Month: January 2008

What? What’s this?? The rest of my “Sweeney Todd” review??

Honestly, I’ve realized I can’t write the review I’d like to write. Not now. Not when so much is going on ’round here. Trust me when I say that I’m completely mentally spastic these days. I have no synapses left. I think in fits and starts. My brain is pudding. And not fresh chocolate pudding with whipped cream on top, either. But like that tapioca pudding you made weeks ago and just found moldering in the back of your fridge. What’s below is the best this puddinhead can do right now. I’m “snippeting” the whole darn thing! Snippeting, I tell you!! And when I’m not snippeting, I’m meandering. Meandering, I tell you!!

Okay. Oh ….

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Well, only spoilers if you don’t know the story, really.

~ I want to go back to what I said 57 years and 43,000 words ago: I honestly think that Tim Burton has made the best possible movie that could be made of that musical. The movie looks great. Burton captures perfectly that dark lush squalor of Sweeney’s merciless London. Everything is gray, brown, shadowy, grimy. The sky is a constant charcoal smudge. The streets are in desperate need of a sweeping they will never get. The whole atmosphere instantly tells you: There will be no nuns singing and twirling on hilltops in this musical. If that’s what you want, leave now. None of this is surprising, really. Burton is great with dark. The surprise here would have been if Burton had gotten it wrong.

~ The movie is pared down from the musical, as I mentioned in part 1. Entire numbers are cut; many are shortened from their original length. Because no one will sit through a 3 1/2-hour movie musical. Expecting the entire stage musical brought to the screen is unrealistic. Of course, that didn’t stop me. And I’ll comment a little more on these cuts later. Conversely, dialog has been added in place of some of the music because — I don’t know — post-modern people hate musicals??

~ All right. Johnny Depp as Sweeney. He doesn’t look like what Sweeney usually looks like. What I — again — expect in a Sweeney. I’m used to a Sweeney who’s taller, burlier, dare I say, manlier? Depp is not tall, not burly, he’s manly enough, I suppose, but not beefy manly. Not “my mere physical presence is an issue” manly. Not old-style manly where any minute he might sweep you off your feet or just as easily kill you with his bare hands. Not any of these things I generally think of when I think of Sweeney. When I first heard about this movie, Russell Crowe was in as Sweeney. I could kinda see that. Didn’t know if he could sing, but I could understand that casting. He fit my personal Sweeney mold. (And I thought Toni Collette would have made a nice Mrs. Lovett to match him. And she can sing.) When I heard it was Depp, my knee-jerk reaction, to be totally honest was “no way!” The kind of “no way” you say when you really mean “that sucks.” I didn’t think he looked the part. I wasn’t sure he could sing. But I love Johnny Depp generally and I wanted to keep as open a mind as possible. And, you know …. he worked for me. His Sweeney is not this burly menace. He’s a shadow of a man. And, really, after 15 years in prison on trumped-up charges, who wouldn’t be? Depp’s mere physicality is not an issue; it’s what he does with it. He looks like a man who has shrunk, who is nothing of his former self, who has nothing of that person even breathing inside him. Everything that matters to him is lost and the only thing left is vengeance. That’s the most alive thing about him. That quest. I ended up liking Depp’s physical slightness for Sweeney. It added a certain slyness to him; he’s an unexpected serial killer. “Sweeney was smooth; Sweeney was subtle” as the lyrics say. Yes, he has that weird hair — the hair’s not subtle — but lots of people have weird hair and aren’t going to slit your throat with a razor. It’s his face. His eyes. It’s the insanity mixed with yearning — for his wife, his daughter, his old life — that Depp totally nails. You feel it with him, for him. This is a man totally wronged and totally unable to reconcile the wrongs. They’re too great. They’ve taken too much. He’s burning with rage inside but has to appear somewhat functional publicly to ultimately effect his revenge. I loved watching the flow of Depp’s performance. Reigning it in, letting it out. That see-saw. The sly predator, needing to appear sane while a monster rages inside. During “By the Sea,” Mrs. Lovett’s little fantasy number about their candy-coated future together, I was crying with laughter. Literally. Rather than succumb to outright cackling in the theatre, I just let myself shake and cry. There they are, Sweeney and Lovett, sashaying on the esplanade in fancy clothes, Lovett so happy, Sweeney staring glumly at the ground. There they are on the beach, Lovett happy, Sweeney in his striped Victorian bathing suit, staring glumly at the sand. There they are, at the altar getting married, Sweeney glum, hesitant to even kiss her. Depp’s face in those sequences. Priceless. Depp in that striped Victorian bathing suit. I was dying. He is consumed. Possessed. It doesn’t matter what is happening around him. All that matters is what’s happening inside him. Depp’s singing — to me — is secondary and I really can’t believe I’m saying that. I don’t think he sings all that well. It’s good enough, I suppose, but not great. The songs were clearly transposed into higher keys so he could sing them. But his performance is so full, he is so completely Sweeney, he delivers those songs. How well they’re sung technically matters less to me than how well they’re performed. I thought he was mesmerizing. In every way. He made Sweeney — a role that could easily sink into caricature — human. That is Depp’s genius.

~ Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. I had the same reaction about her as Lovett, initially, as I did with Depp as Sweeney. “No way.” “She doesn’t look right.” “I don’t think she can sing.” Blah blah. But …. I loved her, too. She’s tiny, thin. No robust Mrs. Lovett here. You look at her and think, “Yep. I totally believe she makes the worst pies in London.” Still, she’s kind of consumptively sexy. I thought she and Depp were mirror images of each other. Shadow people. Pale gothic ghosts. Lonely and empty, they are each desperately holding on to one thing, one thing only. He, his revenge. She, her love for Sweeney, a man who doesn’t even see her. These are the things that motivate them and give them hope. Her singing, I think, is less technically capable than Depp’s, but she has this funny, almost offhand way of delivering a song. She doesn’t seem to be consciously performing them. Some of the numbers, like “Worst Pies in London” seem almost like these stream-of-consciousness experiences for her. It’s not SINGING; it’s singing as idle patter. I don’t know. I’m not explaining it well. It’s like she’s singing her diary. Or singing like she’s used to being alone. Or like she’s used to not being listened to because no one’s there. It’s oddly personal and moving. Sort of “I don’t care if you listen or not; I’m just talking to hear myself talk.” She is totally weird and I love her for it.

~ Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin. Well, uhm, they cut his whole self-flagellation number, probably a good idea, but they added a whole scene for him with Anthony, would-be suitor to Judge Turpin’s ward (and Sweeney’s daughter), Johanna. I was bugged by that, thought it was unnecessary — or only necessary to give Rickman a more fleshed-out part. The original script sets the whole conflict with them in a couple of lines. Rickman’s singing is passable, but again, his acting — well, I can’t see straight about him — he’s perfect as the Judge. Really. Appropriately creepy and lustful. His “Pretty Women” duet with Depp is a joy, really.

~ The Judge’s henchman, the Beadle (Timothy Spall). Dude canNOT sing. Worst singer in the show. Blatantly off-key. Luckily, he sings only briefly.

~ Sasha Baron Cohen as Pirelli. A scene stealer, though I’m embarrassed to admit that I was distracted by the package of tube socks someone stuffed in his pants. Let’s not linger.

~ Ah, the young lovers, Anthony and Johanna. MB said the kid playing Anthony looked like the love child of Ashton Kutcher and Claire Danes. He really is a very pretty pony. He was fine. She was fine. Really, there’s not much to say about them because their parts and their storyline were cut drastically. And — here’s a beef I have with the movie — the ending leaves you hanging about Anthony and Johanna. The play does not.

~ Here’s where I have to mention that there are a few things that suffer in the adaptation from stage to screen. Because things like the chorus and certain musical numbers were cut to keep the movie a reasonable length (one assumes), the second act — anything after the song ” A Little Priest” — becomes a bit of an unrelenting blood bath. In the stage version, the chorus steps in at various intense moments, comments on the action, hints at what’s coming, and it’s a kind of breather, almost, from all the slashing and blood and death. It mitigates the damages, so to speak. Perhaps slightly, but that moment is enough. With certain other musical numbers or interludes even, cut from Act Two, what’s left is the weight of all that gory vengeance. It’s a bit of a runaway train at that point. A runaway train full of blood and dead bodies and pies. If Burton decided he needed to “hit the high points” for the sake of time, then he certainly did that, but not being able to take the time to tell the full story makes the collective toll of those high points overwhelming. Again, I understand the necessity. I do. But the movie suffers from the rush of blood — or maybe rush to blood — at the end of it. It loses some of its dark sick humor and becomes more overtly dark and sick.

~ The movie ends abruptly, I think. You don’t see Anthony or Johanna in that very final scene, but you do in the stage version. They run in together, see the aftermath of the grisly blood bath. Not exactly a touching moment between lovers, but you get the sense they will be together, with all that post-traumatic stress giving them something in common at last. The movie leaves you hanging as far as that whole storyline is concerned. The lovers are just kind of dropped. In the final movie scene, Tobias sneaks up on Sweeney and simply slits his throat. Sweeney sinks into death, holding his long-lost Lucy, dead at his own hands. End of movie. Again, this is a moment where I miss the chorus. (Expectations! I can’t get past them!) At the end of the stage version, the chorus comes onstage and sings an epilogue, a slightly different version of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” that starts the show. There’s almost a morality tale feel to it, fleetingly. A morality tale with a wink, that is: “To seek revenge may lead to hell, but everyone does it, tho’ seldom as well ….. as Sweeney … as Sweeney Todd.” The bloody dead rise up and join in the singing, pointing at the audience: “No one can help, nothing can hide you; isn’t that Sweeney there beside you? There! There! There! There!” It’s good freaky fun. The movie, on the other hand, just abruptly leaves you with this dark scene of unsparing tragedy. Nothing mitigates the damages in that final moment. You’re left with a bit of a gut punch as you leave the theatre.

~ But, lest you think differently, these criticisms don’t dampen my enthusiasm for the movie. I was fully engaged the entire time. In many ways, it exceeded my expectations and that’s no small thing, for me anyway. It’s a satisfying rendition, minus a few winks, perhaps, but ultimately faithful to the dark audacious vision of “Sweeney Todd.” I honestly don’t believe the adaptation from stage to screen could have been done any better than Burton and company did it. So bravos all around!