Sweeney Todd Ramble

Speaking of blood (as I was yesterday describing my mother's wedding outfit), we saw "Sweeney Todd" last Sunday. J & J told me about a review that described the opening scene as raining blood on London. Well...splattering maybe. Thick, viscous, bright red splatters that looked like paint. And just a few splatters. All the blood in the movie (and yes, there was plenty of it) looked cartoonish (as did Sacha Baron Cohen's tube-sock bulge and side curls).

Okay, I didn't watch all slicings of throats. The "arterial spray", as my sister told me it was described on NPR, was hideous even in its exaggeration. I am not a fan of gore. But again, it was cartoonish gore in a musical about a demon barber, after all. The movie was a beautifully acted and surprisingly tragic interpretation of Sondheim's over-the-top, Tony-award winning 1979 production (which I loved, at least on vinyl & video). The only thing missing was the title song.

Helena Bonham Carter was especially touching as the devious, kind Mrs. Lovett. Her portrayal is more heartwrenching than Angela Lansbury's blowsy 1979 Mrs. Lovett (whom I adored). Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett, who resembles the Corpse Bride she played in Burton's 2005 animated film, is certainly blowsy, but she is tender in a way that also recalls her corpse bride. Her adoration of "Mr. T" reminded me of her Ophelia. Neither she nor Johnny Depp can sing like Angela Lansbury or Len Cariou, but they both made the roles their own.

What can anyone say about Mr. Depp? The man is a pleasure to watch, unquestionably. But what impresses me is that despite his rockgod image, he is not Johnny Depp as "Sweeney Todd" or "Jack Sparrow" or "Edward Scissorhands". It's like he channels each character. He articulates Jack Sparrow with a psychological complexity that creates Jack Sparrow (a fairly two-dimensional role) as a cinematic figure, a narrative icon. Can you imagine the "Pirates" series being as successful without Depp's Sparrow?

Luckily, in "Sweeney Todd", Mr. Depp's co-actors are equally brilliant. Alan Rickman, as ever, seethes with evil as the vain Judge Turpin. My introduction to Mr. Rickman was in the 1990 film, "Truly, Madly, Deeply" where his character was anything but evil. As Snape, he manages, through the character's apparent evil, to project a wounded morality. Not so Judge Turpin, who is disgusting from his first appearance. However, as the judge encounters Sweeney Todd for the last time, Rickman somehow elicits sympathy, singing to his death. My favorite interpretation was Timothy Spall's oddly foppish Beadle Bamford.

Several of the supporting roles were played by young unknowns who were pretty fine singers. Sprite-faced Jayne Wisener played Johanna. Jamie Campbell Bower played Anthony Hope, which was a bit weird because his sailor was prettier than Johanna. Most impressive was Toby, played by the large-voiced and tiny-bodied Ed Sanders.

Part of Mrs. Lovett's charm is her affection for Toby, who like the Beggar Woman, is one of the story's moral compasses. Yet her real affection is for Mr. T, which is perhaps the reason for her particular (and troubling) demise. When Sweeney Todd discovers Mrs. Lovett's crimes, her consequences were the most disturbing of Mr. Todd's retributions. I secretly wished she could achieve her "By the Sea" fantasy with Mr. T and Toby. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen, and it is to Mr. Burton's credit that his "Sweeney Todd" rejects all sentimentality. None of the characters in this production are redeemed, not even Johanna and Anthony. He disrupts any possibility of a happy ending.

Mrs. Lovett's and Sacha Baron Cohen's Perrelli's are the two longest death scenes in the film. Interestingly, Baron Cohen's Perrelli, despite the impressive bulge*, is a very feminized character. Just saying, on our little and big screens, the iconic image these days is the feminized corpse and/or the slow transformation of femme into corpse. I would like to think that Tim Burton, in Sweeney Todd (as in the Corpse Bride), manipulates and somehow subverts that image. But I'm not sure. Anyway, it is the best movie I've seen in the theater since "No Country for Old Men" (the only two movies I've seen in the past three months).

Now that I think of it, both films left a similar residue. Kinda viscous and red.

*Because of? I understand that Baron Cohen chose the look and that no pictures of his character were released before the film.