This Post is Not for the Squeemish
I'm overdue for a blog post, but I've been lacking on philosophical insight recently. Graduate school will do that to you sometimes. After tonight, however, I felt compelled to write.
We just got back from the dollar theater showing of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (warning: do not consume this post if you are allergic to spoilers. Or human flesh). That... was disgusting. I mean really disgusting. It was like what would happen if every villain from Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit broke out of jail at the same time. Made me think of John Carpenter's The Thing all the way through the movie. If you haven't seen it, and you derive perverse joy from reveling in the darkest stains of human depravity, then you might want to check it out. And that the old lady... yeah. Saw that coming from the first time she asked for alms. Gross.
The songs weren't even that good. The only catchy one came when they decided to feed man-pies to the locals. Lots of clever punnery, vaguely enjoyable melody. The rest of the music was mediocre, though, a step down from Nightmare Before Christmas. Apparently Johnny Depp even required his own private sound tech (I spot weird things during the credits).
On the SVU note, lets look at the cast of characters, shall we? There's Serial Killer Guy, Cannibal Lady, Creepy Stalker Kid, Slimy Pedophile Man, and various Rape Party Attendees. All to the blood-squirting rubber head special effects any 80's horror flick would be proud of. It's like Tim Burton's dream story!
So yeah. Apparently Sweeney Todd is not my kind of show--too graphic. Let me know when something tame like Friday the 13th is on, though...
We just got back from the dollar theater showing of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (warning: do not consume this post if you are allergic to spoilers. Or human flesh). That... was disgusting. I mean really disgusting. It was like what would happen if every villain from Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit broke out of jail at the same time. Made me think of John Carpenter's The Thing all the way through the movie. If you haven't seen it, and you derive perverse joy from reveling in the darkest stains of human depravity, then you might want to check it out. And that the old lady... yeah. Saw that coming from the first time she asked for alms. Gross.
The songs weren't even that good. The only catchy one came when they decided to feed man-pies to the locals. Lots of clever punnery, vaguely enjoyable melody. The rest of the music was mediocre, though, a step down from Nightmare Before Christmas. Apparently Johnny Depp even required his own private sound tech (I spot weird things during the credits).
On the SVU note, lets look at the cast of characters, shall we? There's Serial Killer Guy, Cannibal Lady, Creepy Stalker Kid, Slimy Pedophile Man, and various Rape Party Attendees. All to the blood-squirting rubber head special effects any 80's horror flick would be proud of. It's like Tim Burton's dream story!
So yeah. Apparently Sweeney Todd is not my kind of show--too graphic. Let me know when something tame like Friday the 13th is on, though...
posted by Norman at 5:12 PM
3 Comments:
Maybe I need to write a guest post about seeing my own depravity in Mrs. Lovett?
The music mediocre?! NORMAN, WE NEED TO TALK!! :)
That it is a stark and tinny show, I'll grant you; that is is gory beyond the pale of any sort of taste goes without saying. But in my ever humble opinion you have missed the real significance.
The trouble with Sweeney Todd 2007 is that Mr Burton has both the virtue and the failings of a child.
The film is very bloody, but this is all to a purpose - the violence in the film could be many things, but the one thing it is certainly not is random. Nor, I think, is it in any way condoned. Mr Burton is a serious man, and his work makes a serious and damning point - and I daresay without excess subtlety - about respectable society. Sweeney is indisputably a madman, and gets what is undoubtedly coming to him in the denoument. But the madness that floods his mind like light from a pinprick springs from a single great and terrifying truth which we'd do well to recognise: that the dream of homo socius can be a nightmare.
The setting is Britain at its apogee, and Anthony's love-song to his home - which later transitions to his love-song to Johanna - is interrupted by Todd's opinion that this paradise is a cesspool. This he proceeds to demonstrate, and indeed by act II he is actively participating, and going the gutter rats one better. It is a tragedy about revenge pursued, about a man spurred by injustice to become the wickedest of all; ultimately it is the tragedy of man himself, and a viscious swipe at the Englightenment. I think Burton's simplicity serves him well here. He wants to get a point across and uses plain speech: mangled flesh, cannibalism, debauchery. These are pictures that need no captioning, and that is precisely their intent.
Now, the great clarity of this vision is equally its downfall. His characters, as you note with perfect justice, lack even the most rudimentary complexity: either Sweeney must scream or he must whisper; the rain must be either dingey water or a ruby-drop of blood. And this is a definite limitation of the film. The musical does a far better job of humanising Sweeney - and for that matter nearly everybody else - and Depp's portrayal was rather over-the-top. This is not a surprising. But let us be clear about which is the focus, and which the limitation.
Musically I couldn't agree more - as Jenny can attest - but you must allow that what seems poor vocal quality might also be a deliberate artistic choice. It is not coincidental that every singer in the whole film (with the exception of Pirelli, who was only a buffo character in the first place) sounds like a choirboy. Rather, it is an eerily precise reflection of the world of the film. The tones, like London, are flat and grey, and lack any sense of warmth of body. Even Anthony, the closest thing to a whole man the plot supplies us, sings with an undistinguished treble little thicker than the veneer of English respectability. And this I take to be the point.
Sweeney Todd may not be good story, and I do not plan to buy the soundtrack. But it was very well-executed. Mr Burton is something of a cinematic one-trick pony, but at doing that he has no par.
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