Last Friday, in the midst of frenzied preparations for the big day, I was messengered a DVD of the trailer for Tim Burton’s upcoming film version of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, a musical for which I have the utmost admiration. The film, which stars Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman, has already been much discussed in theatrical circles, and it would be an understatement to say that I’ve been curious to see what Burton would make of Sondheim’s greatest musical.
A two-and-a-half-minute trailer is by definition nothing more than a hint, but judging by what I saw on Friday, I’m now more than a little bit concerned about what I’ll be seeing come December 21. To begin with, the trailer is edited in such a way as to suggest that Sweeney Todd is not a musical. Only two or three lines in the trailer are sung–the rest of what you hear is spoken dialogue. In addition, Depp looks far too young to be credible as Sweeney, and the cinematography is alarmingly reminiscent of Moulin Rouge.
Needless to say, none of this necesssarily means that the film will be bad. The cast is wonderful, and Tim Burton certainly has the imagination necessary to translate Sondheim’s show into specifically cinematic terms. But I don’t much like the fact that the creators of the trailer clearly feel the need to apologize for the fact that Sweeney Todd is a musical. It is, in point of fact, an opera, and anybody who goes to the film expecting it to be something else is in for the shock of a lifetime.
I’ve got my fingers crossed.
To view the trailer, go here.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
