Stephen Sondheim’s music theatre masterwork is adapted with equal mastery and a gothic flourish to the big screen by Tim Burton.
Johnny Depp stars as barber Benjamin Barker, aka Sweeney Todd, falsely imprisoned by Judge Turpin, who has eyes for Barker’s lovely wife. Suffering horrendously in prison for 15 odd years, we join Barker as he is returning to Victorian London, looking for redemption, but finding only wrack and ruin. His wife has committed suicide rather than endure life with the Judge, who now holds his teenage daughter Johanna captive as his ward.
Hellbent on getting Johanna back and getting bloody revenge, Sweeney snaps, and a serial killer is born. He strikes an unholy partnership with Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), proprietor of Mrs. Lovett’s Pies (the worst in London). The barber will give the local scum the closest shave of their lives, and Lovett will bake them into her pies, giving business the boost it needs.
London will never be the same…
This is Burton’s sixth collaboration with Depp, and their creative simpatico has never been more in step.
The actor gives the performance of his career as the demon barber of Fleet Street. He sucks the marrow from every note of Sondheim’s glorious music and lyrics. His musicality, pitch and phrasing are to die for, the sound filling to the soul. Depp endows Sweeney with a murderous urgency, riveting and immediate, that you can’t take your eyes off. And yet the pain of a man wronged and a love lost is always there, simmering in vocal quavers and tiny gestures. If there is an Oscar ceremony this year, and there was any justice, Depp would walk off with a statuette.
Helena Bonham-Carter steps into intimidating shoes as Mrs Lovett, a role immortalised by a handful of theatrical Grand Dames. She can’t equal their vocal chops, but she is extremely impressive, pitching a strangely lyrical, genteel performance that casts new light on the attraction between she and Todd – physically and psychically. She nails the humor, and it’s heartbreaking to watch her palsied overtures toward domesticity with young Tobias.
Alan Rickman is a chilling, understated delight as Turpin, and he too surprises with a fine singing voice. His duet with Todd, Pretty Women lingers long after the house lights are up and you’re on your way home.
The rest of the cast are also outstanding. Timothy Spall is a weasely wonder as Beadle Bamford, cohort of Turpin and general malcontent. Sacha Baron Cohen is a treat as Signor Adolfo Pirelli, the melodramatic Italian barber competing for Sweeney’s business, with some secrets of his own.
Jamie Campbell Bower will spellbind as Anthony Hope, the young sailor who falls for Johanna and longs to snatch her from Turpin’s clutches. With a voice like a angel, a face to match, and a keen acting talent to boot, this actor is clearly one to watch.
Jayne Wisener is a graceful, tender Johanna. A tricky, often thankless role in the stage production, Wisener is utterly engaging as she sits Rapunzel like in the Judge’s house, mouring her freedom in empyrean melodies.
And Ed Sanders is a charming Tobias. Another gifted with a splendid voice, Sanders gives a sophisticated, preternaturally mature performance as he goes from wayward street urchin to unwitting accomplice.
Production designer Dante Ferretti and Director of Photography Dariusz Wolski brilliantly realise Burton’s macabre vision of Victorian London, and the trademark Burton style touches are there (particularly in a fantasy sequence where Mrs Lovett imagines Todd, she and Tobias in seaside idyll).
Longtime Sondheim orchestrator Jonathan Tunick has adapted his original work to reach lush new heights. The choral numbers have been removed, replaced with sweeping orchestral transtitions that accelerate the narrative with a different kind of boil.
Sweeney Todd on screen is harrowing, brutal and achingly beautiful. Sondheim’s exhilarating, throbbing score breathing an exquisite, passionate gasp through a finely tuned ensemble of multi-talents. The composer’s masterwork might now also become Burton’s.
Sweeney Todd is now showing nationally.
