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Tonight I got home from the cinema after watching Sweeney Todd and my housemate asked “Was Johnny Depp hot?” Girls, I’m sorry, no. With his sunken eye sockets, crazy hair and throat slashing tendencies my future husband was not looking his best. But Depp does deliver a wonderful, ever so slightly reminiscent of Edward Scissorhands, performance as the tortured and barbarous Sweeney Todd of the title. It’s been said before that Tim Burton, a frequent collaborator with both Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, his wife, was born to shoot this movie and visually it’s amazing, particularly the terrific scene with Bonham Carter and Depp on a beach. It is also haunting with its Victorian London drained of colour, punctuated by rats and vivid splashes of scarlet blood.
With his sunken eye sockets, crazy hair and throat slashing tendencies my future husband, Johnny Depp, was not looking his best.
Granted, the plot is a bit thin but it is a musical after all. In a nutshell; Benjamin Barker, a young barber and his beautiful wife and baby have life too good. The evil local Judge Turpin played by Alan Rickman (who else?) aided by his sidekick The Beadle (Timothy Spall), frames Benjamin and sentences him to life’s hard labour in Australia in order to rape his wife and take their baby girl as his ward. Benjamin escapes after 15 years and is rescued by a young sailor, restyles himself as Sweeney Todd and returns to wreak his revenge on those who have wronged him. He returns to his old lodgings in Fleet Street above the shop of Mrs. Lovett, self-professed purveyor of the worst pies in London. She recognises him from the old days and tells him what happened to Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) his wife; she tragically took poison. This strengthens Todd’s resolve and, because she loves him, Mrs. Lovett offers to aid and abet him in taking his revenge. When the body count starts to really add up it’s Lovett that comes up with the ingenious idea of stuffing them into pies. Then, honestly, it all starts to get a bit silly.
Much has been made of Bonham Carter and Depp’s supposedly average singing voices, but I think they acquitted themselves admirably with frankly neither the easiest nor the best songs of the musical genre. There is less distinction between singing and dialogue than when it is traditionally staged and it has been cut down to two hours but it really doesn’t suffer for it. Of course, being a film, Burton could use as much blood as he wanted, and the more throats Todd slits the more the blood acts as a catharsis for his pain. Helena B-C as the genial, sort of consumptive looking, bonny, cockney pie lady is absolutely fantastic and has some hilarious asides and lines and was, for me, the star. There was a brilliant cameo from Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli the fraudulent “I-talian” barber but for me the one to watch is little Ed Sanders as Tobias who eventually does Todd in with his own razor and delivers an accomplished and polished performance for his 14 years.
Clearly Sweeney Todd is in a slash-happy/horror/gore/comedy/musical genre all of its own. It’s not for everyone, certainly not those with a weak disposition, but its black humour and beautiful cinematography make it the best film I’ve seen this year.
"Sweeney Todd" directed by Tim Burton is showing at City Screens
Alice Bushell
I used to have a theory that female film directors were like blue diamonds; sadly very rare but always of the highest quality. My theory was ruptured when I saw Aeon Flux (Karyn Kusama) because it was pure tripe, but fortunately for the civil rights movement, Tamara Jenkins' new film, The Savages, is an outstanding feature on the bittersweet drama landscape.
Taking inspiration from the works of Lynch, Jarmusch and Payne, it's the story of estranged siblings John and Wendy Savage (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) who are forced to look after their abusive father when he develops dementia. Obviously, the plot is a little more intricate than snakes being found on a plane so you have to keep your brain with you, but it's definitely worth the effort.
In one of the film's most telling scenes, a character starts discussing the work of Bertolt Brecht who theorised that art shouldn't suck you in, but keep you at a distance so you can be objective about it. Not knowing much about Brecht, this concept initially went straight past me, but the film's strength lies is in the way it reinforces this idea, pushing you between involvement and detachment.
Just as the characters move between love and indifference, the film allows you to sink in at times and step back at others. It doesn't matter if you can't identify with all of it, that's half the point! Don't get me wrong, it's certainly an engrossing drama, but it's peppered with enough jarring moments and comedic observations to allow you the luxury of deciding whether to get involved or stand back and admire (even if what you're admiring is Philip Seymour Hoffman's half naked thighs).
