Psycho's Movie Reviews #300: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 2007 musical slasher film directed by Tim Burton and an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Tony Award-winning 1979 musical of the same name. The film retells the melodramatic Victorian tale of Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), an English barber and serial killer who murders his customers with a straight razor and, with the help of his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), processes their corpses into meat pies.

Having been struck by the cinematic qualities of Sondheim's musical while still a student, Burton had entertained the notion of a film version since the early 1980s. However, it was not until 2006 that he had the opportunity to realize this ambition, when DreamWorks announced his appointment as replacement for director Sam Mendes, who had been working on such an adaptation. Sondheim, although not directly involved, was extensively consulted during production. Depp, not known for his singing, took lessons in preparation for his role, which producer Richard D. Zanuck acknowledged was something of a gamble.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was released in the United States on December 21, 2007 and in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2008. Grossing over $150 million worldwide, the film was praised for the performances of the cast, musical numbers, costume and set design, and faithfulness to the 1979 musical.

Plot

In 1846, Benjamin Barker, a barber, arrives in London, accompanied by sailor Anthony Hope. Fifteen years earlier, he was falsely convicted and exiled to Australia by the corrupt Judge Turpin, who lusted after Barker's wife Lucy. Barker adopts the alias "Sweeney Todd" and returns to his old Fleet Street shop, situated above Nellie Lovett's meat pie shop, where she sells the "worst pies in London". Lovett tells him that once he was exiled, Turpin raped Lucy, who then poisoned herself with arsenic. The couple's daughter, Johanna, is now Turpin's ward. Todd vows revenge and re-opens his barbershop after Mrs. Lovett, who loves him unrequitedly, presents him with his old straight razors. Anthony becomes enamoured with Johanna, but is caught by Turpin and driven away by his henchman, Beadle Bamford.

Todd denounces faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli's hair tonic as a fraud and humiliates him in a public shaving contest judged by Bamford. A few days later, Pirelli arrives at Todd's shop, with his boy assistant Tobias Ragg. Pirelli identifies himself as Todd's former assistant, Davy Collins, and threatens to reveal Todd's secret unless Todd gives him half his earnings. Todd bludgeons Collins unconscious with a tea kettle, hides him in a trunk, and later slits his throat upon finding him still alive.

After receiving advice from Bamford, Turpin visits Todd for grooming, intent on marrying Johanna. Todd shaves Turpin, preparing to slit his throat; they are interrupted by Anthony, who reveals his plan to elope with Johanna before noticing Turpin. An angered Turpin renounces Todd's service and leaves. Todd swears revenge on the entire world, vowing to kill as many people as possible while he waits for another chance to kill Turpin. Mrs. Lovett gets the idea to bake Todd's victims into pies, and Todd rigs his barber chair to drop his victims' bodies through a trapdoor and into her bakehouse. Anthony searches for Johanna, whom Turpin has sent to an insane asylum upon discovering her plans to elope with Anthony.

With the barbering and pie-making businesses prospering, Mrs. Lovett takes Toby as her assistant and tells an uninterested Todd of her plans to marry him and move to the seaside. Anthony discovers Johanna's whereabouts and, following Todd's suggestion, poses as a wigmaker's apprentice to rescue her. Todd has Toby deliver a letter to Turpin, telling him where Johanna will be brought when Anthony frees her. Toby has become wary of Todd and tells Mrs. Lovett of his suspicions, vowing to protect her.

Bamford arrives at the pie shop, informing Mrs. Lovett that neighbors have been complaining of the stink from her chimney. Todd distracts him with an offer of a free grooming and murders him. Mrs. Lovett informs Todd of Toby's suspicions, and the pair search for the boy, who is now hiding in the sewers after finding human remains in Mrs. Lovett's bakehouse. Meanwhile, Anthony brings Johanna, disguised as a sailor, to the shop, and has her wait there while he leaves to find Todd.

The beggar woman enters the shop looking for Bamford, and Johanna hides in the trunk. The woman recognizes Todd, but upon hearing Turpin coming, Todd kills her and sends her through the trapdoor in the floor. As Turpin enters, Todd explains that Johanna had repented and is coming to him, then offers a free shave in the meantime. When Turpin finally recognizes Todd as Benjamin Barker, Todd stabs him several times, cuts his throat, and dumps him into the bakehouse. Johanna comes out of her hiding place, still disguised, and Todd prepares to kill her as well, not recognizing her as his daughter. However, hearing Mrs. Lovett horrifyingly scream in the basement when the dying Turpin grabs at her dress, Todd spares Johanna.

