“sweeney todd, the demon barber of fleet street”

Well.

Here we are.

My review of Sweeney Todd.

Oh, yeah. Let me say this: UHM, SPOILERS BELOW!! BEWARE!!

All right. Did me duty. Proceed.

I’ve thought about this for a few days now, the whole thing, and it’s hard for me to be objective. I have such a longstanding personal attachment to the musical that I fear I’m just going to wander about aimlessly here, but I’ll give it a try.

I think I want to start out talking about expectations for a bit.

First, I’m just going to say straight out, up front, get it out of the way: I liked it. I really liked it. I don’t think I can say I LOVED it, unequivocally, because my personal attachment makes me reserved on some level, like if I totally, unabashedly love it, I will have somehow abandoned or betrayed my “first love.” I know it sounds somewhat ridiculous to say, but I want to write this review as honestly as possible and that honesty demands I tell you that I literally can’t see straight when it comes to my love for the original Broadway version of “Sweeney Todd” and, well, the version I was in in Seattle way back in the late 16th century. That’s part of it too, obviously. But I will say this: I honestly think that Tim Burton has made the best possible movie that could be made of that musical. Fans of the musical will go see the movie with expectations that are — now that I’ve thought about it — somewhat unreasonable. I admit I did that. It was a bit unfair. I wanted Johnny Depp to sound like Len Cariou; Helena Bonham Carter like Angela Lansbury. I wanted their looks to change. I wanted to hear Victor Garber’s voice come out of the kid playing Anthony. I wanted every single thing that I love about the musical to be included in the movie. Don’t leave a thing out. Don’t you dare! I think I expected Tim Burton to adopt — telepathically and without struggle, apparently — my personal vision of what “Sweeney Todd” should be. Hear me, Tim Burton! Embrace my genius as yours! Here, I open my boundless brain to you! (I never lack for self-esteem in my delusions.) But I imagine I’m not the only crazed fan guilty of doing that. I did that even knowing that I shouldn’t do that. I know better than that and yet …. emotions, you know. Expectations. They sometimes get in the way of fully appreciating what’s before you right now.

But the stage musical is a play. The movie is a movie. Those two are not the same. Different venues, with different possibilities and different devices that an audience will accept or reject.

Let’s start at the start for an example of what I mean. The start of the play and the start of the movie. At the beginning of the stage musical, the entire Victorian chorus is seen onstage, standing, singing, in your face, some solos, some unison:

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.
His skin was pale and his eye was odd.
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
Who never thereafter were heard of again.
He trod a path that few have trod,
Did Sweeney Todd,
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

It goes on from there, a fairly detailed description of who this person is. This Sweeney Todd you haven’t even seen yet. The lyrics are dark, funny, creepy. The music is eerie. It’s hypnotic. It’s building. If the music doesn’t instantly get under your skin, you, my friend, are already dead. As the music and lyrics build, this mysterious Sweeney is finally revealed, looming and menacing as he sings:

Attend the tale of Sweeney TODD.
He served a dark and a vengeful god.
What happened then — well, that’s the play,
And he wouldn’t want us to give it away,
Not Sweeney …..
Not Sweeney Todd,
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

It’s a whole set-up with a kind of Greek chorus here: Here’s what our guy is like. We’re doing a vengeance play here. And here he is, for a brief second, to frighten you, get your blood pounding. Now, boom, we disappear. It’s a brilliant opening of a musical because — unless you’re the dead person I previously mentioned — you are instantly, hopelessly hooked. You are glued to your seat until the very end of the very last note.

But here is where I confess …….. I was still looking for my Greek chorus opening to the movie.

As the movie started, I heard that music. That oh-so-familiar music. I waited — all silly, giddy — for the singing to start. I mean, there’s THAT music and it goes with THOSE lyrics. They are basically inseparable to me. But there was no singing. None. Not in the opening. Burton did a whole follow-the-red-blood-splatter bit that I didn’t like the first time I saw just 10 minutes of the movie. So I went home, after seeing those glitch-riddled 10 minutes, readjusted my expectations, went back, and liked what he did, even laughed at some of it, the moments of dark humor he put into the sequence.

Because I realized as much as I love the chorus, it wouldn’t have worked in the movie.

The chorus appears throughout the stage musical, commenting, editorializing, building anticipation, and the viewer accepts that device, even loves that device, as I do. We suspend our disbelief for the sake of the story and the experience. Our minds easily surrender to the world presented within the confines of the stage space. We adjust to the limitations, even without knowing we’ve adjusted. Now, true, watching any musical, whether it’s onstage or a movie, involves some pretty major suspension of disbelief. People just don’t burst into song whilst declaring their love or slitting a throat. Just generally doesn’t happen. I mean, would grimy groups of people in Victorian costume break into song, commenting on situations in real life? Uhm, well, probably not sober ones. But with movies, we have this sense of limitlessness. Of a more fully realized world. Movies are filmed on location. Out in the real world. Sets can be entire towns, not just pieces. Special effects make the patently fantastical seem completely real. Because modern movies can do so much, we expect this sort of seamless, limitless experience. I think there’s a feeling that, with movies, everything is doable. Everything that I love — in a book, in a play — can and will translate perfectly, seamlessly, to the screen. But I don’t think that’s true. Some things are best left to our imagination. Some things work best as a stage device. So after thinking about all this, I realize that my beloved Victorian-Greek chorus would have looked idiotic in the movie version of “Sweeney.” Groups of grungy Victorians sliding from the shadows to voice their operatic opinions on the action would have seriously marred that seamless movie reality we’ve all come to expect. They would have looked like some deranged Dickensian carolers popping out of nowhere with no context whatsoever. It works onstage. It needs to stay onstage. I realize that I may be the only person who even reads this tangent — or that anyone who’s read this far may now have gout and a long white beard — but I’m writing this to give myself a kind of talking to, because even as I write this, I know that I MISSED seeing that chorus. That chorus that really wouldn’t have worked. But, still, throughout the entire movie, I knew exactly when a chorus part had been cut. I knew the words. I even started mouthing the words that were “supposed” to be there. And I’m still struggling with expectations. AFTER the fact. As someone with a “Sweeney Tood” obsession, there’s an internal struggle between my emotional expectations and my reason, what’s reasonable, what’s fair.

So I think from here on out, I want to focus on these questions: Is the movie a good, faithful rendition of the musical? Is it a good movie?

(more to come ….)