The characters are superbly written and the performances from the two leads are energetic and, very realistic, which is what you want from good acting right? (Keira Knightley, I hope you're reading this, and if you are-- please stop what you're doing).
Occasionally the film fumbles getting to the point and sometimes felt a bit too long, but this is a minor criticism against a backdrop of praise. If you're in for some powerful drama with intelligent humour then it's bang on. Picking up Oscar nominations for script and lead actress it already has an impressive endorsement so there's little I can add, other than to say it's tough but well worth the effort.
"The Savages" directed by Tamara Jenkins is showing at City Screens
Tim James
Polonius, and his contrived platitude ‘to thine own self be true’, would probably have been pretty baffled had he ever met Bob Dylan. To capture Dylan’s complex, ever-changing personality, Todd Haynes makes the risky but inspired decision to split him into six. But Haynes doesn’t shy away from representing his (numerous) unpleasant sides: Dylan is not in for an easy ride.
One of the Bobs is the young black ‘Woody Guthrie’ (Marcus Carl Franklin): both optimistic and world-weary, he jumps on and off trains across America with a guitar-case that reads ‘This machine kills fascists’. Arthur Rimbaud, brilliantly played by Ben Whishaw, is the ‘poet’ – but this is a tag he dislikes; instead, he describes himself as a ‘trapeze artist’ and a ‘farmer’. Christian Bale does Jack Rollins the anti-war, socially aware protester, and then Dylan the preachy born-again Christian. Heath Ledger’s performance as Robbie Clark marks him out, sadly, as an actor with vast potential. He transforms with poise from the hopeful pre-fame Dylan, endearingly love-struck with Claire/Sara (an arresting Charlotte Gainsbourg), to the anti-hero of later years: jaded by success, unfaithful, sexist, tired. Conversely, the sections with Richard Gere as ‘Billy the Kid’, the old recluse, manage to be both groveling and pretentious: they are out of place and make the film drag a superfluous half hour.
But Cate Blanchett is undoubtedly the star performer. Jude Quinn is the most interesting of the six Dylans: Bob Dylan the tormented artist at the height of his fame, disillusioned with life and music, whose acerbic wit is turned against loved ones and soulless bourgeois journalists alike. He/she exchanges fiery insults with Coco/Edie Sedgwick (Michelle Williams), frolics with the Beatles and is boyishly star-struck upon meeting Allen Ginsberg. Confronted by a reporter with ‘One word for your fans?’ her reply is ‘Astronaut’. Perfect in her jittery, insouciant mannerisms, with a voice and attitude so convincing that you forget she had to wear a sock in her pants for the role, Blanchett’s performance is magnificent.
The abundant allusions to Fellini’s 8 ½ – suffocating in a car, the floating-on-a-rope scene, chasing the muse through the woods – may strike people who have seen 8 ½ as overkill, and those who haven’t as rather confusing. However, the association between Fellini and Dylan is spot-on: a neurotic and self-absorbed artist, under extraordinary pressure to create a masterpiece, recoils and does something that appears to be artistic suicide. In a setting where rock and roll is a ‘betrayal’ of folk, Dylan does a Judas and ‘goes electric’. When Jude goes to a Jazz & Folk Festival and plays a shambolic, distorted version of ‘Maggie’s Farm’, it is as if he were machine-gunning the spectators, who respond with cries of hatred.
While being a fan of Bob Dylan is an incentive in watching the film, it is not a prerequisite. The photographically stunning compositions and Blanchett’s performance are reasons enough for watching. Dylan’s constant turmoil of reinvention, moreover, is painfully and universally human: he is shown as surprisingly vulnerable, concluding that it is better to ‘never create anything, it will be misinterpreted’. It is easy to see how, being simultaneously so revered and so reviled, Dylan has come to be both an immortal artistic icon and an unbearably moody old man.
"I'm Not There" directed by Todd Haynes.
Kathryn Bromwich
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