FILM REVIEW – SWEENEY TODD (2007).

 

Tim Burton’s magnificent rendering of Stephen Sondheim’s Grand Guignal musical about the infamous serial killer Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street is truly amazing.

 

The story is rooted in urban legend. There was certainly no real Sweeney Todd, though crime writer Peter Haining wrote an account claiming that it was true (without offering any sources of checkable evidence). An anonymous penny dreadful sensationalist horror story of the barber appeared as early as 1825, The story of the barber (Todd) and Mrs. Lovett, (the girlfriend) who slit throats and bake the victims in pies to be sold in her shop, is often told. It has surfaced in melodramas, plays, stories and films for many years.   A 1936 film melodrama version was made starring the aptly named Tod Slaughter, generally regarded as one of the hammiest actors every to grace the screens.

 

A 1998 adaptation was done for TV starring Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley, which was quite intense, but not too convincing. A much better presentation starred Ray Winstone and Essie Davis was much better, depicting Todd as a compulsive, but not unsympathetic serial killer. The final moment in which Todd slits his own throat to escape the gallows his terrific.

 

The best-known version however remains Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Broadway musical adaptation of Christopher Bond’s 1973 stage play. Bond had infused Todd’s serial killing with a Revenger’s Tragedy theme, which gives the character a more three dimensional edge than other versions have managed.  The musical is regarded as a nightmare for many actors as the songs have extremely complex harmonies, which are very easy to get wrong. It is one of the most demanding dramas to under-take in live performance.

 

Burton’s film is daring in its graphic gore and in using a cast not normally associated with musicals. The songs are mainly soliloquies giving a character’s dark inner desires and needs. There are no dance numbers, and no show tunes that you are likely to leave the cinema humming away too. Nevertheless the songs are stunning in their presentation here.

 

The plot is straightforward. Todd (Johnny Depp) is an alias adapted by a wronged man who has returned from fifteen years in exile as a wrongly convicted transportee.  A judge, Turpin, (Alan Rickman) had sent him away because he wanted to seduce Todd’s wife, to who Todd had given a daughter.

 

Todd returns, bitter and twisted, hell Bent on revenge, and reunion with his wife. He tells his sad tale to a fellow traveller, a young sailor, played by Anthony Hope, and also to Mrs. Lovett, (Helena Bonham Carter, who steals the film’s acting honours in every respect). She has a reputation for making the worst pies in London, and has no shame in using the local cats and dogs as staple ingredients. She tells Todd that his wife committed suicide, and that his daughter is now an adopted ward of Judge Turpin, who plans to marry her. The daughter is virtually a house prisoner of the evil judge, (happily willing to send even children to the gallows) and guarded by his snarling, terrifyingly sadistic Beadle – Timothy Spall.

 

Todd had been a barber before being transported, and now he reopens his old shop, which is right above Mrs. Lovett’s shop. He regards his silver cutthroat razors as his only true friends and talks / sings to them.

 

As a publicity stunt, Todd publicly humiliates a rival barber, Pirelli, played with great pompous style by Sasha Baron Cohen. (Best known for his roles as Ali G and Borat).   Pirelli is a charlatan who sells his own urine as hair tonic.

 

(In this scene there is a blink and you’ll miss it, uncredited cameo by Anthony Stewart Head, of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame).

 

Pirelli, infuriated by his humiliation, discovers the truth about Todd’s past and tries to blackmail him, becoming the barber’s first murder victim. Mrs, Lovett sees the ferociously butchered body and asks Todd why he committed the crime. Todd replies simply and honestly that his motive was revenge. Lovett replies sardonically “Oh, well that's a different matter then. For a moment there I thought you lost your marbles.”

 

Hitting quickly on the idea of disposing of the body in her pies, the duo hope to lure Turpin into the shop and sure enough he comes, but he is saved from having his throat slit by an untimely collision with the sub-plot.  Anthony Hope has seen the captive ward, and fallen in love with her.  Unfortunately, the Judge has spotted his amore and he has him thrashed by the Beadle and warned to get out of town. He vows to stay and save the girl at any cost.  Hope now enters the barbershop and reveals his plan to help the girl escape to Todd, not realizing that the judge is in the room.  The judge storms out threatening to ruin both men.

 

Todd infuriated that Hope has unwittingly snatched away his chief target, begins to take his frustrations out by killing just about every customer he gets. He even has a chair adapted to tip the bodies straight down to the pie bakery room. 

 

The sudden improvement in the quality of her pies makes Mrs. Lovett the most popular pie seller in London as she turns the unsuspecting city on to cannibalism.

 

One woman does seem to know the truth however – a mad old beggar lady who Mrs. Lovett seems to fear, and who keeps trying to alert people to the fact that something is very wrong about the pie-shop’s success.

 

Eventually, complaints about the aroma from the crematorium chimney in which the bones are disposed of attract the Beadle, who soon becomes a fresh victim.  This coincides with Jamie Bower (Hope’s) liberation of the daughter, who Turpin has now cast into an asylum for rejecting his advances.  Bower makes the girl look like a boy by cutting her hair and takes her to hide in Todd’s barbershop.  The judge arrives to investigate and Todd finally gets his revenge, which the girl witnesses. Todd seems to be on the brink of killing her too (unaware of who she is to him) when Mrs Lovett is attacked by the beggar woman in the bakery. Todd rushes to her rescue and kills the attacker, only to recognise her too late as his wife, who Mrs. Lovett had told him was dead. Crazed by the betrayal from Mrs. Lovett, who acted from love for him that he never recognised, he casts her into the bakery furnace fire to perish. Having his throat cut by his apprentice, a young gin-addicted boy who had previously served Pirelli now kills him himself. 

 

If there is a flaw it is the abruptness of the ending. The boy has been becoming more Todd like as the film has progressed, and we get to see nothing of the lovers escaping from the shop or what happens to the young murderer as anyone discovers the shocking truth about what went on in the shop, but this is a minor flaw in otherwise stunning film, with a pitch perfect cast. The gothic overtones are very impressive, even for Burton. The scene in which Lovett imagines her and Todd going to the seaside for a holiday is hilarious. They look hopelessly out of place in the idyllic surroundings they will never know in reality – It’s like seeing The Addhams Family at Alton Towers.