Todd discovers that the beggar woman was his wife Lucy, whom he believed to be dead, and that Mrs. Lovett deliberately misled him so she could have him to herself. Enraged, Todd pretends to forgive her and dances with her before hurling her into the bakehouse oven as revenge, then cradles Lucy's dead body in his arms. Toby appears, enraged at Mrs. Lovett's death, and Todd allows Toby to slit his throat with his own razor. Toby leaves as Todd bleeds to death over his dead wife.

Production

Development

Tim Burton first saw Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as a CalArts student in London in 1980. Burton recalled his experience of seeing the show, saying, "I was still a student, I didn't know if I would be making movies or working in a restaurant, I had no idea what I would be doing. I just wandered into the theatre and it just blew me away because I'd never really seen anything that had the mixture of all those elements. I actually went three nights in a row because I loved it so much." Burton was not a fan of the musical genre but was struck by how cinematic the musical was, and repeatedly attended subsequent performances. He described it as a silent film with music, and was "dazzled both by the music and its sense of the macabre." When his directing career took off in the late 1980s, Burton approached Sondheim with a view to making a cinematic adaptation, but nothing came of it. Sondheim said, "Burton went off and did other things."

Director Sam Mendes had been working on a film version of the story for several years, and in June 2003 Sondheim was approached to write the script. Although he turned down the offer, Mendes and producer Walter F. Parkes obtained his approval to use writer John Logan instead. Logan had previously collaborated with Parkes on Gladiator, and claimed his biggest challenge in adapting the Sondheim stage play "was taking a sprawling, magnificent Broadway musical and making it cinematic, and an emotionally honest film. Onstage, you can have a chorus sing as the people of London, but I think that would be alienating in a movie." Mendes left to direct the 2005 film Jarhead, and Burton took over as director after his project, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, fell apart due to its excessive budget.

When Burton was hired, he reworked the screenplay with Logan. Logan felt they agreed over the film's tone due to "share[d] stunted childhoods watching Amicus movies". Turning a three-hour stage musical into a two-hour film required some changes. Some songs were shortened, while others were completely removed. Burton said, "In terms of the show, it was three hours long, but we weren't out to film the Broadway show, we were out to make a movie, so we tried to keep the pace like those old melodramas. Sondheim himself is not a real big fan of movie musicals, so he was really open to honing it down to a more pacey shape." Burton and Logan also reduced the prominence of other secondary elements, such as the romance between Todd's daughter Johanna and Anthony, to allow them to focus on the triangular relationship between Todd, Mrs. Lovett, and Toby.

Casting

DreamWorks announced Burton's appointment in August 2006, and Johnny Depp was cast as Todd. Christopher Lee, Peter Bowles, Anthony Head, and five other actors were set to play the ghost narrators, but their roles were cut (Head does appear in an uncredited cameo as a gentleman who congratulates Depp after the shaving contest). According to Lee, these deletions were due to time constraints caused by a break in filming during March 2007, while Depp's daughter recovered from an illness. Burton's domestic partner Helena Bonham Carter was cast in October 2006, as well as Sacha Baron Cohen. In December 2006, Alan Rickman was cast. In January 2007, Laura Michelle Kelly was cast as Lucy Barker. Timothy Spall was added to the cast, and said he was urged to audition by his daughter, who wanted him to work with Depp. He recalled, "I really wanted this one – I knew Tim was directing and that Johnny Depp was going to be in it. My daughter, my youngest daughter, really wanted me to do it for that reason – Johnny Depp was in it. (She came on set to meet Depp) and he was really delightful to her, she had a great time. Then, I took her to the junket – and (Depp) greeted her like an old pal when he saw her. I've got plenty of brownie points at the moment."

Three members of the cast had never been in a film before: Ed Sanders was cast as Toby, Jayne Wisener as Johanna, and Jamie Campbell Bower, who auditioned, and after four days got the part of Anthony said, "I think I weed myself. I was out shopping at the time and I got this call on my mobile. I was just like, 'OH MY GOD!' Honestly, I was like a little girl running around this shop like oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god."

