Film: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Studio: DreamWorks SKG; Warner Brothers

Director: Tim Burton

Principal Actors: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener, Sacha Baron Cohen

Release: December 21, 2007

Film length: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Rating: R for graphic bloody violence

5 Stars

Reviewer: Deborah Ground Buckner

Just in time for Christmas, Tim Burton brings a tale of bloody murder, cannibalism, and revenge. Thirty years since its Broadway debut, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has made it to the screen.

As the opening credits for DreamWorks and Warner Brothers roll by, eerie organ music plays. Out of the dark, foggy night, the rooftops of London emerge with smoking chimneys rising above. This isn't the London of Mary Poppins.

This is a London of rat-infested sewers with a strange, red substance in the water, a monstrous sausage grinder with long strings of meat emerging from it, dripping blood, and a barber's chair shown between two haunting framed silhouettes of a woman and a little girl. Production designer Dante Ferretti has created a London that has never been possible to show on a stage: dark, narrow crowded streets, rats and filth, a fog that conveys the entire gloom of the population.

This is the London of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

A ship sails into port. A young sailor (Jamie Campbell Bower) sings a happy song of the excitement of London. A second voice joins, offering a much more sinister view of the city. Though the figure of a dark, mysterious fellow in loads of eyeliner standing aboard a ship may be familiar to the fans of Captain Jack Sparrow, this is a much different incarnation of Johnny Depp. He appears as the haunted remnant of a once happy husband and father, Benjamin Barker, unjustly sent away to prison, leaving his wife to become the victim of a lustful judge. After fifteen years, Barker returns as Sweeney Todd, ready to take his revenge.

Returning to his old home, Todd encounters his former landlady, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). Mrs. Lovett is immediately established as a nut case, a purveyor of “the worst pies in London,” of which she prates and babbles in song, brushing away the roaches (another advantage of film) as she serves a meat pie to Todd. Mrs. Lovett tells him of his wife taking poison, and his infant daughter becoming the ward of the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). She reveals Todd's greatest treasure, his barber's razors, which she has kept hidden below the floorboards of his old quarters. Todd sings a love song to his “friends” while Lovett joins in singing the song to Todd. Bonham Carter's performance is so good, it is obvious she was cast in the role for more reasons than having just given birth to her second child with the director.

Todd hatches his plan of revenge, to lure the judge into his barber's chair and slit his throat. First, he must deal with the competition, Signor Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen—Borat), hailed as the best barber in London. Pirelli's great skill and magical elixir are hawked in the marketplace by his workhouse boy, Tobias (Ed Sanders). Todd challenges Pirelli to a contest to see who can give the fastest, closest shave. Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall-recently Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films), the henchman of Judge Turpin, is enlisted to declare the winner, and bestows the honor upon Todd.

Pirelli recognizes Todd as the former Benjamin Barker and threatens him with blackmail. Todd's razors make short work of him. Mrs. Lovett, in all practicality, observes burying the body would be a terrible waste, and a new ingredient for her meat pies is suddenly available. She takes in young Tobias, who believes his master has deserted him, as her assistant.

Meanwhile, Antony, the young sailor, has encountered Todd's daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener), the captive ward of Judge Turpin. Antony plans to run away with her, but the constantly vigilant Turpin (watching through a peephole carved into Johanna's wall) decides to preempt the plan by marrying his ward himself. When Turpin senses her repulsion to the idea, he turns to Beadle for advice who sends him to the new barber. Todd's glorious moment of revenge awaits as he has the judge in his chair, the two joining in a lovely duet about “Pretty Women,” when Antony's sudden bursting into the chamber destroys the moment.

At this point, what was left of Todd's sanity completely snaps, and he decides his razors will be well employed while he awaits another opportunity for revenge. He joins with Mrs. Lovett in “Have a Little Priest,” a happy song speculating what flavoring the various professions of London will add to her meat pies.

Todd adapts his barber's chair for maximum efficiency. With the mere push of a pedal, the chair sends a victim through a trap door and down to the work room of the pie shop. With every stroke of the razor, the screen becomes flooded with bursts of blood, the gore that gives the film its “R” rating. But this is “musical” blood, flowing so well with the story and so artfully unreal in appearance that it dispels the horror of a typical splatter film. Mrs. Lovett's business flourishes, and seeing her response to the new prosperity takes much of the bite away from the knowledge of exactly what she is serving to her customers.

That is the magic of Sondheim's work, pitting the darkest of tales against some of the greatest music in theatrical musicals and telling the story through such vibrant characters. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are actors, not singers, but the music does not suffer. I have seen stage productions of Sweeney Todd with well-trained vocalists where either projection or enunciation problems have made the lyrics go past in a blur, and with Sondheim, every word is important. Nothing is lost throughout Depp's and Bonham Carter's songs, and they are so well in character as they sing that they keep the story moving.

As always, Rickman gives a run at stealing the show, his judge even more ominous than Severus Snape, and he reveals a pleasant singing voice in his duet in the barber's chair.

As the young lovers, Wisener and Bower bring beautiful voices to the work, making their songs high points of the film. Ed Sanders, who looks to be about ten years old, sings his heart out in “Nothing's Gonna Harm You” to Mrs. Lovett and conjures up memories of Mark Lester singing “Where is Love” in the film of Lionel Bart's Oliver!

For all the darkness of its tale, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd is a well-crafted story well told. It will have audiences leaving the theater humming and pondering Oscar nominations.