Ryan McNeil
We are now in the eighth year of the Modern Musical Era. Since the commercial and critical success of MOULIN ROUGE!, Hollywood has re-awakened to a genre once left for dead. The films made now have more money and effort behind them than ever before, but the results have been wildly inconsistent. I could climb on to my soapbox and illustrate my views on which films hit, and which films miss, but I think I’ll leave that for a whole other entry. Let me just say this – when the imaginary curtain comes down and the credits start to roll, I have one piece of criteria for how I judge a modern musical: Did the film achieve something that a staging of the play could not? On this criterion alone, SWEENEY TODD succeeds.
This is a story of vengeance. A judge (Alan Rickman), finds himself consumed with jealousy of a simple barber named Barker’s (Johnny Depp) picture-perfect wife and daughter. He wants them as his own, and sends the man to prison for no crime whatsoever. Years later, the barber returns to London a dark shell of the man he used to be. He meets Mrs. Lovett – a woman piemaker (Helena Bonham-Carter), who knows who he used to be, and fills him in on what he’s missed: his wife is dead, his daughter has been adopted by the judge. Quickly falling deeper into rage and despair, he swears out revenge on the judge. He begins changing his name to Sweeney Todd, dusting off his razors and re-opening his barber shop on Fleet Street. He even marks the occasion by competing with a rival barber named Pirelli (Sascha Baron-Coen) over who can give the fastest, cleanest shave. This is where things start to go wrong…and get gruesome.
So does the film achieve something that a staging could not? Indeed it does. For starters, it’s much darker – literally. Much of the movie is dreary, drab, and is primarily presented in tones of grey. So much so, that it could almost be presented in black and white. Much of this wouldn’t work on a stage, since the audience would be straining to make out what was happening with much of the action being pulled from shadows. When the film does branch out from the greys, it swings to the reds…for blood…a lot of blood. Sweeney’s viciousness has always been inferred on stage – red lights, red water, red scarves, and so on.
Director Tim Burton goes far less subtle, and gets every drop he can out of every one of Sweeney’s kills. As if that isn’t bad enough, he alters one of the trademarks of the story to gruesome effect. Historically, after Sweeney kills a customer, he would tilt the chair forward and let the body slide down a trap door to the cellar below. Burton decided it would be far more grisly to tip the chair back, making the body slide – and worse yet, land –head first. I must give high praise to the sound mixer, since the squishy crunch of each landing made my skin crawl every time.
As a movie, and as a modern-musical SWEENEY TODD works, but how much you enjoy it will depend on two other factors. The first is the fact that it isn’t so much a musical, as it is an opera. Precious few words are spoken and not sung, and while that worked for me, I can see how it might be a bit too demanding for some audiences. What makes this first factor so hard to overcome is how deceptively the movie was marketed. In many trailers and ads, the singing was minimal – if even present at all. It felt like a bit of false advertising to get audiences in, to dupe them into a musical they might otherwise skip. The second factor comes down to the music itself. The music is lyrical, dark, and gothic…and deliberately not tremendously memorable. You won’t finish watching the movie and be humming the romantic theme. I dare suggest that none of it will get stuck in your head. The music isn’t bad (quite the contrary actually) it just isn’t catchy.
What’s most interesting about the fact that the music doesn’t last, is the fact that it truly doesn’t matter. I once wrote that by and large, musicals are not highly concerned with the actual story. Not only does SWEENEY TODD pay close attention to the story, it tells one of the best ones ever put to music. The story delves into madness, violence, revenge, faith, hope, and love – not bad for two hours’ traffic! The movie could well have worked if told as a gruesome tale without so much as a hum…but what fun would that be?