So, I kicked off the new year by going to see Sweeney Todd (Tim Burton's version of the Stephen Sondheim musical). I've always wanted to see the musical, but never have. It doesn't seem to be performed very often, compared to, say, West Side Story. (Which Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics to. Huh, I didn't know that.) The original debuted in 1979, and for some reason I remember this vividly, including this poster. I have no idea why I am so familiar with the poster. But I know that even as a kid I would have been fascinated by the idea of a musical comedy about serial killing and cannibalism.
The film is good, easily the best musical about cannibalism I have ever seen. (Much better than Trey Parker's Cannibal, The Musical, and better than Big Meat Eater.) Probably, this is because Stephen Sondheim is actually a composer. And maybe that's why the movie left me feeling so weird and surreal. I am disturbed. It is disturbing.
Why? I haven't completely figured it out yet. The last movie I saw that left me feeling this unsettled was Todd Solondz' excellent Palindromes, so maybe it has something to do with spelling "Todd" with two d's.
Sweeney Todd feels extremely dark, even for a black comedy. And the music is used to force the audience into extraordinary emotional sympathy with its atrocity-committing antihero. Sondheim's compositions for Todd are compelling, catchy without containing any hummable pop motifs, full off odd spiky discords and unresolved progressions. And their use in the story is frequently devastating, full of bitter ironic contrasts between the horrifying action and the sweet but unsettling ballads.
It's probably no surprise that Tim Burton's visual sensibilities are a good match for the material. If you were to ask, "Who would make Victorian London look oppressively grim and decrepit, but still sort of beautiful?" he's the obvious answer. Burton revels in the blatant artificiality of the musical, with his tendency to make even large-scale outdoor scenes look like they're taking place indoors, as if we're on a giant Disneyland ride.
After The Nightmare Before Christmas it should be no surprise that Burton can direct a musical, either. For Todd, he has used the musical-as-movie to make the performances more intimate than stage would allow. With this material that really works, as when Johnny Depp sings "My Friends," a love song to his straight razors. Helena Bonham Carter is a bit of a weak singer, but she sells the character so well that her songs work anyway. And Depp and Bonham Carter have the perfect screen presence for this material, adorable even when slaughtering people left and right and made up to look like they're dying of tuberculosis.
The real surprise is that the screenplay by John Logan makes for a good movie. His previous credits include some of the worst movies I've ever seen, such as Bats, The Time Machine (2002) and Star Trek: Nemesis.
