Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, by Tim Burton, Rating: 3 in 5

As a film, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has all the good and bad qualities of a typical Tim Burton film. Some will enjoy the good ones; some will overemphasize the bad ones. On my part, I am rather disappointed by this film.

From the very beginning, Burton’s films have shown how the atmosphere can become the most important factor of a film. Most of his films --- “Beetlejuice”, “Edward Scissorhands”, the “Batman” films, “Sleepy Hollow” etc ---- are “atmospheric” films; their virtues lie solely in their atmosphere. On the flip side, many of these films lacked coherence in the development of their story-line, which is essential for the kind of films they are. Same things hold true for “Sweeney Todd”; although the story does not suffer from completely unnecessary intrusions of characters like Michael Keaton’s in “Beetlejuice”, the story never becomes surprising or engrossing enough to make Sweeney Todd’s anguish, or his pained humanity seem true. May be the “spectacular” nature of musicals was always a disincentive for the film’s subject. At the end of the day, this film will be remembered as the bloodiest musical ever made on film that had a stunning backdrop of 19^th century London.

The film starts with CGI blood-drops that look suspiciously like diluted tomato ketchup running down blue-tinted gables of shanty houses. The symbol holds true for the entire film: it is mostly about blood ketchup and blue-tinted 19^th century London. This film is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s stage musical of the same name [the logo at the beginning of this article is the original poster of the musical]. Benjamin Barker (played by Johnny Depp), a barber, is falsely arrested, charged and sentenced to life of hard labor in Australia by a licentious Judge Turpin (played by Alan Rickman), who coveted Barker's "beautiful and virtuous" wife, Lucy (played by Laura Michelle Kelly). Returning 15 years later, Barker adopts the name of Sweeney Todd and says goodbye to his friend, sailor Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower), who rescued him from the sea. He then returns to his old flat above Nellie Lovett's (played by Helena Bonham Carter) pie shop on Fleet Street. She tells him that after his arrest, Turpin tried to rape his wife, and she poisoned herself out of humiliation. After receiving this news, Todd vows revenge and reopens his barber shop in the upstairs flat. His method is simple: he cuts the throats of his customers and sends the bodies down to the basement through a chute. Nellie cuts the bodies up and uses the meat to make the best meat pie in whole London.

It is highly unsettling (I presume this. I have been a gore fan for long time, so it all looked lip-smacking to me) to see serial killers with operatic music. To heighten that effect, it is filmed differently than formal musicals: you do not see groups of dancers singing choruses, or anything of that sort. There is absolutely no dialog in the film, which is again very rare. Burton, surprisingly, makes the film more quasi-realistic than a musical fantasy. The London of yesteryears looks like Hell’s Kitchen in the film; it reminded me of the ghastly details I read once in a huge book called “London: A Biography”. Following recent [and deplorable to me. I have lived in one of the most notorious cities in the world for its poverty, Kolkata, throughout my life, and never saw a slum look blue in moonlight] tradition of showcasing any bleak part of a city through clod blue filters, the production design of Dante Ferretti and cinematography of Dariusz Wolski help create a dark, frightening and eccentrically skewed vision of London. Most of the characters have a larger-than-life and over-the-top feel of a Dickensian caricature. They all have deathly blanched faces, almost blue from lack of blood. One of the good things about this film is that all the songs are sung by the actors. It makes the words of the lyrics sound more clear and important, helping the story to grow naturally. It is something Woody Allen did in his musical comedy “Everyone says I Love You”. It also avoids the over-emphatic singing style of professional singers.

I wrote “Most of the characters have a larger-than-life and over-the-top feel of a Dickensian caricature”. The problem of the film is that even the principal characters are caricatures. It would have worked if the film showcased itself as a musical fantasy, but the quasi-realistic nature of the movie leaves us with a lot of unfulfilled expectations. Also to be blamed is Johnny Depp. Criticizing someone like Johnny Depp sounds sacrilegious nowadays, but I have no qualms in saying that his acting in this film has a sad after-effect of Jack Sparrow. I detected a slight backward tilt every time he delivered a major dialog. That backward tilt, strongly reminiscent of “you-know-who”, ruined my day. And at the end of the day, the character of Sweeney Todd remains a phantasmagorical caricature; his human emotions seem shallow, his ultimate redemption seems phony. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow deserved at least an Oscar; if there was ever a performance that can be tagged “original”, that was it. From such a great actor, I expected far better performance. I expected him to frame the character of Sweeney Todd in a different manner. His acting in this film seemed to hesitate between sincerely enjoying the act of killing and feeling deep resentment for what happened to him in past. Too shallow by my standards. On the other hand, Helena Bonham Carter is perfect in her role. She is quite an actor; it is a shame that she still remains under-estimated in Hollywood. But the best performance comes from Allan Rickman as judge Turpin. You have to watch him to realize what a truly nuanced actor from English school of acting can do to such roles. His acting will stay with me for a long time.

There is a segment in the film that shows the true capabilities of Tim Burton as a director, though. Nellie, while butchering human carcasses every day, still dreams an insane dream of marrying Sweeny and making a good thing out of it. Her dreams are painted with heart-rending softness that stirs our compassion; it makes the character of Nellie surprisingly believable and familiar. Sadly, Sweeney does not seem to have such hidden chambers; it would have been a good thing for his character. He is either a chocolaty simpleton of a husband (in flashback), or a one-dimensional monster. I have a suspicion that Tim Burton wanted to create his own “Kill Bill”, but lacked the quirky appreciation of the genre that Tarantino showed.

The songs used in the film are highly complex; it is a miracle that the actors managed to do justice to them. It bears the signature of mid-twentieth century, urban style of music. A veritable Sondheim masterpiece.

The film has received tremendous positive reviews from critics. Why, I don’t know. Despite all the hullabaloos about this film, I found it to be a noble failure, and nothing more than that. I give this film a three. It does not deserve any more.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI