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iView Author:
Abhinav Katoch
(New Delhi, India)

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Bloody Musical

‘Sweeney Todd:The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ immediately introduces its hero in a breathless credit sequence: I mean Blood–Blood trickling through the damp streets of London,flowing freely between the wheels as it smothers everything in its thick shades ….. In Dante Ferretti’s created world this blood is a magnet–wherever,whenever you go you are moving towards it.Tim Burton’s adaptation of Sweeney Todd(based on lyrics by Stephen Sondheim) might as well be the bloodiest musical in history perfectly in conjuction with the ghoulish musical productions the French theatres specialised in…

Seeing so much of blood being spilt,it hardly comes as a surprise that the two central protagonists are so pale in their appearance as though all blood has been sucked out of their veins..this isnt a pretty world(for that matter nothing in Burton’s films usually is)

Benjamin Barker(Johnny Depp) is slanderously accused and sent off for a life of hard labour in Australia by Judge Turpin(a scheming,sly Alan Rickman) as the latter longs for Barker’s wife(Laura Kelly).Barker escapes and returns to London,in order to avenge Turpin.He changes his name to Sweeney Todd and goes about his plan as he returns to his old barber shop above Mrs.Lovett’s(Helen Carter) pie shop slitting throats without a hint of remorse. The sequence which turns Barker into Todd in turn introducing us to his blood spilling ways and subsequently transforming him from an abstract embodiment of depravity to a figure in a Grand Guignol is his assasination of rival barber Pirelli(Sacha Baron Cohen)…

The film rarely shoots from his point of view,but the mise-en-scene is an exuberant expression of how he sees the world.As he says:

There’s a whole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren’t worth what a pig can spit
and it goes by the name of London…
At the top of the hole sit the previlaged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo
turning beauty to filth and greed…
I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
for the cruelty of men is as wonderous as Peru
but there’s no place like London!

The shadowy cobblestone streets,murky skies and Gothic architecture reflect the decadent bleak misanthropes living beneath them and as Todd sees them .This embodiment of subjectivity in an objective style is what allows the film to eschew sentimentality and manipulation.We rarely see people from an outside point of view…

Only twice is this sensibility intruded on–in a dream of sorts where Mrs.Lovett longs for an idyllic sea side life with Todd.The other is Todd’s reminiscence of his wife–in a bright,colourful and beautiful world…

a foolish barber and his wife
she was his reason and his life
and she was beautiful
and she was virtuous

Mrs.Lovett is an equally villainy figure as her appropriation of being in on the truth(of Barker’s wife), to hide from him the fact that his wife is alive suggests..Indeed she transposes Barker’s words– she calls him beautiful in her description,and the wife silly..And in a world where the first meat pie an orphan had was made out of his father such figures are definitely not out of place.Sweeey Todd is a moving,melancholic musical,with snatches of macabre amongst the various interludes of graphic violence.

I am not particularly used to musicals(this is my first Hollywood musical to be honest) therefore I am inclined to cut Sweeney Todd some slack–at times the seams did show up to me as the pacing became so languorous that it was difficult to sustain interest,the sound effects at times are not particularly pleasing.

But,Burton’s cast more than makes up for these minor blemishes….

Depp’s performance goes beyond all Edward Scissorhands and Jack Sparrows we have seen him reprise perfectly.His countenances perfectly matching his cadences this is a remarkably restrained performance,his stony eyes always fixed and turpitudinous..

Carter’s fragile frame and sad eyes always yearning for his love forms the perfect foil.The who’s who of Harry Potter(Timothy Spall,Jamie Bowyer)lend able support.

Conventionally speaking-To move is to live - that is why the final freeze-frame is so frightening:..Blood which dominates the opening credits,dominates the closing frame.Sweeney has exacted his revenge..But at what cost?