View image Attend the pale and Teeny Todd. He doesn't exactly cut an imposing figure. Jack Skellington with a thicker head of hair.
"Tim Burton has made a miniaturist 'Sweeney Todd.' Wispy, anemic, paper-thin, sanitized. Petit Guignol. Teeny Todd..."
Those were among the first notes to myself that I typed after returning from a December screening of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Before that, it had seemed to me that Tim Burton (the Tim Burton of "Batman" and "Batman Returns," not "Mars Attacks!" or "Nightmare Before Christmas") might be, hypothetically, an ideal choice to make a film of Stephen Sondheim's musical-thriller masterpiece about a vengeful barber who conspires with a randy pie-shop proprietress to bake his victims into meat pies. Surely Burton would make it his own, a movie that wouldn't have to compete with the stage version because it would be a Tim Burton Film, existing in parallel to, but apart from, Sondheim and Harold Prince's achievement.¹
Not quite. It's one thing to Devoid of passion, grandeur, ghastly humor and operatic lunacy, Burton's "Sweeney Todd" is a plastic wind-up toy, a fast-food tie-in trinket. It belongs on a little gingerbread tchotchke shelf, next to your collectible "Macbeth" action-figurines. The best that can be said for it is that nobody's yet adapted the title property for film, so maybe that's something we can still look forward to.²
Sondheim himself has done a fine job of explaining why the filmmakers made the choices they did in bringing this "Sweeney" to the screen (New York Times: "Sondheim Dismembers 'Sweeney' .") And they're all perfectly good reasons. I understand the difficult choices that had to be made. How do you squeeze the show into less two hours? Slash some numbers, condense others, speed up the tempos. Do the performances (and the voices) have to be as strong and idiosyncratic for film as they do on stage? Not necessarily....
But reasons aren't as important as results. And what's wrong with Burton's "Sweeney" is that nearly every single decision -- in the cutting, the quickening, the casting, the character conceptions, the shot choices -- diminishes the power of the tale. OK, the opening (and recurring) "Ballad of Sweeney Todd," sung by a Greek chorus of streetfolk and Sweeney victims, is gone. But it was never just a device to speed up the narrative, setting up the story you're about to see. It creates anticipation and dread, and a sense of inevitability, building Sweeney into a figure of mythic dimensions, not some pathetic little barber who went batty and slit some throats. ("By the Sea" -- a number completely re-conceived for film and nothing like anything in the stage production -- is the most engaging song in the movie, and shows what Burton is capable of doing, had he put more thought into making the material his own.)
Burton's "Sweeney" begins as a disappointment (with an animated overture/credits sequence that's just a cutesy version of the one for Roman Polanski's "Fearless Vampire Killers"), and degenerates into a disaster... of mini-proportions. There's no yawning abyss here, no filthy cesspool, no "great black pit" called London. Just a puny soundstage mud puddle.
The music is here -- well, some of it, anyway, given what's been cut and what isn't sung, only rasped or mewled, by Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett (Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, embarrassingly miscast). What's missing from Burton's version is the dance, the lilting quality that gives it a (fetid) air of delirium and dementia. Burton's characters, the pedestrian Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett especially, are too stiff and sober. Even Toby (who should be played by a man-child with an ambiguous, almost Munchkin-like voice -- not an actual child with the clear, high voice of a boy!) doesn't play drunk when he's drowning himself in gin. Nobody knows how to cut loose.
Here's the thing about "Sweeney Todd": Everyone is crazy. And they like it. They start off damaged and unbalanced (even in their naiveté) and slip over the edge, into the yawning pit of madness. It's a fallen world, long past redemption. Sure, Judge Turpin (played here by Alan Rickman) feels tormented about his lust for his ward Johanna (Jayne Wisener), daughter of the couple (Benjamin and Lucy Barker) whose lives he destroyed -- although the scene in which he flogs himself into sexual agony and ecstasy has been cut. (It was also eliminated from the Broadway run, but you'd think it would be the first thing Burton would have realized the film needed.) But Turpin and his Beadle Bamford are perverts, and they secretly get off on knowing it and flaunting it, like flashers parading naked beneath their robes of authority and respectability.
