The grotesque goodness of "Sweeney Todd"
Jan. 14th, 2008 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grammarwomanI went to see a movie yesterday! This is a big thing, as the husband is overly practical when it comes to paying for a babysitter to go out to a movie, and it never occurs to me to go with other people. So when my friend C. called, asking if I wanted to go see "Sweeney Todd", I was actually stuck in something of quandary, as I was out running errands and felt a little guilty about ditching them in favor of frivolous fun. When she mentioned that she had already called home in search of me and the husband had pushed for me to go, I carped that diem and went zooming away.
Thank goodness for cell phones, as I couldn’t find my friend and her daughter in the lobby. We met up at the concessions stand (I indulged in a red Slurpee/Freeze/whatever their proprietary name was) and dashed off to our seats. I love movie previews, so I was happy to see that we hadn’t missed many. There was one for a Step Up or some such sequel, which had me grinning like a loon (I’m a complete sucker for dancing and singing movies, plot be damned). Then there was another fantasy offering, and a don’t-go-in-there horror movie -- "The Ruins", I think. (Seriously, haven’t enough people been brutally murdered in European hostels/remote islands/haunted mansions? When your friends say, "Hey, let’s go check out this sooper sekrit abandoned Mayan temple on our vacation", Just Say No. At least that’s my motto about seeing those kind of movies. [God, I’m a snob.])
And then I remembered…Right! We were there for an actual movie and not just teasers. I knew the basic plot of "Sweeney Todd", but that was about it. I enjoyed that the ominous music started right in from the Dreamworks logo, and morphed into some creepy dungeon outtakes -- blood running all over the place, clanking gears, and cobbled sewers flowing with putrescence really set the mood. Then came Johnny Depp stepping off of a ship with a mad scientist hairdo, complete with offset skunk stripe, and a wicked case of gothly pallor and blackened eyes. (I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t have eyeliner quotient [EQ] set into his script offers now -- "Dude! We’ll be going for the raccoon look in this one!" "Excellent, sign me up!"). And then he sang, and I didn’t wince. (Did I mention that I love musicals and singing? Seriously. I have happy childhood memories of dancing around to the soundtracks of "The Fantasticks" and "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", among others. This may explain something about the way I turned out.) The fact that he could sing, and reasonably well, even, was a big mark in the movie’s favor. (Though I agree with one reviewer’s take that he didn’t have much variety in his delivery, but hey, at least he didn’t make a mockery of it like Gerard Butler in "Phantom of the Opera". *rage quiver*) And then Helen Bonham Carter (also with high EQ) could sing, too! (I’ve always had something of a girlcrush on her – she’s made a life’s work out of playing quirky/creepy/crazy women, and done it well. Plus, I’ve always longed for hair like hers, that could be described as a riotous mass of curls. *sigh*) I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know if Depp and Carter had previously worked together on anything other than "Corpse Bride", but here they are certainly a match made in hell.
Overall, I’d say the movie was good. It entertained me, which is my low-standards baseline for media; it wasn’t life-changing, or thought-provoking (other than making me want to post about it), or any other kind of exceptional movie-making that will forever stay with me. The visuals were certainly amazing; the dank and grime they created for London’s backstreets would have made anyone’s life seem hopeless. There’s a particular funny scene where Mrs. Lovett is picturing herself and Mr. Todd and the serving boy, Toby, as a demented little goth family going on a succession of trips. Parading down a crowded pier! Basking in their mutant pallor at the beach (with a sulky Mr. Todd in a pristine striped bathing suit)! Having tea with friends in a sunny cottage! The ludicrousness of this grimy, worn-out pair parading around in crisply Technicolor clothes under sunny blue skies hammers home how unfit they are for anywhere else. I also loved how Sweeney Todd played out his revenge story, easily sliding into Mrs. Lovett’s mad plan of cannibalism and profit. The sick humor of the pair standing in her shop and commenting on the literal taste of the passers-by had me laughing, which made me approve of how skillfully the plot had been developed to such a natural and amusing turn of events. I had heard that there was a LOT of blood in the movie, but even though I’m not a big fan of gore, this was bearable. Perhaps it was the syrupy-ketchup consistency and color of the blood (I’ve read that was a deliberate choice on Tim Burton’s part), or the spurty details that played demented homage to Monty Python gags, or simply that each attack was telegraphed and there wasn’t the shocked surprise element to it, but it didn’t make me cringe.
