Edgy Friends

Edgy Friends

The gory scene of cutting someone’s throat made my stomach kind of turn, other than that Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber on Fleet Street is actually a pretty “interesting” movie to watch. I had never been interested in watching musicals very much but I must say Tim Burton captivated my attention with the way he chose to director this movie. I think the way he portrayed the characters was brilliant.

Sweeney himself had grown so overwhelmed with revenge that in the end he died anyways and killed the love of his life. I think if Sweeney would have actually tried to look for Joanna and Lucy then he would have realized that neither was dead and he might have had a chance to return to happiness like he was before he was falsely accused by Judge Turpin. I guess that wouldn’t make this a dark comedy with the killing and revenge aspect behind it.

The fact that Sweeney says “my friend, my faith friend” singing to his razors definitely showed how unbalanced he had become. The razors being personified as if they are the only things that are loyal to him and they are the tools used to help him carry out his plan of retaliation but ultimately they kill both him and Lucy. It almost seems that murdering people and the blood itself is Sweeney’s emotional release; he is more passionate when slashing a throat than any other times in the movie. When Sweeney is singing “There's a hole in the world like a great black pit” and he is talking about London, I am wondering if he only can back to London and get revenge and if he planned to do anything else or was dying kind of a release from the bad things that had happened.

This movie is definitely worth watching again and picking up on more things this time that I didn’t notice the first time I watched it.


Sweeny Todd:The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Screenplay
         Stephen Sondheim.Dir. Tim Burton.2007. Dreamworks,
         2008.DVD