Dry Ice Factory

"I have a joke that Belgium is the France many smug Englishmen would prefer France to be, in that it is a conservative monarchy, is properly grateful to Britain, doesn't make caustic comments about English culture, and is a lot smaller. With that idea in mind, Portugal is the real Spain, Switzerland the perfect Germany, Ukraine the more amenable Russia, Pakistan the better India, and Tim Burton the ideal Terry Gilliam."

--Partisan, comment on Glenn Kenny's blog

So I saw Sweeney Todd a second time at a matinee today. The opening credits really are brilliant, following the trail of blood into the cogs of the machine, telling the story in a completely symbolic form right up front. I love the look of the movie, and they did a good job telling the story and adapting the music -- which is of course gorgeous stuff, lyrical and dark, although perhaps missing too much of the dissonance of the original. I love how at the margins of the story, the city looks like a storybook, like a paper pop-up city, unreal. The ending is perfect, as I said before. Truly poetic; maybe the most poetic thing I've seen in a movie in the past year.

However. (Did you feel the "however" coming?) The two leads are a problem for me. It took me two viewings to be sure, but I don't even like Johnny Depp's performance very much. That's coming from a huge Johnny Depp fan, too. It's not just that I don't like his singing, although it's true that I don't like his singing. It's possible this is in fact the core of the problem, because so much of the story and character in the musical are conveyed in the songs. But basically Depp is not believably demonic or monstrous or malevolent. There's nothing threatening about him. He does a great job at staring into the abyss with black eyes out of a German Expressionist nightmare, but he can't sell the murderous rage boiling in Sweeney's character. At least not to me.

Another problem is that he doesn't connect well with Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett. The byplay between them lacks energy, even in things like "A Little Priest" where Sweeney lets his defenses down and conspires with her against the world. Again, this is at least partly due to the fact that neither of them can sing well enough to put the song across, but it has seemed to me before that Depp has a hard time connecting with the female leads in his movies. Perhaps that's why he's such a great fantasy figure, because we can all fantasize that he's holding himself back for us.

Sacha Baron Cohen is terrific as Pirelli, as is Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, in an unctuous, vicious performance. Rickman is also really good as Judge Turpin, although also not a great singer. Actually, most aspects of the movie are really good, except for the two lead performances. But as they are the lead performances, that's a pretty big problem.

Still, as a gothic theater of blood, it is a lot of fun. That compensates for a lot. And Sondheim's music covers a lot of sins as well, even toned down as it is. Lots of geeky visual nods to other movies, too, from Murnau's Nosferatu (the ship coming into port out of the fog at the beginning) to Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum (the oven looks a lot like the iron maiden in which Barbara Steele is trapped in that one) to the completely gratuitous camera plunge through CGI alleys and byways that appears to be lifted directly from Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge. That latter is a serious misstep, I think, but it's brief.