I did have a few quibbles, though I’m not sure whether to lay blame at Tim Burton’s feet as the filmmaker, or the creator of the original Broadway production. Sweeney Todd’s sailor friend Anthony falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter Joanna merely from seeing her through a window, possibly having heard her sing as well (it’s not very clear in the scene). That kind of covetousness passing as love is rather squicky, as obsession is the genesis of the story: Judge Turpin desired the wife of Sweeney (then Benjamin Barker), so the judge had him deported to Australia on trumped-up charges as to have a better chance at the wife. As a kid, I would have been all aswoon at the young man’s "love at first sight", not to mention the extremely fey attractiveness of the actor playing Anthony, but present-day, it left me feeling a little ill. I guess, to its credit, the movie does underscore Anthony’s epiphany of love with a brooding, ominous score, but that’s about as much subtext as we get. There’s a later meeting between Anthony and Joanna when he’s rescued her from an insane asylum (and what a sobering thought, of how common a circumstance that was and how realistic the depicted conditions were), where he promises her a bright and shiny future and she turns to him with troubled eyes (mind you, she’s not even aware of her father’s current vocation or the fate of her mother) to tell him that the ghosts of their memories will always haunt them. But after that, we never get any closure on their story; I wish there could have been at least a frantic coach ride away during the credits or SOMETHING. I also wondered that the judge would have any desire for Joanna after her stay at the asylum, as I would have assumed that she would have been despoiled by her stay, and her untouched innocence was the basis of her attraction. But I suppose I’m spending too much time thinking about secondary characters…Another head-scratcher was the body-dumping chair: well, not the chair itself, but the chute. The bodies appeared to zoom right into the basement, but the layout of Sweeney Todd’s room above Mrs. Lovett’s business would seem to have the victims falling through the shop. I also thought they over-used the action shots of the carcasses crumpling onto the cellar floor. The boneless sprawl of the dead bodies hitting the ground was unnerving the first couple of times, but it got tedious through repetition.
Enough with the nitpicking; there were plenty of details to love. Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall played the judge and his toady, Beadle Bamford. (For those of you who don’t know Harry Potter minutiae, that’s Snape and Peter Pettigrew.) Rickman was made to play villains, based on his sneer alone. Anthony Steward Head (Giles from "Buffy") had a brief cameo (and my companions and I let out an approving SQUEEE!); evidently the spirit of his character and Christopher Lee’s were supposed to "sing The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, its reprises, and the Epilogue. These songs were recorded, but eventually cut since director Tim Burton felt that the songs were too theatrical for the film." I’d love to see those scenes restored on the DVD. (I’m also an extras slut; so shoot me.) All the actors, even the younger ones, could sing quite well, and the compositions with multiple cast members had delightfully eerie harmonies. (And again with the extras: I wanted to hear Ash sing!) I appreciated the parallel journeys and transformations of the three members of the Barker clan: Benjamin was exiled to Australia by the judge, adopted the new identity of Sweeney Todd, and was guided back to London by Anthony. Lucy was raped and discarded by the judge, became the crazy beggar woman, and was given alms by Anthony. Joanna was kidnapped by the judge, raised as his ward, and was rescued by Anthony. I suppose that’s why Anthony, of all of them, gets to remain the most untouched by the surrounding horrors.
This story was made from Creepy. With Tim Burton, that’s a given, but this was truly a mad marriage of story and artist. Not a single character is untouched by tragedy, and they all have the look of it in their crazy dead eyes. These are people who take their insanity and run with it. I had a meta-unnerving moment when Toby sings his Oedipal love song to Mrs. Lovett, "Not While I’m Around", with the overtones of her realization that she might have to kill this adorable moppet to preserve the horrible secret. I’d heard that song countless times on best-of-Broadway collections, and never knew the gruesome story behind it. *shudder* Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are Tim Burton’s perfectly twisted agents. Other potential Mrs. Lovett’s during casting included Meryl Streep, Cyndi Lauper, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening and Toni Collette, and while I’m sure they each would have brought something fun and enjoyable to the part, Carter’s broken-doll appearance and her matter-of-fact madness were too dead-on to pass up. (Though I must admit to some fascination at the thought of Angela Lansbury in the roll; it pays some credence to the theory that Jessica Fletcher was behind all those murders.)
I told a co-worker that I had seen the movie over the weekend, and he remarked that his teenaged son had seen it and thought it was stupid, because the ads never mentioned it was a musical. I was somewhat agog at his ignorance, but I suppose that’s both my privilege showing through and misleading marketing. (Did none of the ads show them singing? I don’t watch many commercials anymore, bless you DVR!)