Filming

Filming began on February 5, 2007 at Pinewood Studios, and was completed by May 11, despite a brief interruption when Depp's daughter was taken seriously ill. Burton opted to film in London, where he had felt "very much at home" since his work on Batman in 1989. Production designer Dante Ferretti created a darker, more sinister London by adapting Fleet Street and its surrounding area. Burton initially planned to use minimal sets and film in front of a green screen, but decided against it, stating that physical sets helped actors get into a musical frame of mind: "Just having people singing in front of a green screen seemed more disconnected".

Depp created his own image of Todd. Heavy purple and brown make-up was applied around his eyes to suggest fatigue and rage, as if "he's never slept". Burton said of the character Sweeney Todd, "We always saw him as a sad character, not a tragic villain or anything. He's basically a dead person when you meet him; the only thing that's keeping him going is the one single minded thing which is tragic. You don't see anything else around him." Depp said of the character, "He makes Sid Vicious look like the innocent paper boy. He's beyond dark. He's already dead. He's been dead for years." Depp also commented on the streak of white in Todd's hair, saying, "The idea was that he'd had this hideous trauma, from being sent away, locked away. That streak of white hair became the shock of that rage. It represented his rage over what had happened. It's certainly not the first time anyone's used it. But it's effective. It tells a story all by itself. My brother had a white spot growing up, and his son has this kind of shock of white in his hair."

Burton insisted that the film be bloody, as he felt stage versions of the play which cut back on the bloodshed robbed it of its power. For him, "Everything is so internal with Sweeney that the blood is like his emotional release. It's more about catharsis than it is a literal thing." Producer Richard D. Zanuck said that "Burton had a very clear plan that he wanted to lift that up into a surreal, almost Kill Bill kind of stylization. We had done tests and experiments with the neck slashing, with the blood popping out. I remember saying to Tim, 'My God, do we dare do this?'" On set, the fake blood was coloured orange to render correctly on the desaturated colour film used, and crew members wore bin liners to avoid getting stained while filming. This macabre tone made some studios nervous, and it was not until Warner Bros. Pictures, DreamWorks and Paramount had signed up for the project that the film's $50 million budget was covered. Burton said "the studio was cool about it and they accepted it because they knew what the show was. Any movie is a risk, but it is nice to be able to do something like that that doesn't fit into the musical or slasher movie categories."

After the filming, Burton said of the cast, "All I can say is this is one of the best casts I've ever worked with. These people are not professional singers, so to do a musical like this which I think is one of the most difficult musicals, they all went for it. Every day on the set was a very, very special thing for me. Hearing all these guys sing, I don't know if I can ever have an experience like that again." Burton said of the singing, "You can't just lip synch, you'd see the throat and the breath, every take they all had to belt it out. It was very enjoyable for me to see, with music on the set everybody just moved differently. I'd seen Johnny (Depp) act in a way I'd never seen before, walking across the room or sitting in the chair, picking up a razor or making a pie, whatever. They all did it in a way that you could sense."

Depp said of working with Baron Cohen, when asked what he was like in real life (meaning, not doing one of his trademark characters), "He's not what I expected. I didn't look at those characters and think, 'This will be the sweetest guy in the world'. He's incredibly nice. A real gentleman, kind of elegant. I was impressed with him. He's kind of today's equivalent of Peter Sellers."

Music

Burton wanted to avoid the traditional approach of patches of dialogue interrupted by song, "We didn't want it to be what I'd say was a traditional musical with a lot of dialogue and then singing. That's why we cut out a lot of choruses and extras singing and dancing down the street. Each of the characters, because a lot of them are repressed and have their emotions inside, the music was a way to let them express their feelings."

He cut the show's famous opening number, "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", explaining, "Why have a chorus singing about 'attending the tale of Sweeney Todd' when you could just go ahead and attend it?" Sondheim acknowledged that, in adapting a musical to film, the plot has to be kept moving, and was sent MP3 files of his shortened songs by Mike Higham, the film's music producer, for approval. Several other songs were also cut, and Sondheim noted that there were "many changes, additions and deletions... though if you just go along with it, I think you'll have a spectacular time." To create a larger, more cinematic feel, the score was re-orchestrated by the stage musical's original orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, who increased the orchestra from 27 musicians to 78.

