Sweeney Todd Review

SWEENEY TODD REVIEW/Luthy

THE CLOSEST SHAVE YOU’LL EVER GET

By Allison Luthy

Sweet is hardly an apt word for Tim Burton’s most recent film, “Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. Although this movie tells a story of love, it definitely earns its R-rating. A half hour into the film so much blood will be dripping down the screen that you won’t want be able to finish your soda.

“Sweeney Todd” tells the story of a barber who returns to London after nearly two decades to seek revenge for the destruction of his family. With Mrs. Lovett, a woman who owns a meat pie shop, he begins killing the clients that come in for a shave in his barber’s chair. They dispose of the bodies by butchering them and turning them into meat pies that become the hit of London.

The violence consumes Todd as he murders innocent people out of love and grief over his deceased wife. Mrs. Lovett participates in the murders out of love for Todd, out of hope that he will finish his revenge and live with her.

Johnny Depp stars as Sweeney Todd, the barber with a crazy streak to match the white in his hair. With sickly pale skin and dark shadows under his haunted eyes, Depp makes even the obsessed murderer seem deserving of pity. Depp, whose other films include “Pirates of the Caribbean”, “Finding Neverland”, and “Chocolat”, provides one of the strongest performances of his career, proving himself as a singer, and earning an Oscar nomination for best actor.

Helena Bonham Carter brilliantly offsets Depp’s character, playing Mrs. Lovett, the woman in love with Sweeney Todd. Oscar nominated for best actress in this role, Carter has also recently appeared in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and Tim Burton’s film, “The Corpse Bride”, alongside Johnny Depp.

Oscar nominated for best director, Tim Burton directed “Sweeney Todd” very much like his other movies. At times the lighting and costumes looked so much like that used in “Beetlejuice” that it seemed that they had been taken directly from his old movie. This creepy effect only heightened the almost supernatural and hellish sense about the film. Burton’s other films include “Big Fish”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Planet of the Apes”, and “Sleepy Hollow”.

This adaptation of the Broadway hit remained remarkable in its transition from stage to screen. If anything, the film still felt like a stage production with its simplistic sets leaving nothing to distract the audience from the performances onscreen.

Depp’s masterful portrayal of Todd remains bleak and seemingly unfeeling throughout the film, but the character gradually becomes more demonic as he nears his goal. By the end of the movie, Depp transforms a loving barber into a chillingly realistic sociopath who can barely remember the family that he loved and kills for.

Nominated for four Academy Awards, few films this year are as deserving of recognition as Tim Burton’s tragic, bloody, musical masterpiece.