In conclusion (and wow, this kind of length is why I don’t do much commentary), I firmly liked "Sweeney Todd". I wouldn’t say it was the greatest film ever and that you must drop everything and go see it, but if you’re not too squeamish, appreciate musicals and/or the oddness of Tim Burton and his merry madmen and women, then you may very well enjoy this movie, too.
Thank goodness for cell phones, as I couldn’t find my friend and her daughter in the lobby. We met up at the concessions stand (I indulged in a red Slurpee/Freeze/whatever their proprietary name was) and dashed off to our seats. I love movie previews, so I was happy to see that we hadn’t missed many. There was one for a Step Up or some such sequel, which had me grinning like a loon (I’m a complete sucker for dancing and singing movies, plot be damned). Then there was another fantasy offering, and a don’t-go-in-there horror movie -- "The Ruins", I think. (Seriously, haven’t enough people been brutally murdered in European hostels/remote islands/haunted mansions? When your friends say, "Hey, let’s go check out this sooper sekrit abandoned Mayan temple on our vacation", Just Say No. At least that’s my motto about seeing those kind of movies. [God, I’m a snob.])
And then I remembered…Right! We were there for an actual movie and not just teasers. I knew the basic plot of "Sweeney Todd", but that was about it. I enjoyed that the ominous music started right in from the Dreamworks logo, and morphed into some creepy dungeon outtakes -- blood running all over the place, clanking gears, and cobbled sewers flowing with putrescence really set the mood. Then came Johnny Depp stepping off of a ship with a mad scientist hairdo, complete with offset skunk stripe, and a wicked case of gothly pallor and blackened eyes. (I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t have eyeliner quotient [EQ] set into his script offers now -- "Dude! We’ll be going for the raccoon look in this one!" "Excellent, sign me up!"). And then he sang, and I didn’t wince. (Did I mention that I love musicals and singing? Seriously. I have happy childhood memories of dancing around to the soundtracks of "The Fantasticks" and "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", among others. This may explain something about the way I turned out.) The fact that he could sing, and reasonably well, even, was a big mark in the movie’s favor. (Though I agree with one reviewer’s take that he didn’t have much variety in his delivery, but hey, at least he didn’t make a mockery of it like Gerard Butler in "Phantom of the Opera". *rage quiver*) And then Helen Bonham Carter (also with high EQ) could sing, too! (I’ve always had something of a girlcrush on her – she’s made a life’s work out of playing quirky/creepy/crazy women, and done it well. Plus, I’ve always longed for hair like hers, that could be described as a riotous mass of curls. *sigh*) I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know if Depp and Carter had previously worked together on anything other than "Corpse Bride", but here they are certainly a match made in hell.
Overall, I’d say the movie was good. It entertained me, which is my low-standards baseline for media; it wasn’t life-changing, or thought-provoking (other than making me want to post about it), or any other kind of exceptional movie-making that will forever stay with me. The visuals were certainly amazing; the dank and grime they created for London’s backstreets would have made anyone’s life seem hopeless. There’s a particular funny scene where Mrs. Lovett is picturing herself and Mr. Todd and the serving boy, Toby, as a demented little goth family going on a succession of trips. Parading down a crowded pier! Basking in their mutant pallor at the beach (with a sulky Mr. Todd in a pristine striped bathing suit)! Having tea with friends in a sunny cottage! The ludicrousness of this grimy, worn-out pair parading around in crisply Technicolor clothes under sunny blue skies hammers home how unfit they are for anywhere else. I also loved how Sweeney Todd played out his revenge story, easily sliding into Mrs. Lovett’s mad plan of cannibalism and profit. The sick humor of the pair standing in her shop and commenting on the literal taste of the passers-by had me laughing, which made me approve of how skillfully the plot had been developed to such a natural and amusing turn of events. I had heard that there was a LOT of blood in the movie, but even though I’m not a big fan of gore, this was bearable. Perhaps it was the syrupy-ketchup consistency and color of the blood (I’ve read that was a deliberate choice on Tim Burton’s part), or the spurty details that played demented homage to Monty Python gags, or simply that each attack was telegraphed and there wasn’t the shocked surprise element to it, but it didn’t make me cringe.
