Burton’s grandiloquent slasher operetta

Question: is it possible for a Director with unique flair and imagination to collaborate with a musician and lyricist generally acknowledged as possessing greatness touching on genius; blessed with a charismatic and talented cast; shot, dressed and filmed with great professional skill - to produce with commitment and sincerity, a piece of work devoid of substance and almost any artistic merit?

As you leave the cinema for this one, like me I suspect you will hear arguments and disagreements all around you answering this question. Pros will be dominantly but not exclusively male; and cons, based on my experience, will have a nice line in succinctness even irony – “crap…no let me qualify that...absolute crap” being a few choice bons mots that on the way out of the cinema entertained me more than the preceding 95 minutes inside it had done.

Sondheim has always been the aficionado’s creator of musicals and the 1979 Broadway debut of his Sweeney Todd – the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is to this day regarded as a masterpiece. I am no slouch in admiring many of Sondheim’s songs and saw a luminous production of his Assassins at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years back. By contrast I found the music in this film ponderous, pretentious, frequently banal and when accompanying the gruesome scenes of slashing throat-cutting, just plain bathetic. Nothing here to compare say with the terrifying effectiveness of Kubrick’s use of music when Alex and his fellow Droogs in A Clockwork Orange kick a man to death with horrifying style and carefree indifference to the soul-chilling refrain of Singin’ in The Rain. The grotesque counterpoint there between the ‘real’ hateful viciousness of what you were seeing and the light joyous fun of the music was used to devastating effect. After the first few blood-spurting throats in ST, I’m afraid as Sondheim’s music tries, ineffectively to wind-up tension, one just thinks oh for God’s sake get on with it.

I think animation is the right medium for Burton’s imaginative talent. His eye and deep instinct for the grotesque turns his real people into puppet-like figures. He would have been naturally at home with the horror plays at Le Theatre de Grand Guignol (Mr Punch) in Paris which gave its name to the amoral, graphic violence film genre within which Burton’s visual style fits best. Although Johnny Depp’s brooding, inevitably charismatic performance recalls his Edward Scissorhands, unlike with that film, Burton cannot generate a shred of genuine emotion other than repugnance and disgust in ST. And even those emotions lose any credibility and gradually decay into tedium and indifference. True Helena Bonham- Carter occasionally arouses a wry, guilty smile as the thrifty pie-baking recycler of the result of Depp’s “I cut someone shaving this morning” antics. And she and Depp share by far and away the best, for me really the only really effective song in the piece, the darkly witty A Little Priest when they lyrically compare the relative merits of various occupations for pie contents - Poet, Vicar, Fop etc like a couple of chefs discussing the merits of free range versus organic beef, British versus New Zealand lamb etc.

The plot in fact plays out like a Punch and Judy show. Barber Benjamin Barker is happily married to Lucy. They have a baby daughter Johanna. Evil, hanging Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) lusts after Lucy so with the help of his gruesome gopher Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall) disposes of Benjamin to Australia on trumped-up charges. Ten years later Benjamin now calling himself Sweeney Todd returns to revenge himself. This becomes an obsession when he is told his wife killed herself and his daughter is Turpin’s Ward. Befriended by Helena Bonham Carter’s Mrs Lovett, proud purveyor of the “worst pies in London” protein content ranging from cockroach to cat with the odd rat for taste, Sweeney and Mrs L set up a sort of cottage pie business where she renders back unto her pie-eating customers, some of their own number – in-a, rather than upper crust.

For Mrs L, but not we think the revenge-obsessed Sweeney, it is love at first bite. But in a macabre marriage born in hell, the two thrive in what the frequently droll Mrs L calls an “honest little business”. Sweeney DIY’s an automatic barber’s chair, a model of production-line efficiency that tips his victims head first onto the concrete in Mrs L’s basement – (never mind the razor, it’s the fall that’s gonna kill you). His vengeance generalises in to a lethal misanthropy leading him as we may say, to cut through swathes of innocent Londoners on the way to giving Turpin, and Bamford on the way, a stylish razor cut windpipe.

A sub-plot of Sweeney’s saviour from the sea after he had escaped, Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower) rescuing Johanna from the lunatic asylum to which Turpin confined her after she refused to marry him, is pretty risible.

