Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd is a remarkable embodiment of single-minded hate. This film offers a great deal of energy, a few real jolts, and some spectacular settings. Its consideration for numerous awards is well-earned.

By Katherine Ramsland

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Johnny Depp leaves his unique imprint on every role he assumes, and perhaps that's because, as he puts it, "I'm a magnet for weird." From Edward Scissorhands to Willy Wonka to Captain Jack Sparrow, he seems to take a perverse pride in creating a memorable impression with risky roles. Now he's decided to sing his way through a movie as he plays the disturbed and diabolical Sweeney Todd. He wasn't sure he could do it, but he recorded "My Friends" with a band, sent it to producer Richard Zanuck, and it seemed to pass muster. So he plunged in and updated the character.

The story of Sweeney Todd centers on revenge with a vengeance, and in 1973 Christopher Bond turned the nineteenth-century tale into a stage play, providing the motive of payback for false imprisonment. Six years later, Steven Sondheim turned this play into a dark musical, with stylized blood-letting and operatic scenes. Set largely in a grimy area of London reminiscent of Jack the Ripper, the film's bluish-gray monochromatic background dramatically frames the crimson overkill. One-time barber Sweeney has escaped false imprisonment in Australia, becoming "whole" again once he grips his silver razor. It's his weapon of choice, and when thwarted in his plans to kill the man who imprisoned him, his pent-up frustration literally turns customers into cuts-tomers. He's become a psychotic psychopath, unaware of how disconnected he is, and unrepentant about it.

Whether Sweeney Todd, a character from British penny dreadfuls, has any basis in fact is a matter of dispute. Depp says he fully researched the vengeful madman, in the hope that he was real, but ultimately decided he wasn't. Yet the notion of a barber turning people into meat for consumption is not altogether imaginary. Fritz Haarmann, for example, used his skills as a butcher to kill over two dozen young men in Germany after World War I and probably sold their dismembered parts on the street.

Playing Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney's greedy partner and secret admirer, is Helena Bonham Carter. Like Depp, she sports blackened eyes, and one gets the impression that this hollow-eyed look represents a black hole in her moral universe. When Sweeney returns, she's down on her luck because her pies are the worst in the city, but thanks to her entrepreneurial spirit and Sweeney's endless supply of bodies, her unique new cuisine catches the fancy of London society. Todd and Lovett make a gruesome pair, but she, too, must watch her step, as he seems bonded to no one.

Alan Rickman is a welcome addition to the cast, putting what he can into the one-dimensional villain, Judge Turpin, whose devious lust for Sweeney's wife started the bloody ball rolling. He's now eyeing their grown daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener), also his ward, and his incessant lechery makes him even more despicable. Yet Sweeney mirrors him in perspective: both believe that all men have committed some act for which death is a just punishment. They're two sides of the same coin, so one can hardly sympathize with one without feeling the same for the other. But in fact, there's no siding with either, given how self-absorbed each is with his own agenda.

Sacha Baron Cohen as Adolfo Pirelli also makes an appearance; a competing barber who vies with Sweeney for achieving the closest shave. Turns out, it's Sweeney. After an initial murder that seemed justified, he starts looking for appropriate "bleeders" on which to vent his rage.

 

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Contact  Katherine Ramsland  through her Web site at www.katherineramsland.com

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