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Jon and I saw SWEENEY TODD yesterday. It was brilliant, amazing, gorgeous, thrilling . . . Get a thesaurus and just keep going. The movie was that good. Usually, it’s difficult, if not impossible to translate a musical to film. Things get lost, and it just isn’t as good. Even though they had to cut songs, it still worked. It worked not just as a musical, but as a movie. It just bloody worked.
I think one of the reasons may have been something that I read somewhere, (Its been a while so I can’t find the article. Don’t ask me to quote too accurately.) that they went to Stephen Sondheim, and had him help them pick and choose songs and moments to go from stage to screen. The adapter said, he was worried that Sondheim would want nothing changed, or touched, but the composer was very open. He said a very smart thing, “It’s a movie, and that’s a different medium.” Indeed, it is, and that attitude showed. All that being said, no worries, it is very close to the original. It’s mostly crowd scenes cut, and some songs cut. Some condensing for story, and it’s pretty much left alone.
So often when things go to the screen from book or musical they either try to stick too close to the original, so the movie is crippled, or they throw the original out so far that you wonder why they bothered to buy the original at all. It’s like telling someone you’re serving them steak, but all you’ve done is wave chicken near a cow. We all know chicken ain’t steak. Well, books, musicals, and movies, aren’t the same either. SWEENEY TODD works on all levels.
There have been some that complained about Helena Bonham Carter’s voice not being up to Angela Landsbury‘s voice from Broadway. It’s freaking Angela Landsbury, of course, she’s brilliant. But Carter was amazing in the acting part of the role, and her voice held up once you got Landsbury’s out of your head.
The movie was beautiful. Make-up, costumes, staging, props; it was damn near flawless. The only reason I put “damn near” in there is that I’m certain there has to be some false note, but I’ll have to see the movie again to spot it. It was good enough that Jon and I both came out just going, wow.
Not just us, either. The theatre was crowded; get there early for seats together. We ended up sitting between two different groups of teenagers. Three boys on one side, three girls on the other. Now, teenagers are cool, but we’ve all the experience in theatres where teenagers were not so cool during a movie. Constant remarks, disruptive behavior, and just plain rude. You know who you are, and it’s damn irritating in a theatre. Before the movie, the boys were playing that game where they hit each other’s hands really hard. I so don’t get that game. The girls were all on cell phones, talking, but not to each other. Apparently, whoever was on the phone was more interesting than the friends sitting beside them. Again, a behavior I don’t get. If I like you enough to come to a movie with you, I like you enough to talk to you in person.
Jon and I were a little worried about how the two groups we were sandwiched between would behave during the movie. It’s a musical, and it’s going to be gory . . . It had all the earmarks of one of those movies that the teens would not sit through quietly. Then the movie began, and there was some nervous tittering from the girls, and a few restless moments from the boys. Then Johnny Depp raised his arm skyward, and sang, “At last my arm is complete again,” he’s singing to his razors, by the way. From that moment on there was no tittering, no nervous talk. The two groups were as rapt to the screen as we were.
The rest of the audience was a mixed group, age and sex wise, and we all sat there under the spell of that movie. We gasped, we winced, we reacted to the screen. It was brilliant. If Johnny Depp doesn’t get an Oscar for this performance, then something is wrong with the process.
So, a movie that Jon and I would actually be willing to see again, just so we can catch what we missed this time round. I can’t tell you the last time we wanted to repeat a movie in the theatre. I mean it’ll be out in a few months, and we can watch it on the big screen at home, right? Right. But, not this one, you need the movie screen to truly get the experience. It’s one of those movies that really is a movie in the best sense of the word. Go to a theatre, watch it with other people, and remember why you first loved going to a theatre. This movie will remind you, exactly why, movies are magic.