I know this is one of those films where not to like is not to get it. Geddit? And I have only ever hated one genre of movies – horror. Of course it looks good largely in monochrome with an interesting technique of allowing certain colours, notably red (no surprise there), to seep into parts of the image. But to me Sweeney Todd is tedious rather than terrifying, pretentious rather than profound. If this ever had anything great about it, I rather think it all got lost on the journey from stage to screen. It has been said that Burton has been faithful to the original stage musical. That only recalls to me William Goldman’s comment that a film adaptation must never be faithful to the original material – but must always be true to its spirit. For me there was here little genuine spirit to be true to.

Zettel, I'm sorry you didn't like this film. I really did. I liked knowing I was in a Tim Burton film and I almost forgot it was a musical after about fifteen minutes, which was a plus. I thought Johnny Depp managed to sing quite competently, actually. I loved his look and also Helena B-C and the rest of the cast, apart from the soppy youth and the soppy girl, were really good.

For me, there was more than a hint of the cartoon about this film. JD and H B-C are so tiny and doll like for one thing. I loved the scene where H B-C was imagining a future of wedded bliss. JD's response was very visual - he's such a physical actor that his utter distaste at the prospect of being hitched was drawn on every inch of his body.

Most of all it made me laugh. There were some really good lines. I don't think it should have been an 18 though. I would have loved to go and see this with my 15 year olds. The gore was there all right, but you'd have to be a bit simple to think that this scenario might actually ever get played out in real life. How much more disturbing were the spots of blood on snow, after the (unseen) rape in The Kite Runner. Certificate 15, I think.

Jem

Its interesting how people come at Tim Burton. I meant it when I said in the review that he has a unique flair and imagination. But I think the inherent naturalism of live action films is too 'small' to contain that especially visual flair. I think as I indicated, he needs the freedom that animation gives him to get over his 'vision' (ugh sorry about that).

I agree it ought to have worked with the essential theatricality of ST - for me it didn't, for you it did. That's fine, any work that arouses dissent and divergence of view is doing something right by my lights. We only ever all agree about the bland. And bland ST isn't I think we'd agree.

I think one needs what we might call the horror genre sensibility to find ST funny. I've never had it. My paradox that immediately gives me a problem with movies like ST is that I can 'take' horror when it's played real; but not when it's stylised or played for laughs. And that is not meant to imply a value judgement - most of the critics I respect have no problem buying into the mindset necessary to enjoy and see the qualities that can be present in the horror genre.

Obviously Johnny Depp was in the movie for box office and cinematic presence and charisma not for his voice. But it was a brave move and a new cahllenge. One has to respect that. But an adequate voice would perhaps have been more effective in a less demanding musical score than the very operatic demands of ST I think. I'd like JD to do a genuinely funny film not the Pirates franchise where he just has to camp up his strong presence of camera. I underplayed HBC a bit - her role was deliciously wicked and droll and I did enjoy that.

Thinking about it I'd really like Burton to consider the 'rotoscoping' animation effects Richard Linklater used to such good effect in A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, both superb films I think. And the form gives a wider range to Burton's extraordinary visual flair than live action or even the flattening effect of animation.

Anyway thanks for the comments. There are very few films I wish I hadn't gone to see. I get some enjoyment out of almost every film because it really has to be a dog for there to be no moments of dialogue, performance, cinematography, editing that don't satisfy. But a review is a compromise and mine are already often a touch long, so the good bits of a bad movie often get missed. And I agree there is much to admire in ST. And what I do greatly admire about Burton is his implacable dsitaste for sentimentality. For that - go Tim.

regards

Z

PS Agree entirely about the spots of blood in The Kite Runner - less is more. As for the facts of ST - it was after all based on historical fact and a series of murders did take place I believe.

My two cents: we left the cinema after an hour (something I rarely, if ever, do), bored out of our minds by what we had just been subjected to on screen. It seemed unbelievable that this movie ever saw light of day, and to such 'rave' reviews too! What I did see of the film - when I wasn't yawning or fidgeting (or sniggering at it) - I found extremely flatulent and almost criminally pretentious. It just didn't work for me, sorry. I did not think it was 'beau-tiful...' at all. More like visual trepanning.

