Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen

Director: Tim Burton

Screenplay: John Logan

Running time: 1 hr 57 mins

Genre: Musical/Drama/Horror


REVIEW:


By the mention of horror musicals, it is as intimidating as it is somewhat disastrous. Let’s take a look at the recent cinematic revival of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA by director Joel Schumacher: only Gerard Butler’s performance was appreciable, the rest of the film was laid to bare waste. Since then, audience weren’t too friendly to this particular genre. Everyone seemed to want sunshine-struck musicals with big numbers, dazzling spectacle and dizzying colours – not dark, dank palettes, Gothic backdrops, and tragic miseries. Tim Burton must have faced that hard sentiment with mistrusting peril. But then again, it takes one to know one. For what Burton brings here in his newest, possibly his finest made musical film so far in his career, is a concoction in which Burton was born to brew for. SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is not only one of the year’s longest titled film, but it is a deranged melange of a majestic masterclass, bringing music, heartbreak, vengeance, romance, drama, humour, horror, suspense, irony, wit and sarcasm to achieve that wondrous and sumptuous mixture of cinema. Yes, even more sumptuous than Mrs Lovett’s meat pies.


Be warned for one thing. This film is classed as a musical, and if you hate characters breaking into a song, then just sit down, shut your gob and prepare for the shaving-chair ride down into the dark dungeons of the human psyche. Probably most everyone knows now the cheerless tale of Sweeney Todd and his friendly razors; how he cuts his customers throats with manic glee, and sends the throat-slashed bodies down into Mrs Lovett’s stinky dungeon to compensate her lack of pork meat for her best-selling pies. But hang on, this is not smeared with all gore. Apart from the spraying of blood, there’s a touch of humanity temperately boiling at its core. Sweeney Todd is, in fact, once Benjamin Barker whose life was taken away from him, including his wife and daughter, and now back in 19th century Victorian London for some sweet, bloody vengeance.


We trust Burton when it comes to anything dark and Gothic. His Victorian London is a mirror to that post-Industrial Revolution, urbanised, slum-ridden Dickensian panorama, hence the smog, pollution and things which are ‘not very nice’. Most people in his screen look as though they never bother to bathe themselves. And he paints his palette with strong monochromatic intensity, so that when blood flows out in any scene, it appears as terrifyingly scarlet, almost beautifully viscous, shiny and elegant altogether.


However, elegance shouldn’t be present in this film, given the violent tale of the central character. Here, Burton hits the right note to settle with Johnny Depp in their sixth filmic collaboration. After all, after playing some odd bloke with scissor hands, contemptuous detective in sleepy hollows, and swaggering pirate in some uncharted Caribbean island, Depp knows by heart how to play mad, and boy does he deliver such a creatively nuanced central performance so pivotal to the Todd, a character utterly consumed by his pathos of revenge transforming him into a living, breathing blood-lusty man-monster. His pale, vampiric complexion only blends in perfect, ghastly chemistry to the brilliant Helena Bonham-Carter’s Mrs Lovett, the meat-pie cook so consumed by her own desires. Her casting might raise eyebrows as she is Burton’s real-life leading lady, but her Mrs Lovett would prove to you, with a subtle, sweeping gesture of a hand, that she’s rightfully tuned to the character. Funny, brilliant, and often poignant, she was the one that tempers Todd’s moods, that wife who yearns for a quiet life in a seaside but knows it all dwells in fantasy. Both of them on screen looked like ashen-faced, pallid vampires – but it certainly works.


There are excellent supporting performances too. The finest epitome would be Sacha Baron Cohen in his all-too-brief but genuinely wonderful turn as the pseudo-Italian barber, Pirelli. Who could expect that BORAT could actually act? He might have left his throat slashed, but his humour left an unmistakable imprint, especially in the shaving contest in the market, and his visit to Todd’s parlour, shifting his Italian accent to a fluent London one in one swift, hilarious manner. Alan Rickman, as ever, brings pitch-perfect villainy to Judge Turpin, and Timothy Spall as his sidekick is just fiery as hell.


But how could we expect such music to be sung by non-singers, vocally unchallenged actors? Fact: none of them hit a false note. Depp brings a deep, serious drawl on his vocal testament, and Bonham-Carter is wonderful in her croon. Burton, meanwhile, makes sure his musical numbers don’t fall into chore and painstakingly kept the sizzle of the story to develop, making way to a grand, satisfying, and bloody finale. As soon as the curtain falls to a close, that final scene, we know it’s not going to be a happy tale. But it’s a moralistic one. And we certainly could tell it’s an excruciatingly story to be told but it’s a story told rather well.


VERDICT:


The Burton-Depp collaboration, by now, is a thing to be anticipated quite extremely. What a wonderfully dark, ghoulish, dynamic entertainment this is. Depp and Bonham-Carter are top performers. And the blood – this is literally bloody brilliant! Surely, SWEENEY TODD would go down to history as the bloodiest musical ever put to silverscreen. All hail ye razors!


RATING: A


Note: Mr Depp has just recently won Best Actor for Musical/Comedy for his role as Sweeney Todd at Golden Globes this year. Meanwhile, he's nominated for Oscars Best Actor. Whether it's a triumph, we shall see.