Sondheim has fun with his inane young lovers, the Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones of this deranged "Night at the Opera." Anthony's (Jamie Campbell Bower) "love" for Johanna may be more benign than Judge Turpin's but equally compulsive and obsessive. He catches a glimpse of her in a window (echoes of the Judge's description of the sun from the window illuminating her body beneath her gown, from missing flagellation number) and it's love at first peep. Immediately he wants to kidnap -- er, rescue -- her: "Even now I'm at your window... / I am in the dark beside you, / Buried sweetly in your yellow hair! / I feel you, Johanna / And one day, I'll steal you!" (That's right: "buried.") Johanna herself has been driven mad by years of trauma and captivity, reduced to flitting around like a high-strung birdbrain in gilded cage.
Although Anthony and Johanna's songs of passion and hysteria ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird," "Ah, Miss," "Kiss Me"), from Burton's movie, Bower and Wisener's voices have a power and presence that Depp and Carter can't approach. You know something's out of whack when the show's kinkiest, most chilling moment belongs to Anthony, an androgynous, virginal creature who exhibits greater drive and passion than the rest of the characters put together. After being threatened by Turpin ("You gandered, sir!") and beaten by the Beadle, he sings desperately of his desire to be "buried sweetly" in Johanna's yellow hair, with blood smeared around his mouth like lipstick.
Everything that's wrong with Burton's "Sweeny Todd" can be found in his treatment of one of the show's crucial turning points, "A Little Priest." It's an escalating verbal competition in which Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney goad each other, testing just how far into madness and mayhem each is willing to go. It begins as an idea that just pops into the creative little mind of Mrs. Lovett, a purely practical solution to two pressing problems: 1) the disposal of Sweeney's leftovers (i.e., the bodies of his sacrifices); and 2) a shortage of meat for pie fillings. I mean, Mrs. Mooney's neighbors' cats have been disappearing and, "a pussy's good for only six or seven at the most." It's not just appallingly funny to us; they take perverse joy and delight in imagining their future crimes of feeding the aristocracy into the guts of beggars (to paraphrase Hamlet).
It's Swiftian: "Oh what's the sound of the world out there / Those crunching noises pervading the air? / I't's man devouring man, my dear." Moreover, it's political, a dimension entirely missing from this "Sweeney": "The history of the world, my sweet / Is who gets eaten and who gets to eat... / How gratifying for once to know / That those above will serve those down below!" (The stage show begins with a curtain image of "The British Beehive," an illustration of the class structure.)
"A Little Priest" is an exercise in seduction through imagination, but there's nothing ripe or risque (or risky) about Burton's sexless approach (elsewhere, the Beggar Woman's obscene come-ons have been clinically excised!), and he dumbs down the wit by having Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett literally gaze out the window to receive their ideas. Show us a clergyman, and somebody sings a line about the clergy. Thud. So much for wordplay.
Above all, the song is a waltz. It's (queasily) romantic! Coming after Sweeney's bloody breakdown (the appropriately titled "Epiphany"), we -- and Mrs. Lovett -- need to feel that Sweeney actually could be falling in love with her when he sings: "Mrs. Lovett, how I've lived / Without you all these years, I'll never know! / How delectable! / Also undetectable! / How choice! / How rare!" In the depths of his despair, she has taken the risk of suggesting something one step beyond his bloodiest revenge fantasies -- and makes him laugh, turning tragedy into farce. He greets the cannibalistic abomination as "a charming notion." And yet in Burton's film the music, the staging and the performances are humorless and inert. Sweeneys exclamations ("Oh!" "My dear!" "How choice!") are affectless, as flat and dry as Mrs. Lovett's pasty pies.
That's one approach to the character. But it's a small one. And that is a tragedy.
