The joining of director Tim Burton with Stephen Sondheim's songs and lyrics in the new film adaptation of Sweeney Todd is "the perfect marriage of maker and material," says the perfect-ten PopMatters review. They have come together to create "the best film of 2007. It is an outright masterpiece, a work of bravura craftsmanship by a man whose been preparing for this creative moment all his directorial life."
Adapting for the screen a piece of musical theatre as revered as Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd could seem a daunting task, and one ripe for a mis-step in the wrong hands. "Luckily," writes Bill Gibron in his perfect-ten review of the film in PopMatters, "the right auteur came along, a director so perfectly in tune with the composer’s layered conceits that one imagines it was written specifically for him."
The joining of director Tim Burton with Sondheim's songs and lyrics, it seems, is "the perfect marriage of maker and material," Gibron says. They have come together to create "the best film of 2007. It is an outright masterpiece, a work of bravura craftsmanship by a man whose been preparing for this creative moment all his directorial life."
The PopMatters review compliments the film's star, Johnny Depp, as well, for his "remarkable acting turn," calling him "absolutely brilliant" as the demon barber. For Gibron, the match between the actor and the role are another perfect pairing: "his performance of the musical material is heartbreaking. He syncs up flawlessly with Sondheim’s sentiments, resulting in the most menacing, mercurial Todd ever." An as for the film's co-stars, the review finds Depp "matched equally well by Helena Bonham Carter" and the rest of the cast "just outstanding."
Even so, Gibron reserves his highest praise for the man behind the camera. "It’s Burton," he says, "who ends up the true hero, his eye for the unusual and the downtrodden in full, flowering effect."
The combined forces of all of these talents culminate in an unforgettable experience for die-hard fans of Sondheim's work and for those coming to it for the first time:
The result is the year’s finest cinematic experience ... Like all great artists, the talent involved here didn’t dishonor Sondheim, but instead, they make the material their own. That’s the true test of any adaptation. ... [The film] is proof that, when left to their own devices, the gifted will give over to something quite special. The undeniable greatness exhibited here certainly supports such a conclusion.
To read the complete review, visit popmaters.com.
