In their Oscar acceptance speech, the Coen Brothers expressed thanks for being allowed to play in their corner of the sandpit. The other corner is surely reserved for Tim Burton who, like the Coens, has consistently made movies that follow a unique vision and which steadfastly refuse to pander to Hollywood conventions.

It’s hard to imagine another director who could have done such a remarkable job of translating Sweeney Todd to the big screen. Terry Gilliam perhaps has the same verve and madness but he lacks Burton’s discipline

For all the flights of imaginative fancy the scenes in Sweeney Todd are so precisely mapped out that you can easily imagine that Burton’s storyboards would make a great graphic novel.

This is an all singing no dancing tale of the notorious serial killer and barber
(“a proper artist with a knife”) He is driven to madness by a thirst for revenge against a philandering and corrupt judge, Turpin, (“a pious vulture of the law”) who destroyed his life by stealing his wife and having him imprisoned on a trumped up charge.

Burton uses muted colour to shroud the scenes in a bleak Dickensian haze, the exceptions to this being in brash blue costume of the rival barber Pirelli – an hilarious star turn by Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) and the vivid blood red (lot’s of it!) that results from Todd’s rampant killing spree.

A stellar,mostly British, cast do wonders to bring out all the subtle nuances of Stephen Sonheim’s music which more than compensates for the lack of Danny Elfman’s usual roller coaster soundtrack.

The songs sound more earthy and alive than those recorded for the stage version. They
are positively overflowing with ideas with such linguistic vitality that they work like music hall raps. Take, for example, Todd’s venomous lines in the opening song (No Place Like London):
there’s a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and it’s morals aren’t worth what a pig can spit
and it goes by the name of London.

Needless to say, Johnnny Depp in the title role is magnificent, cutting a dash with his fixed scowl and Edgar Allen Poe garb and proving that there is life after Jack Sparrow.

His singing is a revelation, adopting a mock cockney voice that sounds remarkably like David Bowie in his pre-Ziggy Stardust days.

Tim Burton’s genius is in showing us a dark poetry in a world steeped in squalor and brutality. What could have ended up as a prize turkey turns out to be an instant classic full of originality and style.

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