- - - -
¹ I saw "Sweeney Todd" at the Uris Theater on Broadway in early 1980 -- my first New York stage musical -- and was so blown away by its bloody grandeur, gutsy characterizations (Len Cariou, Angela Lansbury) and cutting socio-political comedy that no other musical stage production I've ever seen comes close. I'm not a big fan of musicals, but Sondheim and "Sweeney Todd" appeal to those who never got into the whole Broad-way, balcony-belting, Ethel-Merman style. No wonder it's said half the opening-night audience in 1979 walked out in disgust -- too rich for Broadway blood! I recommend the George Hearn/Angela Lansbury DVD of the stage show over the Burton movie -- not because one captures the stage show and the other is a movie, but because I find the interpretation of the material is much richer and stronger in the former. (BTW, I think Laurence Olivier's Oscar-winning film version of "Hamlet" is pretty thin and unsatisfying, too.)
² I'm no fan of Sam Mendes, a director attached to the project before Burton. But, hell, maybe he deserves a shot. What have we got to lose?
I too was remarkably underwhelmed by this film, and I am not familiar with the Sondheim musical on which it is based, so I didn't arrive with any preconceived notions about what to expect.
Firstly, the songs, with a few exceptions ("By the Sea", for example) were simply not memorably put forward. Many people bash "Chicago", but I think it contained at least five or six unforgettable songs (John C. Reilly's "Mr. Cellophane" was the capper).
In addition, I simply didn't get a sense of the grandiosity of it all...Sweeney's transition into madness and murder seems more like a chore than a tragic fall (speaking of paint-by-numbers tragedy, I saw the twist involving the Judy Greer character as soon as she re-appears.)
Finally, the violence in the film was so off-putting (not because of the gore, but because of the monotonous nature in which it was presented) that it made the film a near-chore to sit through. When I was in the bathroom after the film, I overheard someone say "Well, everyone died who should have". That doesn't sound like a film that conveyed tragedy...more like another in the series of films that promote murder and violence as justified or meaningless.
(SPOILERS ahead)
Well, I disagree pretty much entirely with everything you've written here, but particularly I'm bothered by the idea that the film needs to be compared to the stage musical. I personally consider Stephen Sondheim a nearly talentless hack, yet still found Burton's version of Sweeney Todd a masterpiece. Sondheim usually tries so hard to be different from Broadway archetypes that his works become flat, predictable, musically unmemorable exercises in "wit" that couldn't be more formulaic. The "those above will serve down below" line is so cringeworthy and groan-inducingly obvious that it was merciful on Burton's part to cut it. What I found fascinating about the film of Sweeney Todd was the way it used the elements of a musical without even necessarily being one. The songs drive the plot and characters, but are not particularly exciting nor memorable and I was thrilled by the complete lack of "musical" direction or even competent singing voices. What I saw in the film was (I believe) a fully intentional depiction of how the relentless pursuit of a goal drives all other human aspects out of a character and, as we see, reduces Sweeney to a repetitious machine. He takes no joy in his work and it would be a deadly mistake for him to take sexual gratification from it. He has only one useful way to kill anyone and the process is necessarily routine. He seems to have lost all emotional attachment to Johanna even, and doesn't regain any emotion until he realizes that the ends can't justify the means if the ends aren't reached. This is why he essentially lets himself die, and why he kills Mrs. Lovett then and there, because it's easy and allows him to get his final ordeal out of the way. Sweeney isn't a mythical boogeyman figure, and the film makes no attempt to paint him as such. He's a cold, humorless bastard who kills just so he can get what he desires, and to protect his identity - the only possible reason why he would let Mrs. Lovett bake anyone into pies. What Burton did was make a brilliantly dark film that knows that the story is mechanical, while Sondheim mechanically attempted to feign emotion through dull, insipid metaphors and cardboard characters that seem "deep" in a smugly "clever" way to someone, somewhere, not unlike the abysmal Disney film of "Alice in Wonderland", which Burton is apparently remaking, and will no doubt much improve upon.
I loved this piece -- it absolutely erupts from start to finish.
There were glimmers throughout "Sweeney Todd" that I enjoyed, a few sequences that I thought downright masterful, but on the whole it left me wanting, and I couldn't quite figure out why until now. Granted, I'd only seen it once (a rarity for me with films I'm conflicted on), and hadn't been able to dedicate much thought to it during the end-of-year hype, but now I can see my own response more clearly.
To be clear, however, I am going to watch it again (I surely didn't hate it and, even if I ultimately don't care for it, still think it an important piece in the auteur puzzle that is Burton, whose "Batman Returns" I think a masterpiece), and may even have a turnaround (sometimes second viewings provide you with the entry point that alluded you the first time around; is this a common experience, or am I just crazy?). Ultimate agreement/disagreement notwithstanding, though, that was one of the most thrilling reviews I've ever read, and a pick-me-up after the horrendous news about Greenwood's score.
My main qualm is that the disparate elements of production overshadow the film itself. Tim Burton and his idiosyncratic style are bigger than the story; Johnny Depp and his hair are bigger than the character, the sets and set-ups are bigger than the songs and the (incredibly lackluster) production numbers. It's self-indulgent, stylistic onanism disguised as quirky and dark.
I am a big fan of musicals. And I can't help but wonder how one can start with such a flawless musical as Sweeney Todd, and end up with this overbaked hodge-podge of a movie.
Jim, I don't mean to be rude, but it seems you're displaying a childish attachment to the play "Sweeney Todd" - because that seems to be the ONLY thing you're judging the movie on. I'm a critic myself, and I abhor that sort of criticism. I thought critics were (or should be) above that sort of nonsense.
Your opening disclaimer (in which you state you expected not to have to compare the film to the play) notwithstanding, it still shows a lack of appreciation for the fact that theatre and film are completely different mediums. I can appreciate and understand criticisms of the film, but every single one of yours boils down to: Here's how the play did it, and it was awesome! And then Burton totally changed/ruined/misinterpreted it, and got it "wrong!"
That's what I particularly can't stand - the stubborn assumption that, if one does something differently with material than did the original, it's "wrong."
No attempt to look at the film on its own terms. No attempt to first recognize what Burton's trying to do with the material. You leap right into what the film is "missing" that the play had, what the film ISN'T exploring that the play did, how parallel scenes in the two version are different.
It's the same thing that drives me crazy whenever I hear irrationally devout "Harry Potter" fans insanely cling to Chris Columbus' flat, lifeless movies (which were apparently faithful, how important!) and bash Alfonso Cuaron's inventive, beautiful third film.
I mean, if we're to judge movies that way, then "Dr. Strangelove" is a COMPLETE failure - because after all, the novel it was based on was a pure suspense novel, not a satire. ("Oh my God! That Kubrick fella took such a great suspenseful story and made a mockery of it! He got it wrong! He ruined it!")
I know that you're a passionate lover of the play, and I understand that, but still - the play is the play and the film is the film.
Someone who hates the film version of "Sweeeney Todd" on its own terms might look at your post and point you in the direction of the quote at the top of your page.
Also, Alex: I'm not sure how it's structured in the play, but I don't think we were suppposed to be surprised by the identity of the beggar woman. If anything, we're supposed to anticipate that revelation and it's supposed to add to the sense of foreboding.
And it's not Judy Greer, by the way.
Very enlightening post.
I had only a bare-bones notion of the original play, but I enjoyed the film. Viewers are obviously missing nuances necessary to the play's incarnation.
Some questions I have: are there any theatrical plays or musicals that genuinely translate to film without somehow subverting the source material? Besides the "tactile" sensory experience-- is it just the same ol' debate as translating books when they migrate to film?
Do you think "Todd" could be translated in it's entirety and scope, or is the musical's value inherently a live phenomenon?
If I can ask: why did you think Burton was an ideal director to begin with? His m.o. is probably best described as "gothic whimsy", which is hardly a good fit for Sweeney. He's never done anything really dark or crazy, since the gothic is usually superficial to the whimsical. (Well, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was disturbing, but for the wrong reasons).
That being said, I thought he pulled off the final sequence very well. The whole second half of the film - that is, everything after the flat "A Little Priest" - was pretty well done. It's the plodding first half, the awful "Worst Pies in London", and (I agree with everything you've said) "A Little Priest" that really suck the life out of the film. What bothered me especially about these two songs is the determination NOT to be funny: it's almost as if Burton instructed his actors to downplay punchlines. But "A Little Priest" is an exuberant game of comic one-upsmanship, so the Burton staging makes no sense.
