Tim Burton Double Feature! Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow

Tim Burton Double Feature!

"Sweeney Todd" and "Sleepy Hollow"

On Thursday night, my friend and I made an excursion into San Francisco to watch consecutive screenings of "Sweeney Todd" (2007) and "Sleepy Hollow" (1999) at the Castro Theatre. I am taking a course on Hitchcock, and in that class we are learning how each film that is made by an auteur, or director, presents common themes and obsessions that are prevalent in all of his work. Auteur theory also delves into how the artist's biography intersects with his films, but I'm too lazy to look into Tim Burton's biography. Instead, I'll try to review both films within the framework that they each share common themes, styles, and obsessions.

Let's start off with the obvious: both films star Johnny Depp, feature gloomy atmospheres, and have a great deal of blood. Good. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about "Sweeney Todd."

This film, which is an adaptation of the macabre Broadway musical that is written by Stephen Sondheim - which I have not seen - opens with an animated sequence. Streams of blood drip through crevices and drive a series of gears until, upon pervading every aspect of the scenery, the film finally begins. But instead of witnessing the all-too-vivid red of animated blood, we see a world that has been entirely drained of color. And then there is Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), a demented barber, whose shockingly pallid visage peers out at Burton's vision of a dilapidated London. Only one thing is on his mind – revenge. The object of his malice: an evil judge (Alan Rickman) who has stolen his wife and child. So, Todd returns to his barbershop, which has been maintained for years by the even-more-eccentric pie shop owner, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), to plot his revenge.

Burton, in all of his films, tries to strike a perfect balance in depicting bizarre, gruesome events and the darkly comical nature that arises from them. In “Sweeney Todd,” his atmosphere is appropriately dreary, and the songs are all outstanding – of particular note is a hilarious sequence in which Todd and Mrs. Lovett sing about cooking priests into pies. But that's mostly due to Sondheim's writing. With regards to the performances, we get a disappointingly stoic Johnny Depp, who, despite sporting some very wild makeup and hair, fails to spark much intensity in the film. He serves as nothing more than a ballast, a relatively calm center amidst the other actors and the bloody environs. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays a rather crazy Italian barber, understand how simultaneously disturbing and silly the entire affair is, and they ham up their performances to memorable effect. Even better is Alan Rickman's chilling performance, as a purely corrupt, though erudite, man who uses his powerful position to ruin the lives of others – he is a sadist, like Todd, but he lurks, instead, within the bureaucracy.

There is a sequence, early on, in which the film enters a computer-generated whirlwind tour of the streets of London. It is an example of what I'll call the “Tim Burton effect,” a unique, ostentatious and over-the-top approach that he arbitrarily switches on whenever he feels like doing so. I hate the sequence because it takes me out of the film, and it makes me aware of who is turning the switches. My friend, probably for the reasons I cited above, loves it. But it is difficult to excuse Burton for some of his other ill-advised excesses. He obviously loves blood; whenever Todd slices the throat of one of his victims, blood spurts everywhere, even on the camera – and thus on us, the audience – "Kill Bill" style. But Burton manages to overdo it; he shows, to an excessive and sadistic extent, how heads split apart when Todd drops his victims' bodies down a conveniently placed chute. And then there is the completely unnecessary, and terribly-rendered, computer-generated shot of a character burning to death in an oven.

I suppose this is Burton's point: that we are all just as culpable as Todd for witnessing, and even enjoying, these murders. To a certain extent, I am sure this is true. But I won't be able to join in on the “fun” until the director manages to reign in his excesses and sadism. This will probably never happen, though; after all, it is this “Tim Burton Effect” that makes his films so very unique.

I have seen “Sleepy Hollow” three times. The first time I saw it when I was ten years old. It scared the crap out of me. I watched it a second time last year, over winter break, on DVD, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I was curious as to how it would hold up on a third viewing, especially on the heels of “Sweeney Todd.” The answer, surprisingly, is “not very well at all.”

I think that Burton made this film because he simply wanted to craft amazing sets and a very cool atmosphere, especially when the story ostensibly involves the headless horseman of Sleepy hollow. Indeed, the art direction is amazing, the atmosphere is amazing, and the brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki impeccably shoots the entire affair with gorgeous – and equally creepy – diffuse light. The film is an even bigger disappointment considering how tantalizingly good the first half hour of the film is. Ichabad Crane (Johnny Depp) is a nerdy murder investigator who has been sent by annoyed magistrates in New York City to investigate a series of beheadings in the town of Sleepy Hollow.

I love one little moment, in particular. Crane enters one of the town's huge manors – which Burton introduces with a wonderfully bleak establishing shot – where he unwittingly enters a kissing game with a group of men, who are circling around the story's love interest, who is played by Christina Ricci. She is blindfolded and accidentally latches onto Crane, who she then kisses. The kiss is shot with a telephoto lens; after the couple breaks apart, we see, behind them, a man looking at Crane with extreme hatred and jealousy. The sequence is, in the scheme of things, entirely unnecessary. But I love the way that Burton and Lubezki establish this burgeoning love – and the distrust that is rampant within the community – in a thoroughly visual manner.

Here, we see Burton, again, trying to strike a perfect balance between horror and black comedy. For a time, he actually succeeds, because he appears to recognize how silly the story is, and how over-the-top some of the visuals are supposed to be. It is unfortunate that Burton has to deal with a terribly boring plot – it has something to do with witches and inter-family rivalries – and a good deal of terrible writing. The narrative structure, after the first half hour, turns out to be a complete mess; it devolves into moments of randomly placed horror mixed in with needlessly lengthy monologues by Crane. A climatic fight on a run-away stagecoach is uninspired and edited in such a way as to be entirely incomprehensible. Even Danny Elfman's score sounds tired by the end of the film; it is a series of repetitive notes that keeps pounding us over and over until we cow in submission.

Amongst the brilliant and the terrible moments, we still witness the occasional “Tim Burton Effect.” Laughable computer-generated eyes pop out of a witch's skull, for example. But even these moments grow dull – we can only see a beheading so many times before they all look the same. And all of them result in the same bizarre occurrence; the victim's head lands on the ground, upright, with his eyes looking right at us. It's a practical joke on the audience, and a statement about how we get a perverse pleasure by witnessing all of these deaths. It's a joke that grows old very quickly. But to be fair, Tim Burton certainly knows how to craft a fascinating, dour atmosphere, and for that, I think that we should all be thankful.

I gave Sweeney Todd a second viewing on 9/18/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb
I gave Sleepy Hollow a third viewing on 9/18/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDB