“To seek revenge may lead to hell, but everyone does though seldom as well.” This was one of the closing lyrics of the original Sweeney Todd play. It epitomized Sweeney's anger, passion, and vendetta. Some found Burton's adaptation for the screen inadequate and failing in comparison to the original play. However, I have seen both and I can say for myself that Burton's stylized recreation of Sweeney more than adequately displays this bloody and tragic tale of blurring justice with revenge.
The film begins, and we see a young and hopeful man staring off into a somber city and singing about it as if it was a paradise. Then Sweeney interjects, calling it a “a hole on the world” which the “vermin of the world inhabit.” At this moment, it would appear as if he was right, it certainly doesn't look anything the young man was purporting it to be. Sweeney then seems to trail off, speaking about a barber and his wife and as we enter his memory the city doesn't seem so dark any more. In his flashback it is quite a bright place filled with bright days, it is indeed a lovely life he had, and it was indeed a lovely wife he had as well. He talks fondly of her beauty and of their child. But then, he speaks of “another man who saw that she was beautiful. A pious vulture of the law, who with a gesture of his claw, removed the barber from his plate. Then there was nothing but to wait, and she would fall, so frail, so lost and oh so beautiful.” The young man asks what happened to the woman, Sweeney says he doubts if anyone should know. They dock and Sweeney leaves ship to go to a familiar place where he once was a happy man. However, he finds that he has nothing left their. A women named Mrs. Lovett tells him his wife had been raped by the corrupt judge that had sentenced him to prison and his daughter stolen by the same. At first, he falls apart. But then, he vows to seek revenge on the man who did this to him, and to make the corrupt city that allowed it suffer as well.
Burton indeed did a fine and meticulous job in creating this film. Due to practical purposes of course he had to cut out certain musical numbers and re mold a few character personalities. However, he forgets none of the vital passion that was captured by the play, if anything he enhances and extenuates it. Through highly stylized costume design and art direction he gives us a feel of the way Sweeney views London. The buildings are all gray and somber, the people all wear dark and drab clothing and nobody seems to be worthy of their own lives. However, in all this dreary darkness Burton doesn't forget a foil. Toby, Mrs. Lovett's young assistant, is an innocent and caution child who used to live in the infamous child workhouses. He inspires us to think that not all the city's inhabitance are as evil and fiendish and Sweeney makes them out to be. Anthony, the young man in the beginning, as well gives us reason to doubt Sweeney.
All of Burton's careful direction comes reinforced by a strong cast. Depp adds never before seen dimension to Sweeney. While his predecessors may have been equipped with more adequate singing voices, Depp's fury, passion, and sadness allows us to at times sympathize with Sweeney and at other moments despise him. Helena Bonham Carter plays the infamous Mrs. Lovett not as a arbitrarily evil hag, but rather as a strangely love-struck and obsessive woman. All these different aspects of the film come together and work in perfect harmony creating a compelling and delightfully gory Tim Burton masterpiece.
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