And don't even get me started on "Worst Pies in London". I'm assuming Burton's directions to Carter were "stand behind the counter, stare down at the floor, and don't move. Try not to articulate so clearly. And for chrissake don't raise your voice above a mumble!"
Chris: True, I can't pretend that I haven't seen Sondheim's stage musical, from which the film version was adapted. I have, and I acknowledge how that affects my view of the film. But, as I say, I wasn't expecting a mere recreation of the stage experience. But, as I said, choices can be made for valid reasons; I tried to show why these particular choices don't serve the material. (And I don't care that, for example, Sondheim himself endorses the movie; it didn't work for me, for the reasons I describe.)
Yes, I am taking issue with Burton's artistic treatment of the original, just as I might argue about a director's interpretation of "Macbeth." The plays may support any number of different approaches, but (as I said) I thought nearly all of Burton's reduced the stature and complexity that make the work great. (I didn't simply say he was "wrong," but I did say his choices were "small" -- and tried to illustrate how and why they were reductive ones.)
Brad: I guess I was hoping we'd get something more fitting in tone and sweep, like Burton's grand, dark "Batman" and "Batman Returns," and less like his little animated projects (which I like -- especially "Corpse Bride" -- but which aren't "Sweeney Todd"-scale).
Jim, I'm with you on this. There was no zest, no engagement in Burton's "Sweeney," just a bunch of bored actors playing boring characters that shouldn't be. My biggest issue is perhaps the production design. For a cramped, dirty hole, London sure does have some cavernous-looking places and the streets and "unwashed" masses are awfully clean. London should be as much a character as Sweeney or Mrs. Lovett.
I'm gonna have to take issue with you on this one Jim. I think your idea that the film "shrunk" the play is a rather good assessment of it actually, but I certainly don't think that's a bad thing.
Certainly you don't have to like the movie. This is one of those films that's all about tone and texture. If it hit you the right way (as it did me.....I really thought it was great) it worked. If not, there's not much I can say to convince you that you should change your opinion. This is not to say debating the film's merits isn't worthwhile, but I think this is one of those films you love or you hate. For me, it was a nicely surreal balance of sentimentality, cynicism, and humor. It went down just fine.
But I do have to chime in.....first of all, this is a film based on a musical. It isn't the musical. Its goal obviously was not, nor should it have been, to simply "adapt" the stage version to a different medium. If Burton's interpretation of the material changes it, so what?
What you attack as a diminished small scale "Sweeney" might be just as easily defended as as a more internal, subtle version that could only exist onscreen. The film lavishes attention on faces, and the more stripped down, personal scale of the film (lots of interiors) seems to set it in a obsessive fantasy world. I rather loved it. The movie doesn't need to spell out everything in the way a musical does to get the right kind of tone. While I think the prospect of Alan Rickman playing a scene where he flogs himself would be a hoot...I think his leer, which is the best leer in showbiz, gets the point across.
As Roger Ebert likes to say "the best way to critique a film is to make another film." The best stage versions of "Sweeney Todd" do serve as a useful foil for anybody who didn't like the film..."It should have been more like THIS"....I do worry though that your review slips into arguing that the movie sucks because it's different than the musical. I trust that's not what you mean to say, but that's sure what it seems like. If the musical helps you explain WHY you don't like the film, that's valid. If you don't like the film because it does something different than the stage version, that's not so good.
I'm reminded of the very, very good film version of "Three Penney Opera" that Criterion just released. It's quite different from the stage version...less of a caberet show, more of a story. And the songs are presented fairly minimally. A tactful cut here, a little gesture there. It's a pretty different ride from the exuberant stage version. But it's a movie, yets?
thanks
"Sweeney Todd" the film, is a delight and a masterpiece, no matter what you, Jim, or Len Cariou say. On the other hand, "Batman Returns" was about as overstuffed with plot as "Spiderman 3", but with better production design. Yes, Jim, in this case, you are being a Grinch. I do not think there is a person alive other Johnny Depp, who can infuse the words, "There was a barber and his wife..." with such melancholy, with such longing. But hey, Paul Dano is having a much worse [day] than me. Robbed like Sir Paul being beaten Randy Newman.
