I haven't been writing a review in a long time, but now I'm doing this. This time, it's about "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street". For those of you who don't remember, "Sweeney Todd" is a 1979 Broadway musical, based on the play by Christopher Bond, and the brainchild of Stephen Sondheim ("West Side Story", "A Little Night Music"). Director Tim Burton liked the musical so much, that he thought on adapting it into a movie, and one day it was decided. You see, Burton has a leading man, Johnny Depp, whom he had chosen to act in "Edward Scissorhands", when Depp was in "21 Jump Street", and through the years they made other Burton-Depp films like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". When Burton asked Depp if he could play the title character in the "Sweeney Todd" movie, he thought on it for a while, and after listening to the "Sweeney Todd" CD and familiarizing the words, Depp decided to try it out. After meeting Sondheim himself, tackling the difficult notes of the songs, and leaving for the hospital to care for his daughter Lily-Rose, Depp's voice became golden, like a mix of Cockney accent and 1970's David Bowie.
There are other talented voices too, like Helena Bonham Carter (wife of Tim Burton, who was then expecting her second child), Alan Rickman (Harry Potter's Snape, who somehow sings in spite of the odds), and Sacha Baron Cohen (as Da Ali G and Borat, with the funny singing too!). It's no wonder that, despite the fact that most of the songs got edited or altered, and "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" was reduced to an instrumental version, the movie went on to win the Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor Johnny Depp; and an Academy Award for Best Art Direction. Of course, I hadn't seen the musical, and although my mother warned me that the movie based on that musical could be bloody and "gross" (she feels sensitive of the blood and overprotective of me sometimes), I would give it a try anyway.
The story is simple: A barber, Benjamin Barker (Depp, a rock-pop teen idol with a voice of gold), returns to London with a sailor named Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower, whose voice sounds like it could be in "American Idol"). Barker recalls the time when he and his wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) were together with their baby daughter Johanna, until the time when Judge Turpin (Rickman) and Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall, a.k.a. "Wormtail") arrested Barker and, after wrongly convicting him of a trumped up charge, sent him to Australia to be locked up for the rest of his life. He thanks Anthony for saving him and goes to Mrs. Nellie Lovett's pie shop, where Lovett (Carter) talks (or sings rather) about how her business is faring poorly, and that while Barker was gone, Turpin lusted for Lucy and one day he invited her to a masked ball, where she was confused and became drunk enough for Turpin to rape her (which is kind of less brutalizing than the Cheshire home invasion in Connecticut last year). Barker then hears that Lucy poisoned herself and Turpin adopted Johanna as a ward, so Barker seeks revenge, under a new name, Sweeney Todd (so weird how he sings to his razor blades in "My Friends"!). Now, as a Christian, I know that revenge (used in the form of the death penalty, which I'm against) is far from being a Christian virtue, yet I believe that Sweeney symbolizes the families of the murder victims whose loved ones were taken away by murder, yet their grief is so understandable they would seek revenge by executing those who killed their loved ones without paying heed to the killers' families, thus causing the families more grief. Yet I know that killing is wrong, no matter who does it.
Moving right along: Anthony sees Johanna (Jayne Wisener, sounding angelic like a present day Snow White) and, after paying alms to a beggar woman (Kelly again, whom Burton decided to make as virtuous as Johanna by removing sexual themes from her song "Alms, Alms"), he tries to rescue her, but Turpin and Beadle won't allow it and kicks him off after a beating, so he secretly decides to run away with her. Meanwhile, Todd and Lovett buy Pirelli's Miracle Elixir from Tobias Ragg, a.k.a. Toby (Ed Sanders, good voice for a boy), only to find it is fake, and when Adolfo Pirelli (Cohen) arrives at the commotion, he and Todd start up a shaving contest to see if the fastest shaver wins. Todd wins by strategy and invites the Beadle to his barbershop upstairs (look for a brief cameo from Anthony "Giles" Head). While he waits, Pirelli and Toby arrive, so Lovett takes Toby downstairs while Pirelli, who is actually con-man David Conners, knows Todd's identity and tries to blackmail him for safety from Turpin, but Todd won't allow it and bludgeons Conners with a prepared, hot kettle (I was like, "Ooh, that one hurt him!"); and after a moment with Toby, he makes his first bloody kill (I, of course, wasn't grossed out because of the paint that looks like blood, and I was like, "Cool!").