The Deluxe Complete Edition soundtrack was released on December 18, 2007. Depp's singing was described by a New York Times reviewer as "harsh and thin, but amazingly forceful". Another critic adds that, though Depp's voice "does not have much heft or power", "his ear is obviously excellent, because his pitch is dead-on accurate... Beyond his good pitch and phrasing, the expressive colourings of his singing are crucial to the portrayal. Beneath this Sweeney’s vacant, sullen exterior is a man consumed with a murderous rage that threatens to burst forth every time he slowly takes a breath and is poised to speak. Yet when he sings, his voice crackles and breaks with sadness."

Release/Reception/Box Office

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street officially opened at the United States box office on December 21, 2007 in 1,249 theatres, and took $9,300,805 in its opening weekend. Worldwide releases followed during January and February 2008, with the film performing well in the United Kingdom and Japan. The film grossed $52,898,073 in the United States and Canada, and $99,625,091 in other markets, accumulating a worldwide total of $152,523,164. In the United States, the Marcus Theatres Corporation was not initially planning to screen the film following its premiere, because it was unable to reach a pricing agreement with Paramount. However, the dispute was resolved in time for the official release.

Although Sondheim was cautious of a cinematic adaptation of his musical, he was largely impressed by the results. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street received critical acclaim, and the performances, visuals, production design, costume design and faithfulness to its source material were praised. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 232 reviews and an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Full of pith and Grand Guignol grossness, this macabre musical is perfectly helmed and highly entertaining. Tim Burton masterfully stages the musical in a way that will make you think he has done this many times before." Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 83 out of 100, based on 39 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Sweeney Todd appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.

Of the reviewers, Time rated it an A-minus and added, "Burton and Depp infuse the brilliant cold steel of Stephen Sondheim's score with a burning passion. Helena Bonham Carter and a superb supporting cast bring focused fury to this musical nightmare. It's bloody great." Time's Richard Corliss named the film one of its top ten movies of 2007, placing it fifth. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four stars out of four, lauding Burton's visual style. In his review in Variety, Todd McCarthy called it "both sharp and fleet" and "a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1979 theatrical musical things have turned out uniformly right thanks to highly focused direction by Tim Burton, expert screw-tightening by scenarist John Logan, and haunted and musically adept lead performances from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Assembled artistic combo assures the film will reap by far the biggest audience to see a pure Sondheim musical, although just how big depends on the upscale crowd’s tolerance for buckets of blood, and the degree to which the masses stay away due to the whiff of the highbrow." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B-plus in its Movie Reviews section and stated, "To stage a proper Sweeney Todd, necks must be slit, human flesh must be squished into pastries, and blood ought to spurt in fountains and rivers of death. Enter Tim Burton, who has tenderly art-directed soup-thick, tomato-red, fake-gore blood with the zest of a Hollywood-funded Jackson Pollock." She went on to refer to the piece as "opulent, attentive so finely minced a mixture of Sondheim's original melodrama and Burton's signature spicing that it's difficult to think of any other filmmaker so naturally suited for the job."

In its DVD Reviews section, EW's Chris Nashawaty gave the film an A-minus, stating, "Depp's soaring voice makes you wonder what other tricks he's been hiding... Watching Depp's barber wield his razors... it's hard not to be reminded of Edward Scissorhands frantically shaping hedges into animal topiaries 18 years ago... and all of the twisted beauty we would've missed out on had Burton and Depp never met." In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers awarded it 3½ out of 4 stars and added, "Sweeney Todd is a thriller-diller from start to finish: scary, monstrously funny and melodically thrilling the film is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score." As with Time, the critic ranked it fifth on his list of the best movies of 2007. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said, "The blood juxtaposed to the music is highly unsettling. It runs contrary to expectations. Burton pushes this gore into his audiences' faces so as to feel the madness and the destructive fury of Sweeney's obsession. Teaming with Depp, his long-time alter ego, Burton makes Sweeney a smouldering dark pit of fury and hate that consumes itself. With his sturdy acting and surprisingly good voice, Depp is a Sweeney Todd for the ages." Harry Knowles gave the film a highly positive review, calling it Burton's best film since Ed Wood, his favourite Burton film, and said it was possibly superior. He praised all of the cast and the cinematography, but noted it would probably not appeal to non-musical fans due to the dominance of music in the film.

