Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Cater, Alan Rickman
Music: Stephen Sondheim
Studio: DreamWorks 13215 (2-Disc Special Edition)
Video: 1.85:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9 widescreen, color
Audio: English, French or Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Extras: Commentary track by Burton, Depp & Carter – behind-the-scenes look at their collaboration with exclusive footage from rehearsals, recording sessions and more; “Benny Todd is Alive: The Real History of the Demon Barber;” “Musical Mayhem: Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd;” Sweeny’s London; The Making of Benny Todd; Grand Guignol: A Theatrical Tradition; Designs for a Demon Barber; A Bloody Business; Moviefone Unscripted; Press Conference, more
Length: 116 minutes
Rating: *****
I hadn’t realized that this was done straight thru as a musical, an edited-down version of the three-hour-long Sondheim original with the emphasis more on the drama and the usual Burton interests instead of the music. Sondheim collaborated closely in reshaping the stage work for the film, and Burton’s mixture of his own black humor, Grand Guignol bloody violence and gothic horror/monster movie elements make this film one of the best the director has ever done. The vocal approach was similar to that of Kurt Weill’s operettas – avoidance of trained operatic voices in favor of having the actors (who were mostly new to musicals) actually sing their parts in front of the camera. Recordings were made for lip-sync performance – the way most movie musicals are done. But it seemed too artificial to Burton, so he had everyone sing while doing their stuff in from of the camera. Occasionally it’s a bit of a struggle to completely hear all the lyrics – perhaps Carter’s voice is a little too subtle and she’s not as good in the humor department as was Angela Lansbury in the original stage version. But the orchestrations are fine, and everyone sings on key – something you don’t always get. Speaking of humor, the funniest thing in the film is Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat!) as a foppish fake-Italian rival barber.
The whole project owes its success to Depp’s excellent brooding, monstrous barber – focused intensely on his one goal – seeking revenge on all the people who had a hand in putting him in prison for 15 years while his wife supposedly died and his daughter was carried off by a villainous judge to be his ward. The costumes and set design contribute to a perfect representation of Victorian-era London as a dark, dirty, overpopulated, stinking environment. Some of the many fascinating extras on the second DVD fill in the viewer on just how awful London of this period was. Some of the facts from these presentations tie in with details in the film – such as the little orphan from the workhouse being addicted to bathtub gin – the orphanages gave the children gin to keep them quiet and to sleep.
Naturally Burton has pulled out all the stops to convey his vision of monstrous living conditions and monstrous people. Both Depp and Carter have death-warmed-over whitish makeup. As the R rating says: Graphic Bloody Violence, and that certainly describes the blood-letting that goes on in Todd’s Rube Goldbergish tippy barber chair! But it is clearly appropriate in the context of the story and design. That design concept fits with what you see on the DVD cover – it’s basically a black and white color scheme with the red of blood being the only real color. Everything is very dark and murky – I had to change my Samsung dispay’s setting from Custom to Dynamic, and even then I was wishing this had been Blu-ray because then there would be more fine details in the many very dark areas of the images. You wouldn’t want to watch this DVD during daylight hours unless you had a completely closed-off dedicated HT room. In the Extras we see numerous clips of shooting scenes, and in all of them that are not in the final edited film, we see that the light level is much higher – like the sun is out. Burton has given everything (except for a brief bright outdoor fantasy scene) a much lower exposure and fuzzed up the images to conform to his dark chiaroscuro design on the screen.
– John Sunier
