Re-running "Todd" review
In view of today's Sweeney Todd opening, a partial re-run of my 11.30.07 review: I went to Sweeney Todd (Dreamamount, 12.21) with a guarded attitude. And then it began, and less than two minutes in I knew it was exceptional and perhaps more than that. Ten minutes later I was feeling something growing within me. Surprise turned to admiration turned to amazement. I felt filled up, delighted. I couldn't believe it...a Tim Burton film that reverses the decline!
All my life I've loved -- worshipped -- what Stephen Sondheim's music can do for the human heart. Blend this with a tragic, grand guignol metaphor about how we're all caught up with some issue of the past -- needing on some level to pay the world back for the hurt and the woundings. Add to this Burton's exquisite visual panache and precision, the drop-dead beautiful, near monochromatic color, the ravishing production design and...pardon me for sounding like a pushover, but this movie pushes over.
At times it melted me like a candle. I was lifted, moved. I was never not aroused. Every frame is a painting and a pageant and a falling tear.
Johnny Depp is fantastic as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street -- he has to be a Best Actor candidate as of this moment. Helena Bonham Carter can't sing very well but she's great anyway. Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Jamie Campbell Bower (a major new arrival), Jayne Wisener, Sascha Baron Cohen...everyone fills the bill.
Sweeney Todd is a locked Best Picture contender at this stage. It's too beautifully made, too full of feeling, too exquisitely performed to shunt aside. But it won't win because of the blood.
I was lifted, touched, moved, melted...and also showered and sprayed. And I'm sorry for this. If only Burton had held back and focused harder on the metaphor of a man consumed by bitterness, determined to pay back those who ruined his life...if he'd only elected to turn away and not indulge his B-movie director's fetish for the gushing red vino, as if from a garden hose or a fire hydrant. The film is its own tragedy, in a way. So near and yet so far.
Something very deep-down kicks in when a human being is killed or mutilated or both. It's horrible and ghastly, and the spirit naturally recoils unless -- and this is a very big "unless" -- the style and the context turn it around and redefine it in some way.
Al I know for sure is that I was mesmerized. I loved the duets, the look of it, the control, the poise, the ache, the tragedy. This is a major, major film. Way up there. Better, impact-wise than the B'way stage version I saw a couple of years ago with Patti Lupone. The finest big-time movie musical since the under-appreciated Evita, which I feel is Alan Parker's best film ever.
So into the top-five slot it goes and let the back-and-forth begin. It almost certainly won't win the Best Picture Oscar because Burton, intractable mule that he is, allows a gore fetish to override the emotion and the metaphor and the beauty. Okay, perhaps not "override" but he gives too much exposure and power to the plasma. But this is still a masterful work. Heart-stopping, heart-lifting. I came close to tears several times, and I don't like admitting this stuff because people use it against you later on.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on December 21, 2007 at 7:27 AM
comment #1
Sean
says ...
You know, I'm thinking back over the oeuvre, and I don't actually think Burton is a splatter director. I don't think he's bloody like, say, Raimi. A little in Batman Returns, I guess. But even Mars Attacks and Sleepy Hollow were, to my recollection, bloodless. So his choice to "overdo" it with the blood here is, I think, him responding to the material, not him indulging his inner Tom Savini. I actually don't think the blood in the movie is overdone.
Posted by Sean
at December 21, 2007 7:45 AM
comment #2
actionman
says ...
i remember some decent gore and some grisly moments in Sleepy Hollow. But I agree...he's hardly been a "splatter" director. Fanciful violence is what he enjoys.
Posted by actionman
at December 21, 2007 8:08 AM
comment #3
Breedlove
says ...
If Burton or the studio or whoever had the balls to go with Broadway unknowns who could really sing this would have won Best Picture...it's a good movie but it's a shame they had to cast movie stars who are mediocre singers. It really does lose some of it's power, I think.
Posted by Breedlove
at December 21, 2007 8:56 AM
comment #4
BurmaShave
says ...
Sean has clearly never seen SLEEPY HOLLOW.
Posted by BurmaShave
at December 21, 2007 9:28 AM
comment #5
T. Holly
says ...
The movie that almost made Wells cry. Cry for his kids, that's all who's left at the end of the day.
Posted by T. Holly
at December 21, 2007 12:03 PM
comment #6
BurmaShave
says ...
T.Holly, are you an android, or Dutch maybe?
Posted by BurmaShave
at December 21, 2007 2:56 PM
comment #7
ROTC
says ...
I haven't seen Sweeney Todd yet (my wife and I have tickets for tomorrow night at The Dome), but, based on the reviews, it seems odd to me that it hasn't gotten significantly more front-runner awards buzz. From everything I've read, Sweeney is much more of the kind of film traditionally embraced by the Oscars crowd than, say, No Country for Old Men. (OK, Atonement is also traditional Oscar bait, but I and everyone I know who's seen it thought it was almost insultingly lame.) I'm just wondering if perhaps last year's Dreamgirls overkill along with Phantom of the Opera and Rent the year before have done a lot of subliminal damage to Sweeney, which appears to be a much worthier contender than those recent musical disappointments. Are the prognosticators and voters afraid to get behind this movie in force because they don't want to get burned again?
Posted by ROTC
at December 21, 2007 4:12 PM
comment #8
T. Holly
says ...
Burma, are you threatening me? Cuz I'm not taking shit anymore. OK? Tony Scott probably wept as he wrote his review.
Posted by T. Holly
at December 21, 2007 4:21 PM
comment #9
D.Z.
says ...
Jeff Wells was spot-on, while MiraJeff is Michael Bay's lapdog. Sweeney Todd was clearly the type of movie I was expecting from Sleepy Hollow, and even Mars Attacks. Burton should thank Depp every day of his life that the guy saved his career.
Breed: "If Burton or the studio or whoever had the balls to go with Broadway unknowns who could really sing this would have won Best Picture..."
Yeah, just like The Producers and Rent. Oh, wait!
Posted by D.Z.
at December 21, 2007 4:45 PM
comment #10
lipranzer
says ...
You know, I liked this movie, but it left me a little cold as well. I like Johnny Depp, and thought both his singing and Cockney accent were adequate to the occasion, but you never got a true sense of his sorrow. His acting morose, it seemed, was freezing the emotion he got in the first scene, and just playing it the same way throughout. Even with the final payoff at the end, I didn't really connect with him. It's a shame, because everyone else was good (Helena Bonham Carter and the actor who plays the boy walk away with the movie).
Posted by lipranzer
at December 21, 2007 5:23 PM
comment #11
Dan Revill
says ...
I saw it Friday afternoon. I'm still processing it - my reaction is a warm one overall, but yeah, I can understand it leaving audiences a little cold. Gotta agree that HBC and the kid do steal the show...I think as much as everyone would love to see Depp win an Oscar, it probably won't be for this film.
Posted by Dan Revill
at December 22, 2007 3:31 AM