Dr. Freudine Fascinated By Johnny Depp's Singing Sweeney Todd~

NOTE - Dr. Freudine is a fictitious psychiatrist and my alter ego who sometimes helps me to review books, movies and music. Last time she had fun with the book Legs Diamond.
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No sooner does Dr. Defiance storm out of my office than my phone rings. I quickly calm down to answer as professionally as possible, to find out that my client David is sick and needs to postpone. We schedule for tomorrow afternoon and I decide to pack up and leave. It being such a lovely spring day I go for a walk towards the artsy theater. Suddenly I spy Leo, the great-looking Native American, headed there from across the street and I hesitate. He spots me that instant and, without skipping a beat, waves and smiles. Mesmerized I start walking again, smiling and waving like a fool. We meet up by the theater.

“Dr. Freudine,” he murmurs. “Were you, like me, looking for a movie to watch?”

“Oh, well, m…maybe…,” I sputter.

“Good! We’re in luck. They’re showing, in just about fifteen minutes, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber From Fleet Street. I’ve got the DVD now, but want the whole theater experience of it. How about it?”

“Isn’t that with Johnny Depp who sings all throughout?”

He grins. “And does a first-rate job! I love his voice. It and he match the role of Todd like a match made in hell.” His liquid dark eyes glint. “That should intrigue you, I hope?”

“That does! Yes. Okay, yes. Let’s go.” I let him steer me to the line forming for tickets. “You remind me of Depp,” I then so inanely say and cringe as he laughs out loud. “I mean, in a good way. You’re not that eccentric…”

“My charming doctor, it is the high cheekbones from our shared Cherokee ancestry. I think of him as a brother in spirit, but perhaps I’m not as eccentric. I’m no celebrity.”

I just nod and wanly smile, determined to only watch the movie from now on. As we’re taking our seats in the dimly lit theater, I glance at his excited face turned towards the big screen and I can’t help asking about his earlier comment. “You said that Depp and Todd are a match made in hell. Todd is called a demon. Is he really a demon and has supernatural powers?”

“Sweeney Todd is the name of a character from a trashy horror novel in the 1800s. Whether he had a demon in him depends on your religious beliefs. He had none. Religious beliefs, that is.” Leo regards me for a moment. “Depp has played the role of a man who lived like a dead man (the poet William Blake), numerous roles of men he admired and who died, many roles of men who are crazy, lonely, social misfits. He has yet to play the role of a strong, brave Native American, like Crazy Horse, but I dream of it. There is something…something very attuned to the Native American spirit in all of his work, as in Sweeney Todd, where he realizes that it’s all about man eating man…all the time.”

I gaze silently at him as the previews finally end and the feature presentation is announced. I’m turning my attention to the screen when he quietly asks me if I’d like an apple. Thanking him I take it and jump when eerie organ music suddenly thunders around me. Soon the dark, gritty-looking film transports me to 1800s’ London as Todd and a young sailor arrive by private, dilapidated boat.

Todd isn’t as starry-eyed about the town as his fresh-faced friend and he certainly doesn’t look very fresh-faced, but ghostly as if he wears the burden of the ghostly memories on his pale, dark-eyed face. A flashback reveals that he used to be married to a beautiful woman and had a baby girl, but a lecherous judge wanted her for himself and had him thrown into prison ‘life’ far away for fifteen years. Todd grimaces and snarls like a tormented man who only wants revenge and his family back, but not very hopeful about getting either.

He takes his leave of his friend, rather rudely, and rediscovers the ugliness of London, then finally the meat pie shop where he and his family used to live above it and he plied his trade as a barber. An equally mad person owns the shop, but she knows that her meat pies are the worst in London, singing about it as she serves him one and ale to wash it down, though he secretly spits it out. (I reconsider eating my apple.) It’s with her, the ’haunted’ room upstairs she leases to him because she recognizes him, his old knives that he sings to in fascinated reunion and a young naïve boy who used to work for a bad, blackmailing barber that Todd kills that allow him to work his nasty revenge. It’s because of his sailor friend that he learns that his daughter still lives in London, but the landlady has described how his wife died.

They all sing wonderfully, joyfully. Even the horrid judge and the bad barber. There’s a dramatic Broadway quality about them, like Phantom of the Opera maybe, with amusing lyrics that color their 1800s’ world for us. I think one talented man must have written the many songs to match the characters (a match made in hell!) and the music is an added bonus to a compelling, though bloody, film. There's a tender love story for us romantics and I love the comic touches, showing that Todd isn’t the only madman (or monster). He could also make me feel his sadness.

The ending catches me off guard, but on reflection it is just right. Leo stares at me in naked expectation after the final, devastating scene and I nod. “I’m very glad I came with you. This was extraordinary!”

As the lights flicker on and we stand up to stretch after the almost two-hour movie, he tells me that Depp won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar. I replied that I could see why. “I was wondering if Sweeney Todd was first a Broadway musical. The songs seem perfect for it.”

“Oh, very much so. Doctor. It was adapted to film, keeping in all but two of the Stephen Sondheim songs. Burton wanted to film this adaptation for a decade with Depp in the title role, even though he’d never done a musical and Johnny had never sung. Quite an accomplishment, don’t you think?” He opens the door for me and it’s still sunny out. “Helena Bonham Carter, Sasha Baron Cohen, Alan Rickman and the rest do a magnificent job making you feel like you’re right in 1800s’ London.”

“Yeah.” I’m blinking in the bright light, not sure what to say.

“The DVD has an interesting making-of featurette with lots of interviews, but the bonus DVD isn’t really worth seeing,” he offers tentatively, shifting weight. "It has more interviews and shows some history, you know..."

“So you think Depp should play Crazy Horse?” I ask, walking towards my office and my car. “I like to write plays. If I came up with a play about Crazy Horse, would you play the part?”

He stops dead and tries not to gawk at me. “Uh, um, I…don’t know…”

It’s now my turn to laugh.