I did have a few quibbles, though I’m not sure whether to lay blame at Tim Burton’s feet as the filmmaker, or the creator of the original Broadway production. Sweeney Todd’s sailor friend Anthony falls in love with Sweeney’s daughter Joanna merely from seeing her through a window, possibly having heard her sing as well (it’s not very clear in the scene). That kind of covetousness passing as love is rather squicky, as obsession is the genesis of the story: Judge Turpin desired the wife of Sweeney (then Benjamin Barker), so the judge had him deported to Australia on trumped-up charges as to have a better chance at the wife. As a kid, I would have been all aswoon at the young man’s "love at first sight", not to mention the extremely fey attractiveness of the actor playing Anthony, but present-day, it left me feeling a little ill. I guess, to its credit, the movie does underscore Anthony’s epiphany of love with a brooding, ominous score, but that’s about as much subtext as we get. There’s a later meeting between Anthony and Joanna when he’s rescued her from an insane asylum (and what a sobering thought, of how common a circumstance that was and how realistic the depicted conditions were), where he promises her a bright and shiny future and she turns to him with troubled eyes (mind you, she’s not even aware of her father’s current vocation or the fate of her mother) to tell him that the ghosts of their memories will always haunt them. But after that, we never get any closure on their story; I wish there could have been at least a frantic coach ride away during the credits or SOMETHING. I also wondered that the judge would have any desire for Joanna after her stay at the asylum, as I would have assumed that she would have been despoiled by her stay, and her untouched innocence was the basis of her attraction. But I suppose I’m spending too much time thinking about secondary characters…Another head-scratcher was the body-dumping chair: well, not the chair itself, but the chute. The bodies appeared to zoom right into the basement, but the layout of Sweeney Todd’s room above Mrs. Lovett’s business would seem to have the victims falling through the shop. I also thought they over-used the action shots of the carcasses crumpling onto the cellar floor. The boneless sprawl of the dead bodies hitting the ground was unnerving the first couple of times, but it got tedious through repetition.
Enough with the nitpicking; there were plenty of details to love. Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall played the judge and his toady, Beadle Bamford. (For those of you who don’t know Harry Potter minutiae, that’s Snape and Peter Pettigrew.) Rickman was made to play villains, based on his sneer alone. Anthony Steward Head (Giles from "Buffy") had a brief cameo (and my companions and I let out an approving SQUEEE!); evidently the spirit of his character and Christopher Lee’s were supposed to "sing The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, its reprises, and the Epilogue. These songs were recorded, but eventually cut since director Tim Burton felt that the songs were too theatrical for the film." I’d love to see those scenes restored on the DVD. (I’m also an extras slut; so shoot me.) All the actors, even the younger ones, could sing quite well, and the compositions with multiple cast members had delightfully eerie harmonies. (And again with the extras: I wanted to hear Ash sing!) I appreciated the parallel journeys and transformations of the three members of the Barker clan: Benjamin was exiled to Australia by the judge, adopted the new identity of Sweeney Todd, and was guided back to London by Anthony. Lucy was raped and discarded by the judge, became the crazy beggar woman, and was given alms by Anthony. Joanna was kidnapped by the judge, raised as his ward, and was rescued by Anthony. I suppose that’s why Anthony, of all of them, gets to remain the most untouched by the surrounding horrors.
This story was made from Creepy. With Tim Burton, that’s a given, but this was truly a mad marriage of story and artist. Not a single character is untouched by tragedy, and they all have the look of it in their crazy dead eyes. These are people who take their insanity and run with it. I had a meta-unnerving moment when Toby sings his Oedipal love song to Mrs. Lovett, "Not While I’m Around", with the overtones of her realization that she might have to kill this adorable moppet to preserve the horrible secret. I’d heard that song countless times on best-of-Broadway collections, and never knew the gruesome story behind it. *shudder* Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are Tim Burton’s perfectly twisted agents. Other potential Mrs. Lovett’s during casting included Meryl Streep, Cyndi Lauper, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening and Toni Collette, and while I’m sure they each would have brought something fun and enjoyable to the part, Carter’s broken-doll appearance and her matter-of-fact madness were too dead-on to pass up. (Though I must admit to some fascination at the thought of Angela Lansbury in the roll; it pays some credence to the theory that Jessica Fletcher was behind all those murders.)
I told a co-worker that I had seen the movie over the weekend, and he remarked that his teenaged son had seen it and thought it was stupid, because the ads never mentioned it was a musical. I was somewhat agog at his ignorance, but I suppose that’s both my privilege showing through and misleading marketing. (Did none of the ads show them singing? I don’t watch many commercials anymore, bless you DVR!)
In conclusion (and wow, this kind of length is why I don’t do much commentary), I firmly liked "Sweeney Todd". I wouldn’t say it was the greatest film ever and that you must drop everything and go see it, but if you’re not too squeamish, appreciate musicals and/or the oddness of Tim Burton and his merry madmen and women, then you may very well enjoy this movie, too.