Alex: "By the Sea" is the perfect example of how Burton could have made "Sweeney Todd" his own and made it work differently. It's completely unlike anything in the stage show, and I agree it's one of the most effective numbers. (In fact, I'm going to add that to the original post.)
I had such low expectations for this film that when I saw it I ended up enjoying it, though I agree with all of your gripes.
But what's the surprise here? This Burtonesque quality you speak of has been so tamed down over the course of his last 5 movies that it really doesn't mean anything anymore.
His style has become far too handsome. The street of London were far from dirty in this film.
And I too abhorred the opening credits sequence. When it reminds you of "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" and the dreadful "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", you know the film is going to be misplaced.
But even though it lacked the qualities that would have made it as brilliant as "Ed Wood", I enjoyed it for the trifle that it was.
My feeling perhaps is that Burton has been living in his own little world for so long that he's become too comfortable in it and it's lost its edge.
It's a pinatta with no candy inside.
I am a big fan of (good) musicals, Stephen Sondheim, and the Angela Lansbury-George Hearn video version that Jim so correctly recommends. However, I thought that, with the exception of the way too literal "A Little Priest", Burton's "Sweeney Todd" was about the best film version I could have imagined, especially given the probably commercially mandated need to have two big stars in the lead roles who wouldn't necessarily be musical veterans. In fact, I'll go further and say that it's by far the best stage musical adaptation since Bob Fosse went to the great beyond. Not that there's a huge amount of competition in the category.
I'm way too tired to defend that statement right now, but I will say that leaving in "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" would have been way too theatrical. It's a theater conceit through and through and would have played as such in the film. Overall, to my mind, the miniaturization proved exactly correct -- theater is big because the actors look small and film should be small because (at least in the theater) it's so darned big -- this is why video versions are actually usually the best way to go with stage musicals, in my opinion.
I will add, though, that I deliberately avoided taking a look at the DVD before seeing the movie, because I was afraid I might end up feeling the way Jim clearly does if I had the movie too clearly in mind.
And Jamie, I don't know if you know this or not, but that G.W. Pabst film of "Threepenny Opera" was so disliked by Bertolt Brecht that he famously sued Pabst over it. This stage to film adaptation thing can really be tricky.
Thank you so much. I couldn't believe how everyone was falling over themselves to praise this film (like the Golden Globes). I thought it was completely unremarkable. Burton's color palette for the film matches the film's impression. How drab! The material is drained of all it's wit and life. Not even Borat gets to have any fun. The only explanation for the prasie must be that the people seeing the film have no idea what the source material is capable of - the lift, the head-long rush into madness, the sweeping current ... all gone, gone, gone from the film. I agree that "By the Sea" is the only glimpse at what could have been possible.
Yes, Brecht did indeed sue over the G.W. Pabst version of "Threepenny Opera," but that lawsuit had a lot more to do with Brecht being Brecht than with any violation of his work.
In fact, the lawsuit was because Brecht submited a screenplay (he was commisioned to write the movie version) that was waaay DIFFERENT from the play. He was comissioned to adapt the musical for the screen, and instead of making judicious changes to get the thing in shape for a different medium, he decided to substantially rewrite the thing into a strident, unfilmable rant. He then proceeded to make the lawsuit into a public spectacle. In short, he wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of selling out by joining the movie biz, so he used the interest in "Thee Penney Opera" as a chance to pull a grand stunt. Either he'd get a perverse amount of control, or he'd make a show of the legalities of showbiz. (Which suggests just how strange his politics actually were. Were I to list things that a Marxist in 1930 should worry about, the absence of unreasonable creative autonomy in expensive showbiz endevors wouldn't top the list.)
To put a final ironic cap on the whole thing, most of the changes he concieved are in the film. His script (with the more deliberately stagey "Bretchian" rants deleted) was the the basis for the movie, and the alterations that were made to his script were, in my opinion, big improvements. The non-Brechtian ending of the film is rather brilliant and startlingly cynical....the theives start a bank, making their theivery socially respectable and legally sanctioned. That's much clever than the bombastic riot Brecht wanted.
