Sweeney Todd: The Movie
[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:41 PM Eastern on 8 Apr. See below.]
We confess, as we've on a couple previous occasions all but confessed, that we find nothing so tiresome and aesthetically artificial as the Broadway musical, unless it be a movie version of a Broadway musical, the latter invariably lacking even the few dubious charms of the staged version. The single exception for us among Broadway musicals, staged or filmed, has been Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd as we related in some detail in this October 2004 post. But, then, it's somewhat misleading to label Sweeney Todd a Broadway musical although we suppose technically that's the form on which it's based. Sweeney Todd more rightly belongs on the opera stage, not the stage of a Broadway theater so rich in complex (for the Broadway theater) and brilliantly written music is it, and, to their credit, opera houses worldwide have not been remiss in understanding this.
Last December saw the release of Tim Burton's film of Sweeney Todd. On first hearing of this project and its director and cast back in October 2006, we had an essentially one-word comment: Perfect!. And now, through the aegis of our New Best Friend, Netflix, we've just gotten around to viewing it for the first time.
In speaking of the film, Stephen Sondheim is reported to have said approvingly, "For those of you who know the show...forget it. This is not a film of a musical. It's a film based on a musical." And The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout has declared the film to be "without exception, and by a considerable margin, the best film ever to have been made from a Broadway musical," and while, all things considered, that's not saying very much, we most wholeheartedly agree. Everything about this dark and richly-textured film is just as it should be, most especially its two leads: Johnny Depp as the wronged, vengeful, and bitter Sweeney, driven to demented murderous extreme; and Helena Bonham Carter as the "very creepy but curiously charming and touching Mrs. Lovett" as we described the character in our first-linked post above. And a decisive stroke of sound cinematic and aesthetic judgment on Burton's part it was that he insisted that all the actors, leads included, none of whom are singers, sing their songs using their own untrained voices rather than have the singing dubbed in for them by professional singers as is the usual Hollywood practice in such a circumstance. Had Burton not insisted on this, the musically polished result would have broken the film and made it not worth the celluloid it was printed on.
All that notwithstanding, and as much as we loved this film, at its close we had an overwhelming desire that simply could not be resisted. And so on shutting down the DVD player we immediately switched on the CD player, reached for the CD of the original cast Broadway production, popped it in, and spent the next couple hours or so listening to the whole thing all over again.
There's just no getting around it. Movingly affective horror show cum Aeschylean tragic drama as Sweeney Todd is, it's its music, coupled with Sondheim's pitch-perfect lyrics, that's its genius, and that defines and makes of it the genuine masterpiece that it is. Much of that superb music in its nonpareil orchestration by Jonathan Tunick was missing from this film. It was the absolutely right decision for this splendid piece of cinema, but, alas, the wrong one for the masterpiece that is Sweeney Todd. It's not for nothing that opera houses worldwide have not been shy to mount Sweeney on its stages. It's where it properly belongs.
Update (1:41 PM Eastern on 8 Apr): Something kept nagging at us about this film. There was something lacking in the horror of Todd's discovery of the identity of the beggar woman, but we couldn't quite put our finger on what it was.
We just watched the film again, and now know what it was.
In the show, almost right at the beginning, there's a first brief meeting between Todd and the beggar woman when he gets off the boat with Anthony, and the beggar woman, after doing her thing, peers at Todd questioningly, and sings in that strange melodic turn, "Hey, don't I know you, mister?" At the end of the show in Todd's shop, just before Todd slits her throat, she again peers at him in that questioning way, and again sings in that same strange melodic turn, "Hey, don't I know you, mister?" almost immediately after which Todd dispatches her ("I have no time!")
In the film, Todd meets the beggar woman only once at film's end, and only moments before he slits her throat after she peers at him and says (not sings), "Hey, don't I know you, mister?"
Sounds like a small fault, doesn't it. But it's not. It's HUGE.
How Burton could have made such a colossal dramatic error (and how we could have missed it first time around) is entirely beyond our comprehension, but he (and we) did.
Damn shame.
