A perfect marriage of cinematic creative team and source material

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2008)

The film is one of the greatest recent examples of a perfect marriage of cinematic creative team and source material. It is only fitting that Stephen Sondheim's dark, macabre, horrific musical be adapted to the screen by none other than Tim Burton, who if anything excels at the dark and the macabre. Although Burton's greatest cinematic preamble to Sweeney Todd is his equally dark and nearly equally gory Sleepy Hollow, incidentally also starring Johnny Depp, with its de-saturated colour palette and gloomy, shadowy, other-worldly atmosphere; the fact is that most of Burton's work belongs to a more childish, fantastical type of macabre. Most of his movies are rated PG, and although claiming to be a stranger to the genre, it's important to notice that some of these films also contain musical numbers. Although not directed by him, The Nightmare Before Christmas was a full-fledged musical, and the same goes for the similarly stop-animated Corpse Bride, this time directed by Burton himself. Even his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory contained a few musical numbers in the form of the Oompa Loompa songs, but one can truly look at Sweeney Todd as a confluence of many of Burton's previous themes and subjects, coming out in full force with guns blazing.
At the center of the film is Stephen Sondheim's musical work, which is so intensely complex and fantastically intricate it's even more of a wonder that it all works so well. Indeed, considering the immense complexity along with the dark, serious nature of the story and the ultimate tragedy of the tale, one can liken Sondheim's work far less to the classic Broadway musical revue and more to a full-fledged modern opera. With songs featuring multiple characters singing and overlapping one another only to occasionally synchronize to incredibly complicated note transitions, recurring themes, lines and elements throughout the entire work, recurring and winding sets of rhymes and rhythms, it is indeed an epic, complicated, majestically elaborate work that deserves credit on its own. And while Sondheim's full, 3-hour musical is more than worth a viewing (or at least a listen) in order to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the entire work, Burton's film adaptation adequately and delicately condenses the musical to make it work more as a film and less as a stage show and retains the complexity and beauty of the original musical work.
But this is also a Tim Burton film, and that also carries a series of characteristics and complexities unique to the director. Burton is indeed a wonder, a perfect example of a modern-day director who didn't break onto the scene through independent film but rather through the traditional studio system with which he has always managed to work with and prosper in. Burton's signature dark, macabre style comes in full force in the film in which sunlight is rarely glimpsed and the scenes are almost always drenched in a gray, de-saturated, colour-less palette  except when doused with the occasional blood splatter. Also in step with his previous works, the film retains an unreal, fantastical, otherworldly feeling to it. It is a highly stylized, darker, fantastical twist on our real-world reality, as much of Burton's films are. Frequent Burton collaborator and costume designer Colleen Atwood, along with extremely talented production designer Dante Ferretti and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski do their utmost best to evoke the dark, macabre atmosphere the film revels in. The fantasy genre is almost cheating when it comes to costume and production design, because quite literally everything goes, but I'm sure those who work in the field get the most pleasure out of projects like Sweeney Todd in which their creative minds can truly go wild and create wondrous works evoking fantastical emotions. What's for sure is that like Wes Anderson, Tim Burton's films are unmistakable and instantly recognizable based on his unique visual style alone.
It is a wondrous and fulfilling experience to have your expectations met, and even exceeded. Everything was going for this film and it certainly didn't disappoint. A more than fitting addition to the Tim Burton canon, it is, on its own, a beautiful and exciting film; dramatically rewarding with its overtures of false imprisonment, evil, revenge and tragedy; its amazingly complex, operatic musical score and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; top-notch performances from Burton's major players and a superb visual style and production value. Fans of the musical genre will rejoice to see such serious, dark, menacing subject matter getting the revue treatment  though the film knows just when to pepper itself with sly, appropriately black humour  and while those who dislike the genre may find the film's almost entirely-sung dialogue difficult to ignore, they may still find more than enough to enjoy in what is one of the most satisfying events of the year.