Besides, who cares what Brecht wanted? One of the heretical truths about movies is that sometimes (not usually, but it does happen) the alterations that happen to films to suit producers and "suits" can actually improve them (as some irritatingly overblown "director's cut" DVDs can demonstrate). At the very least we have to acknowledge that film is a collaborative art. Brecht wasn't fighting only against the movie biz, but also against G.W. Pabst and Kurt Weill.
Anyway, I think the same pont should be made about "Sweeney Todd." If it isn't what Sondeim invisioned, that's interesting, but not a criticism in an of itself. Every different production of a play, and every film adaptation is a different work and should be judged accordingly. Just like a film adaptation of a novel isn't the novel. Sometimes films are better than their scources ("Silence of the Lambs" comes to mind), sometimes worse, but whether anything conformes to an author's original intention isn't a way to evaluate something, although it might offer a useful way to explain how something is defficient. (The easiest way to demonstrae what's wrong with the Demi Moore "The Scarlett Letter" is to just read the book. Well, maybe wince watching the film is enough that might be a bad example....)
Speaking of rants, I really got off on one there. I'll go lie down for a while.....
Though many respected critics felt that the film version of "The Lord of The Rings" was a major artistic achievement; your pal Ebert was somewhat lukewarm. His reason? Well, the Hobbits did not look or act the way HE had imagined they should. I felt bad for Ebert. He could not really enjoy these wonderful films because he was ridiculously close-minded. You're doing the same thing. You could have saved yourself alot of time on this overlong blog by just stating the real reason you don't like this movie....It's not the play. It's not the show that's ingrained in your mind and you stubbornly refuse to accept anything other than what you feel is the "real" Sweeney Todd. I saw the musical many years ago and loved it, bought the soundtrack, and even recently bought a DVD of the Angela Landsbury telecast. However, I also saw the Johnny Depp film and feel....like the vast majority of critics...that Johnny Depp was phenominal, that the tone of the film was spot on and that it's one of Burton's best. Art is, as you well know, subjective. But I believe that you are missing out on one of the best films of 2007...too bad.
Very interesting Jim. In no way should you have to apoligize for the fact that your peceptions of art will be shaped by exposure to previous expressions of the work in a different medium. There's just no way to objectively analyze something as if in a vacuum when you have an emotional or nostalgic attachment to a previous, and presumably better, conception. That said, I wasn't born yet when you saw Sondheim's musical and never saw it, therefore I have to appreciate it as is. And I really enjoyed it. It is difficult for me to defend the film in any way intellectually since I haven't seen the musical and can't provide much context other than the two hours I spent with the film. I guess I would say that choices always have to be made by artists especially when transferring a work from one medium to another and I think Burton chose to emphasize the theme of revenge, the zeitgeist of 2007 cinema it would seem, rather than the socio-economic stuff you alluded to. However, I think you could argue that the concern for the poor and the downtrodden is still a theme in the film, albeit subtly. The bleak, grey scenes in London were images reminescent of a Dickens novel. Dickens similarly illustrated a retched existence for London's poor in many of his novels in order to espouse a sort of social justice but without the kind of preachiness you see in a lot of films and novels. Burton used imagery and characters, like the orphan boy and the homeless woman, to show how important it is to care for and pay attention to the poor. The surprise ending of the film, which I thought worked in a way so many films don't, really allowed the two divergent themes of being consumed with revenge and ignoring the poor to culminate into a beautfully bloody and touching climax. While the gore was a bit much for my tastes (the couple sitting behind me left right after Sacha Baron Cohen's character is slashed) I think Burton was right when he said it would have been hard to get 20-somethings like me to go see a movie based on a Sondheim musical without the enticement of some throat slashings. Nonetheless, I am sorry it didn't live up to your expectations.
The feeling conveyed by Burton's film is one of isolation. It is lacking the grandiosity of a musical in order to show, simply, a man alone. Everyone in this film is lonely and it is their loneliness that drives them. The small, claustrophobic scale only enhances this feeling.