JB

The thing that surprised me Waxy was how just plain borng and banal the music was. I love some of Sondheim's stuff but this all seemed so dreary and pretentious.

It also struck me that the visual motif of deep red blood seeping into the grey monochromes was a rip off og Copola's Dracula, As I recall he did exactly the same thing.

Almost joined you on walking out when I saw Souhtland Tales tonight - glad I didn't though - weird but interesting.

regards

Z

I hadn't planned to see this film and definitely won't now, thanks to your review, Zettel.

Waxy - the only film I've ever walked out on (in the cinema, that is - plenty I've abandoned on the small screen) was Mars Attacks!, also by Tim Burton. The friend I was with had exactly the same reaction as me, which was that there was absolutely nothing to warm to in that film. But then I find that with just about all Burton's films. I agree he has great visual flair, but what he fatally lacks is the ability to produce characters you can care about. What he's managed to do, however - through astute (for the most part) choice of subject matter and that visual flair - is create a kind of legend around himself which a lot of people just swallow wholesale. He's also pretty crap at plots - look at the off-the-cuff story nonsense, especially in the climaxes, of the first two Batman films (again, visually stunning though).

I feel the same way about Sondheim. He's created a kind of aura around himself that middle-class intellectuals and actor/singers who love to emote endorse. But when you look closely at his output, it's mostly just tuneless dirges with portentious, blather-filled, lyrics floating on top like word turds. Sort of good visually, too, then; therefore, the perfect match with Burton.

Terry

Terry

Nicely put and I agree. On thing though, I did thnk Edward Scissorhands was inventive,innovative and just to make your point, perhaps theonly one of Burton's films that had both charm and a character of real innocence and poignancy. It was gentle and sad and said much about our attitudes to difference and the unusual.

For me Burton makes fables or dramatised fairy tales. Not really my taste but the point about a fable or a fairy tale is surely that they give us insights into moral concerns we otherwise ignore. ES did that for me but nothing he has done since reslly does.

regards

Z

I saw this at the weekend. All I can say is that it was better to look at than to listen to.

Ben

A review I read said Sweeney Todd was a film easy to admire, difficult to love. I think I'd have just preferred the story without all the singing. Z, I agree - the music was mind-numbingly boring and most scenes, in my opinion, went on too long.

Terry, I'm with you on Mars Attacks. Rubbish. Style over content? I think that's a familiar Burton crime. Batman Returns was also a horror. Why not just pervert the story completely Tim? Penguin as sewer mutant? (no, he's just a double-dealing professor), Catwoman as schitzo lunatic? (no, she's just a neutral Gotham jewel thief). I joined a lot of fans in their outrage over how Burton warped the overall tale and I'm so glad the studios are now getting Bats back on track after his hamfisted massacre of it.

JB

I walked out of Batman many moons ago - just couldn't take Jack Nicholson's joker.

I still get flak for that.

Is there a trend developing here?

Sarah

Problem with Nicholson is that now he oeverwhelms any film he's in. Actually as I pu tin the review of There will Be Blood, Daniel Day Lewis is in danger of doing the same thing but in a totally different way. It would be interesting to see hwther DDL can do real comedy.

Z

Sarah,

I totally agree about Jack Nicholson as the Joker. As soon as I heard he was playing the part, I knew exactly how he'd do it; and he did. Not remotely scary; just panotomime and blather. The pictures of Heath Ledger's Joker look a lot more interesting and dark. It was the same with Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther in the last Superman film - totally predictable pantomime. Also showed how TV sometimes develops characters much more interestingly than film, in that Lex Luther in Smallville is a much more complex character.

Terry

I second that on Smallville, Terry. I found Superman Returns a very cold film, if that makes any sense? It just seemed a bit stilted and two dimensional...but then Superman was never half as interesting as old Bats, was he?

The new Joker looks fab and finally, at last, true to the comics. Such a shame about Heath Ledger though. I wasn't keep on Nicholson either. Joker is archetypically tall and thin and these things, I'm afraid to say, do bother me when movies fluff them in the name of a big name cast list.

Purists!

JB