Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
FROM visionary filmmaker Tim Burton (Batman, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory) and starring Academy Award® and Golden Globe nominee Johnny Depp comes the new dramatic thriller, Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a compelling and original vision based on the award-winning musical sensation by legendary lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim.
Depp stars as Benjamin Barker, a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years on the other side of the world, who escapes back to London with a vow of revenge, opposite Helena Bonham Carter as his obsessively devoted accomplice, Mrs. Nellie Lovett.
Adopting the guise of Sweeney Todd, Barker returns to his old barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s pie-making premises, and sets his sights on Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who, with help from his nefarious henchman Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), shipped him off on a trumped-up charge in order to steal his wife, Lucy, and his baby daughter, Johanna, from him. In between doing so, however, he kills several of his customers along the way.
Mrs Lovett, meanwhile, sees the slaying as a potential solution to her ailing business – and suggests using human flesh as the filling for her pies.
But when Sweeney discovers that Judge Turpin has turned his amorous affections towards the now teenaged Johanna, who is imprisoned in his house, he begins to set a trap aimed at freeing Johanna and uniting her with potential suitor Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), the young sailor who rescued Sweeney from the sea.
Sweeney Todd & The Demon Barber of Fleet Street marks the sixth collaboration between Depp and Burton after Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and The Corpse Bride and has been hailed by a lot of American critics as their best yet.
Depp first learned of the story in 2000, when he was given an original cast recording of the musical by Burton, but took a while to sign on as he wasn’t a fan of the musical genre in particular. He has since said that he used Peter Lorre’s performance in the 1935 film Mad Love as an influence, as well as the stillness of Boris Karloff and other classic horror actors to capture Todd’s coldness.
He also regularly practised the songs in the film while completing work on Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End. The ensuing film was embraced by critics and has garnered four Golden Globe nominations, including best film (in musical or comedy), best actor and actress (for Depp and Bonham Carter) and best director (Burton).
Of the positive reviews, The New York Times wrote: “Sweeney Todd is as much a horror film as a musical. It is also something close to a masterpiece.”
Variety gushed: “This represents one happy instance of a film made by a director without stage experience that genuinely serves the intentions of the original piece.”
And Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times purred: “It combines some of Tim Burton’s favourite elements: The fantastic, the ghoulish, the bizarre, the unspeakable, the romantic and in Johnny Depp, he has an actor he has worked with since Edward Scissorhands and finds a perfect instrument.”
The Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, wrote that “the show couldn’t have fallen into better hands”, and Entertainment Weekly observed: “Burton has an affinity for the mayhem’s Grand Guignol setting, of course. But more valuably, he has a unique collaborative relationship with his longtime leading man.”
The final word, however, goes to Newsday, which opined: “Abetted by Wolski’s swooping, receding camera and Jonathan Tunick’s propulsive orchestrations, Burton makes this as fluid and dynamic as any screen ride this year, musical or otherwise.”
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opens in UK cinemas on Thursday, July 24, 2008. We’ll have interviews, reviews and photos then.
Read our review of the soundtrack