Movie Review

Directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd), Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs. Lovett), Jane Wisener (Johanna Barker), Alan Rickman (Judge Turpin), 116 minutes, 2007.

About two thirds of the way through this film I said to myself "One more splash of blood and I'm out of here!" OK, it was a curiosity; a serial killer cannibal with singing and dancing done by big names, but really! Who in the name of all that is bright and beautiful could call this entertainment?

I was helped in further reflection by fellow film critic, Rachel Crawley, to view this play/ film as a revival of a theatre genre called grande guignol, literally 'big puppet'. Guignol was a Punch and Judy- like figure in French theatre. In the 19thC. a theatre by that name specialized as a theatre of horrors in the Pigalle area of Paris. With live actors, it portrayed all the horrors of gritty street life; sickness, crime, gruesome murders, torture, suicide, painful death, etc. At one point, Grande Guignol had medical professionals on site and measured its success in the amount of swooning per show. In the early 20th C it became a popular theatre for the upper classes to come and be titillated by the gore. The theatre closed following World War 2 because, as the last director quipped, "After Auschwitz, what would horrify?"

We meet Todd as he returns to England from a penal colony in Australia. He is bent (literally) on revenge for Judge Turpin's having seduced his wife, stolen his child Johanna and ruined his own life. He forms an alliance with Mrs. Lovett who runs a pie shop. Together, they develop a profitable partnership, she with a pie shop on the main floor and he with a barber shop upstairs. Rapidly he descends into depravity when he begins to execute his opponents and even those from the upper classes he perceives to be his natural class enemies. His larger goal is Turpin who has taken his daughter into his own home and intends to marry her. Each of his murdered clients ends up in a subterranean slaughter house and eventually baked into pies by Lovett.

All comes to a tragic end when his wife turns out to be the demented street person who stands across from the shop and issues dire warnings about what is going on. Lovett had conveniently concealed the information that though Todd's wife had attempted suicide when Todd was sent away, she had not been 'successful'. All die!

While Todd had legitimate grievance against Turpin, the source of his hatred turns on a tragic mistake.

This is truly a Tragedy as the prideful character of Todd is overcome by the Fates as he tries to wreak revenge on the representatives of personal and social injustice. Jesus' words in Matt. 5:24, that if we have a grievance against someone that we should first leave our gift at the altar and go to that person and be reconciled before we return to offering something to God, may seem like weak terms for an interpersonal morality between equals (hardly Todd's situation) but it contains a great human truth about the corrosive and deadly effect of resentment. It destroys us and wreaks havoc on those around us.