this: it's a story about a serial killer and they cook people in pies.". And there is no correctness in the feature: gallows humor of the blackest kind, implications of rape and child abuse, and gallons of blood - whereas Sleepy Hollow's decapitations were frequent but anemic, Sweeney Todd's succession of deaths doesn't hold back the red bodily fluid.
Of course, with such a subject, chances are viewers might fail to root for the twisted characters. Burton solves the problem thanks to the songs: in most musicals, they are merely a distraction from the plot; this time, they are integral to the story's human core, as they are used by the cast to convey a complex range of emotions that are hard to express with normal words. Every single actor (including Sacha Baron Cohen as an Italian barber) masters Sondheim's lyrics with unusual grace (then again, the author had the final word on the director's casting choices), and they all use the music to transcend the two-dimensional prison their characters would otherwise be locked up in. Rickman, in particular, gives Turpin an additional majestic feel besides the sheer menace he has carried around since Die Hard, while Bonham Carter proves she wasn't chosen because she is Burton's sweetheart: there's real passion and suffering beneath Mrs. Lovett's insanity, as a beautiful dream sequence (the only moment in the whole film to contain sunlight) testifies. But it is Depp who, as expected, delivers the most impressive performance, for which he won his first Golden Globe and received his third Academy Award nomination: "barking mad", as his partner describes him, while he sings "My Friends" (referred to the razors) and painfully tender in his rendition of "Johanna" (a song concerning Todd's daughter), he paints a layered, immensely compelling portrait of a man wronged for no reason and driven mad by loss. In addition, fans will probably love the Scissorhands joke ("At last, my arm is complete again!").
Sure, some people might find the concept disgusting. Some will be turned off by the blood-letting. But by finding the humanity of the characters and using the musical numbers to tell the gory story of Sweeney Todd, Burton has made a spellbinding film that will, in due time, be considered a classic of the genre.