Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2008)

Long before Sondheim's musical premiered in 1979, the original stage version of this tale by George Dibdin Pitt (adapted from the 1846 penny-dreadful horror novel 'A String of Pearls' by Thomas Prest) opened at the Hoxton Theatre, London on March 1 1847. From the excellent opening titles, I knew this film was going to follow in the blood-soaked footsteps of it's Victorian predecessor. Tim Burton's dark, tragicomic imagination seems to gel so well with the theme, that he was the natural choice to meld Victorian melodrama and a classic of 20th century musical theatre. A grim and desperate Victorian London was fully realised from the outset - reflected and led by music and razor-sharp lyrics of Sondheim's now rightly famous musical play. I call this a musical play, because that is just what it is, the characters do not burst anachronistically into song at odd moments as in other mere musicals, here the genius of Sondheim is such that the characters engage in fully rounded exchanges - they just happen to be singing.
Action, music and song mesh seamlessly, always full of interest wit and revelation. From Alan Rickman's Judge Turpin to Sasha Baron Cohen's wonderful Perelli, the casting is excellent. Bonham-Carter proves that she fully deserved to be cast as Mrs Lovett, as she takes on the part created by Angela Landsbury and makes it fully her own - becoming by turns comic, sardonic, bittersweet and thoroughly nasty while never missing a note along the way.
Johnny Depp, sounding like a cross between Antony Newley and David Bowie, clearly relished the challenge to show another facet of his talents, and as ever, succeeded spectacularly. He is an actor who always manages to find the innate humanity in the odd characters he tends to play. Here he shows Sweeney's decent from happy man to crazed avenger with the kind of heart rending subtly, which only serves to make his further trials at the hands of Fate even more tragic.
The only reason I am giving this movie a 9 instead of a 10, is that for me, I believe Burton missed a trick. Yes, Sweeney Todd is the Demon Barber, and yes the prosthetics were excellent, and okay, Burton said he did not want to back away from the gore, but when all is said and done, the graphic murder of minor characters was overdone. For me, if their violent deaths had been implied rather than shown, the ending would have been much more powerful and affecting. By the time of the climatic scene arrived, although redolent with Victorian morality and melodrama, I am afraid my senses were rather too soaked in 'Kensington Gore' (stage blood) to be as shocked and moved as I supposed Tim Burton intended. Thus a twinge of disappointment erupted in me as the credits rolled, as I realised it was the only bum note in an otherwise pitch-perfect movie experience. Such a shame - mind you, it won't stop me looking forward to the DVD.....