Budget $50 million

Box office $153.4 million

My Review

Sweeney Todd is an old story that is not based on a real 19th century murderer--despite some recent rumours that this legend is true. Though the original story has changed a bit over the years, the basic elements remain. A man is wrongly convicted and returns years later to exact revenge--slicing the throats of the wicked (and sometimes innocent) and then having the bodies disposed of in meat pies sold to the unsuspecting public!

The movie is based on the Sondheim musical. Over the years, there have been other non-musical versions of the fabled story of Sweeney Todd, but Stephen Sondheim has truly popularized this grisly tale of revenge and madness. However, if you are used to the Rogers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe style of musicals, be prepared for a wildly different sort of musical. This isn't just because of the very, very dark subject matter but also the style of singing. Unlike these other famous musical teams, Sweeney Todd does not offer songs that you will quickly find yourself humming or will hear on an elevator. That's because this production isn't a traditional musical with catchy lyrics, but where the dialog is sung to music--somewhat like the wonderful Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (wow, aside from this, you can't find two films more unalike). And since the emphasis is on dialog that is sung, the style may take a lot of getting used to. Plus, you probably WON'T find yourself tapping your feet and humming to the amazingly fast-paced and somewhat maniacal music. About the only really traditional style song is the lovely "Joanna".

This style singing does take some getting used to, though this film adaptation of the musical is much more approachable to the casual viewer. That's because in the play, many of the songs are sung in a crazy and cacophonous manner--with many singers across the stage singing DIFFERENT parts that generally DON'T harmonize well with each other. This strange and sometimes painful style was done to emphasize Sweeney's madness and I understood the symbolism--I just didn't particularly like it and I was thrilled that these twisted chorusers were absent from the film. Instead, the music was sung by either individuals or in duets (which were ALSO often sung very separately but with much less cacophony than an entire chorus). My daughter, quite the purist and lover of theatre told me she missed this aspect of the film--she WANTED the insane chorus. As for me and the average audience member, I am sure this change by Tim Burton is a welcome one. The bottom line is that the stage style was just too annoying and headache-evoking.

While I am talking about the songs, I must point out that despite originally feeling very sceptical about casting Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in the leads (after all, they're NOT known for their singing ability), they and the rest of the cast did quite well. I am sure that the modern ability to make practically ANYONE a singing sensation (such as Hillary Duff or Ashlee Simpson) was employed, but it did work. Now this isn't to say that they or the rest of the cast have gorgeous and melodious voices--they don't. But, for this style of film, it worked perfectly. Had they been cast in a remake of The Sound Of Music or some other more traditional musical, it probably wouldn't have worked. Oddly, despite their being more than competent in the roles, I have heard some snipes about them and I can assure you they DID do well and were well cast.

Now as for the rest of the film, I must STRONGLY urge caution, as this is one of the most violent films I have ever seen. Sure, some films show many more deaths but the closeup shots of throats being slit and profuse torrents of blood is NOT for the squeamish nor is the sight of seeing the corpses splat onto the floor below as they are dropped through the trap door. I noticed several in the theatre covering their eyes during the murder scenes--including my daughter. It's not for the faint-hearted and really is up close and brutal in how it depicts the killings. It worked--the murders looked very vivid and real--perhaps too real. With a little more left to the imagination with the killings, I really think the film might have worked a tad better for the average viewer. I have a very high tolerance for this stuff (probably partly due to my being a human biology minor in college), but most will cringe at all the carnage.

Now as for the aesthetics of the film. As you probably would expect, director Burton did his usual marvellous job. The dankness and awfulness of a Dickensian England is vivid and convincing. The plethora of roaches and rats also heightened this awful realism as did the terrible dental work of the actors. Unlike many films set in this era that featured actors with lovely capped teeth, the actors here abounded with crooked teeth! What I particularly liked about the film and what really jumped out at me was the cinematography--how almost everything was done in sepia and grey tones. There were a few exceptions but these were wonderful and were designed as the occasional and shocking contrast (such as the blueness of Pirelli's clothes or the intensity of the blood). Additionally, the fantasy sequence was extremely colourful and this made it one of the most striking and funny scenes in the film--quite appropriate to the mood.

So overall, apart from the intensity of the violence, this was a great film and a nice improvement over the Sondheim stage production due to its wickedly dark humour and style. 9.7/10