Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)/Fridge
The Musical
Fridge Brilliance
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a lot more interesting when you consider that Sweeney and Anthony are actually foils of each other beyond the simple fact that one is older and broken and more worldly and the other is younger and more optimistic. Going deeper, they are exact opposites in how they react to wrongs committed against themselves and the ones they love. Sweeney discovers how his wife was raped and his daughter was unhappily trapped within the Judge's house, and all he does is go on a long plot to kill the Judge. Even though he knows Johanna is alive and scared and miserable, he makes no effort to save her, unless it contributes to his plan to kill Turpin. His plan, while done in the name of his wife, still only help himself and add to the misery and bloodshed. Anthony, on the other hand, knows of Johanna's plight and spends the play trying to rescue her. Even though he knows how the Judge is mistreating her, he chooses to try to fix her situation and rescue her instead of get revenge on the Judge. This is perhaps best shown when Johanna is being sent to the asylum and Anthony threatens to kill Turpin. At that moment, Anthony could choose between killing the Judge (an act of revenge) or chasing after the carriage (directly helping Johanna). He, of course, chooses the latter. And at the end, that's why he and Johanna survive and escape while Sweeney becomes so horribly broken that he lets himself die. Anthony is really the more heroic of the two!
- Punctuated by the film scene when Sweeney goes to his shop for the first time in years. He sadly examines at the abandoned cradle of his daughter, but seems to quickly forget it when Lovett finds his knives.
- No kidding Anthony is more heroic? Sweeney Todd isn't heroic at all. A Villain Protagonist with a Freudian Excuse is not a hero. Even if one regarded killing Adolfo Pirelli, Beadle Bamford and Judge Turpin as justified (huge stretch) he murders a lot of people who just happen to wander in to get a shave (as seen in the "Johanna (reprise/quartet)" number). Anthony would be more heroic than Sweeney even if he never tried to help Johanna, by virtue of not being a mass murderer. The fact that he helps Sweeney Todd prior to the play's beginning, shows more compassion for Lucy Barker than anyone else, and saves Johanna is really just icing on the cake compared to the "not a serial killer" thing.
Fridge Horror
- Look at that poster hopefully still on the main page. Look at how Sweeney Todd is holding that razor. Now think about gravity and momentum and how it could affect the blade.
- Actually possible Fridge Brilliance; the razor is directly above his eye, and it's a revenge plot...
- Sweeney's song that marks his descent into madness, "Epiphany", is bad enough on its own. That you remember that "epiphany" used to mean "a realisation of divine truth". That's right, Sweeney may well have been visited by God. And what does God have to tell him? "We all deserve to die".
The Movie
Fridge Brilliance
- I disliked the bright, paint-looking blood in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In a different movie, it might have been okay, but it just made me sick when compared to the subdued, washed-out tones of every other bright color, and the dark, smoke-stained grittiness of London. However, there are two other things in the film that are as clear: the razors and the flashbacks. These are the only things that are real to him. Todd's not a completely unfeeling monster (as possibly shown with the father/husband he didn't kill, either because of sympathy or witnesses): though the people mean nothing to him, the killing still affects him. It may not have been the intent of the director and effects artist, but it makes the special effects dissonance much less sickening. -- User:JET 73 L
- Sweeney's not an unfeeling monster, he's a passionate, enraged monster. The blood from his killings is always a pure visual metaphor for his emotions. The intensity of the spray and the gore matches the strength of his rage towards his victim. In the film, there is exactly one cold-blooded execution - when he kills the Beggar Woman who was actually his long thought dead wife, he is only concerned with getting her out of the barber shop so that he can have his revenge on Judge Turpin. He has no emotion toward her, she's not even the object of his general rage at the world - he just wants her out of the way quickly, so her blood does not spurt - just flows in an even, undisturbed sheet down her neck. At the end, as he's mourning his slain wife, he feels not rage but sorrow and weeps tears of blood from his own slit throat. -- User:Twin Ion Engines
- Uhh, the entire point of the "Johanna" song is that he's killed so much that he's become detached and really doesn't care -- User:Pannic
- Sweeney and his dead wife are the only people whose blood doesn't spurt or gush. It dribbles because, to him, they're already dead. -- User:Arzeef
- Sweeney's not an unfeeling monster, he's a passionate, enraged monster. The blood from his killings is always a pure visual metaphor for his emotions. The intensity of the spray and the gore matches the strength of his rage towards his victim. In the film, there is exactly one cold-blooded execution - when he kills the Beggar Woman who was actually his long thought dead wife, he is only concerned with getting her out of the barber shop so that he can have his revenge on Judge Turpin. He has no emotion toward her, she's not even the object of his general rage at the world - he just wants her out of the way quickly, so her blood does not spurt - just flows in an even, undisturbed sheet down her neck. At the end, as he's mourning his slain wife, he feels not rage but sorrow and weeps tears of blood from his own slit throat. -- User:Twin Ion Engines
Fridge Horror Also true for the musical but underlined in the movie, holy christ, practically everyone is dead! Seriously, Signor Pirelli, Beetle Bailey, Judge Turpin, Mrs. Barker (Todd's now insane wife - though, not quite as insane as the original musical), Mrs. Lovett, Todd himself, not to mention a whole mess of townsfolk. This is, of course, not particularly a feel-good movie, but once you reach the fridge: the only characters left are Toby (who may or may not go insane and/or be locked forever with people and pies in various states of decay around him), Joanna (who - and Tim Burton particularly underlines this, but YMMV - hasn't known a life outside a heavily guarded room), and Anthony (who, as a sailor may well have seen some gnarly things in the first place, but was then threatened by Turpin and Co., passed himself off to get into Fog's Asylum and then left its owner to die by being torn to bits, and is now left with the utterly broken woman he loves). Basically, if you lived in this movie, you'd either be dead or wish you were. -- User:capitoltvjunkie