I didn't know what I was expecting this movie to be. All I knew going in was that there was a barber that killed his clients and, who I thought was his wife, made meat pies out of them and their business was booming. That's all I thought I knew about this movie, and then Sacha Baron Cohen showed up and Alan Rickman is the main villain and I was confused but also simultaneously pulled in. Also like Les Miserables, I was not expecting so much singing in this movie. More so in Les Miserables, but still there are a lot of songs that get thrown in at weird times. It's weird to compare Sweeney Todd to Les Miserables but the comparisons reveal some interesting similarities.
Sweeney Todd goes pretty quickly from 0-10. There are some pretty intense scenes, and the first couple really caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it to be as bloody as it was. I wasn't expecting the singing really at all. I wasn't expecting Sacha Baron Cohen and Alan Rickman to sing-- I really only thought it would be Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Going into this movie I didn't really know what his motivation was to kill all these people, but exposition gets shoved in your face (through song of course so pay attention) in the very beginning and it was convoluted and unexpected! There was a lot of backstory that needed to happen to lead to what this film is about and I was shocked at how unique and original they managed to make it.
I think a really smart thing they did was how they formatted the aesthetic of the film. A lot of the movie is dark and pale-- pretty black and white and bland, and it's so gory that the contrast with the bland environment is meant to make it more abrupt and noticeable. The audience is definitely supposed to be caught off guard with the blood. I also really loved how the blood is this tangerine orange color, not this deep purple-y red or actual blood color. It makes it not as dark over all because the dark aesthetic wouldn't be as cut through if the blood was equally as dark and gloomy. It's really alarming and breath-taking when the clients get their throats slit and this orange-y tangerine pink-y colored blood pools out. So even though there were all of these blatant gory, bloody scenes, it wasn't the fact that there was all this blood that was shocking, it's the cartoonish nature of the blood that is shocking.
The backstory is super creepy and weird. I didn't expect there to actually be a motive for making meat pies out of people, but there is this complex, convoluted backstory that leads Johnny Depp to murder people and leads Helena Bonham Carter to help him get rid of the bodies and make them into meat pies. The story beyond the meat pies part is that ultimately, Johnny Depp is attempting to rescue his daughter who was adopted by Alan Rickman's character who also, coincidentally, wants to marry her. There's a lot of revenge and resentment that fuels this story line, ultimately throwing Johnny Depp's character into increasingly sketchy situations.
The characters in this movie are so well fleshed out. They way Helena Bonham Carter's character slowly falls in love with Johnny Depp's character and how that translates to her actions is incredible. It also manages to come full circle in the end with a really great plot twist. The audience also gets to slowly watch Johnny Depp go from savagely vengeful to senselessly killing and it almost seems like he looses sight of what his original intent was in killing his clients.
My biggest issue with this movie is that there's the whole "all bad guys are rapists" trope. Alan Rickman does some super questionable and weird things in regards to Johnny Depp's daughter. I hate the idea that the audience won't be able to really dislike this villain unless he or she is a rapist. Alan Rickman already does some shitty things in the movie to establish himself as the bad guy, we don't need him to creep on this young woman.
All of the components of this movie point to a really gratuitous, gross, unsettling film. It is pretty unsettling, however, not because of the factors you would expect. The emotional suspense in this movie is the most unsettling aspect of Sweeney Todd. Johnny Depp's motives and Helena Bonham Carters motivations to help Johnny Depp are extremely unsettling-- it really makes you wonder the extent of what people will do when love and heartbreak is involved. Every character in this movie is motivated by some kind of love or heartbreak and it's really insightful as a look into human nature. I definitely wonder what this production would like like if it were put on as a play because there a few parts in the film where there's a split screen and two characters are singing together in different situations and just some general parts that I would find interesting if ti were to be portrayed through theater.
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