Let’s Review Sweeney Todd (us television)
No commentsBy Gustavo Wilcox
Having never seen the stage version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, I can’t speak to the fidelity the film shares with the play. That said, let there be no doubt that Tim Burton has crafted a true piece of musical cinema from Stephen Sondheim’s bloody masterpiece. To their discredit, early previews have hedged a bit regarding the singing in the film. In them we only see Johnny Depp canting some recitative as he prowls the streets of London. While this scene is certainly in the movie, it’s barely representative of the actual film which contains at least a dozen fully-staged numbers and only intermittent dialogue.
As the former Benjamin Barker, Depp is magnificent as Todd. His voice may lack the thunder that would be expected on stage, but on the big screen it’s more than suitable. Purists may find it a little ragged and flat at times–Michael Crawford needn’t worry about Depp–but it’s an ideal manifestation of the corrupting anger and rotting vengeance that fill Todd’s soul. The same can be said for Helena Bonham Carter as the fiendish Mrs. Lovett. Sure she will occasionally descend into something approaching a hectoring screech, but consider for a moment that she’s a baker who grinds people into meat and serves them up in piping hot pies!
Voices aside, both actors deliver rich, complex performances. The focus and intensity that Depp brings to his role is riveting. Within minutes of the film’s opening there is no doubt that Depp will have his revenge and have it with gusto. Taking a step back from the film, realize that Todd is a thoroughly despicable character. He often kills indiscriminately, but Depp is so powerful as Todd that you eventually begin to relish his countless murders. Carter’s Mrs. Lovett is, perhaps, even more of a psychopath. Slicing a throat is one thing. Butchering a man and then serving him up for dinner is quite another. Nevertheless, you delight in her, too.
As for the killings, Burton stages them in spectacularly gory fashion. The phrase ‘geysers of blood’ is often used casually when describing a violent film. In Sweeney Todd the phrase is explicitly correct. Depp is often obscured under the high-powered jets of plasma that repeatedly erupt from his customer’s necks. Amazingly, these scenes aren’t even the most disturbing. Once Todd finishes giving a ’shave’, he dumps the corpse down a hole where it cracks loudly at the bottom as the skull splinters and the neck breaks cleanly. It’s all completely over the top and, of course, wonderful, hilarious, inspired.
The same can be said for the film as a whole. In Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton has found material that meshes perfectly with his artistic sense. You could call it a horror film or a screwball comedy and you’d be right both times. The design is, as would be expected from a Burton picture, lavish and spectacular. The supporting cast, especially Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, are superb. Only the love story between Johanna and Anthony falls a little flat. It’s a minor quibble, though, in an otherwise outstanding film. Sweeney Todd joins Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands as Burton’s finest work. It may eventually even be considered his best.
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A Closer Look At Classic Movies
By Kurtis Rivers
So what really is considered a classical movie? Can we simply associate as a black and white film noir thing? Containing some of those cheesy classical music? How about big powdered wigs? Do you think of the formal nature of both the characters as well as the period get-up and attire? Is a classic movie one which garnered 10 Oscars? Or do you think a classic movie simply one which down to the perception of the viewers and individuals?
The classical movie IS truly one of the great inventions since we discovered hamburgers. The classical movie is also the one show that we had the benefit of watching when we were kids, cause at the time only three television channels were available. It was during those good old Saturday afternoons and Sundays, when my dear father wasnt consumed by the sports programmes on show, when those classic movies from the past, movies featuring the glamour girls and the guys that inspired us boys to want to be cowboys, were made available for us to enjoy in all their splendour.
Though there is obviously a distinct difference between classical movies and classical movies with only classical period elements (music, costumes, storylines, etc.), I would like to address the delight of the classical movie of yesterday and today that does involve only a particular period of history and does, then feature only classical period elements.
I tend to associate the black and white flicks with the beauties and the beaus, the comedies with the curmudgeons, the histories with the insights into who people were back then, like us but with an added je ne sais quoi that we must find out, learn about, and finally to appreciate in as great a depth and as wide a breadth as we can, in order to do them the justice they deserve.
Say for example, my favorite classical movie of all time, Impromptu. This film basically enacts a couple of years in the lives of the characters George Sand, Franz Liszt, Freiderich Chopin, and the regal and wealthy folks who took artists in, allowing them to paint, create, compose, write, in exchange for wonderful company and fine entertainment. The film concentrates on Sand, who is bent on partnering with Chopin, her aggression equal in magnitude, as was his weakness. The costumes, the soundtrack, the dialogue, and the setting are all as breathtaking as the direction, technique, and the delivery of words and emotion. There is even a theme or two that humans from the beginning of time until today can identify with or appreciatethe love and hate, good and evil, as well as longing and belonging motifs that are as timeless as the movie itself.
Other classical movie choices I have an affinity toward are those less mainstream & popular ones. I would consider Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (though clearly POST-classical periods), Wilde, and Jefferson, for instance, as worthy of classical movie acclaim as say Amadeus, Emma, The Piano, and any number of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson productions.
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