After sentencing a boy to death by hanging (I was laughing and all like "Aww, poor kid."), Turpin tells the Beadle he has lust for Johanna and wants to marry her, but the Beadle tells him that Johanna would give in to his will if he gets a shave; so Turpin goes to Todd's barbershop where Todd makes shaving a priority (I was laughing when Todd whistles to Turpin's humming in "Pretty Women"). But just when Todd is going in for the kill, Anthony tells him about his plans in front of Turpin (I was like, "No... you blew it, Anthony!"); and after Turpin escapes, Todd feels angry, despite Lovett's attempts to calm him down, and soon decides that the people of London are so wicked and so corrupt, that the only punishment for their crimes is (you guessed it) death. (I was like, "This is, like, totally freaky and creepy!" He has finally cracked and believes that only he decides who's going to die. Vengeance, thy name is Sweeney Todd. Yet we may know that Sweeney is not God.) Lovett soon thinks of her business and decides that Todd should kill people and drop their bodies to the bakehouse so she can grind them up into meat pies. While Turpin sends Johanna to Fogg's Asylum and Anthony searches for her, Todd remodels his old barber's chair and makes a killing spree (I was singing and LOLing at the same time, especially when he spares the man he's about to kill after looking at the man's family). Soon the meat pie business is booming again. While Lovett thinks about getting married (I like the wickedly funny scenes of "By the Sea"), Todd learns from Anthony that Johanna is locked up in Fogg's Asylum, so he sends Anthony out to rescue her while he has Toby send the letter to Turpin as a plot to get back at him. But Toby grows suspicious of Todd and tries to protect Lovett, but Lovett sends him to the bakehouse. While she and Todd invite the Beadle for a shave, Toby learns of the plans after discovering a finger in the meat pie, and other dead bodies, as well as that of the Beadle who has just arrived there. Todd discovers this, and he and Lovett try to kill the boy, only to search for him after finding him missing.
After Anthony rescues Johanna from Fogg's grasp (loved it when the girls pounced on Fogg after Anthony threatens him and leaves), they discover that Todd is missing, so Anthony has her wait in the barbershop while he searches for him. While she is looking at a picture of herself and her mother, the beggar woman, who had been trying to break in to the pie shop, goes into the barbershop, unaware that the girl is hiding in a trunk. Todd discovers the woman, who tries to tell him that Lovett is tricking him into murder, but Todd won't have it; and before the woman tries to recognize him, he slits her throat without warning (her blood drips like a fountain instead of in a spray like other customers). Turpin arrives for a shave again (love it when Todd holds the razor up to the moonlight), and Todd reveals his identity to the judge and stabs and slices him to death. Johanna tries to get out of hiding, probably after learning the truth, but her father, consumed with revenge, fails to recognize her and is about to kill her when he hears a scream from Lovett and spares his daughter.
He returns to the bakehouse to calm Lovett, and just when they are about to dispose of the bodies, she opens the oven door, where a light reveals the beggar woman's golden hair. Todd finally recognizes the woman as his wife Lucy and realizes that he had killed her without knowing it, and that Lovett had lied to him. She tells him that Lucy had poisoned herself, but the poison only turned her into a mad, amnesiac beggar woman instead of killing her; Lovett adds that she had to lie in order to love him. He calms her and after a waltz he pushes Lovett into the oven and burns her to death. He returns to grieve over his wife Lucy and loses his will to live without her. Just then, Toby, who had been in hiding all along, gets back at Todd by grabbing the razor blade he had dropped, and while Todd sings a final swan song, Toby approaches him from behind and slits his throat before he leaves (I felt very sad when Todd dies next to Lucy).
Overall, this movie teaches us a lesson, that when our loved ones get torn apart by murder, our gut instinct tells us it is better not to forgive, but too much anger and revenge can turn us into monsters and lead us into hell. So, to quote Todd in "Final Scene", "The history of the world, my pet... / Is learn forgiveness and try to forget. / ...And life is for the alive, my dear. / So, let's keep living it." "Sweeney Todd" the movie is a must-see if you are fans of the musical and don't mind the blood. Although it may be gross, this movie is alive because of all the great singing voices that turn me on, so overall, I give this movie a 9 out of 10.
Sweeney Todd - Helena Bonham Carter
Sweeney Todd - Tim Burton & Johnny Depp
Sweeney Todd - Jamie Campbell Bower & Jayne Wisener
Sweeney Todd - Laura Michelle Kelly
Sweeney Todd - Writer Stephen Sondhiem
