'Sweeney Todd'

Grotesque and Sickening

'Sweeney Todd' is a horror movie full of incredibly bright personages and well-developed scenes. The grim, dark mood is roaring over the viewer starting from the very beginning, when unfairly punished barber, angry and lost, is coming back to London, the city where many years ago he has lost his wife and a child. http://yuxt.com/richardk/Sweeney_Todd

Dirty, gloomy London, filled with shades and flickering lights of the oil lamps, is the main setting for this cruel and grotesque film that lacks hope and compassion

All personages are visually well put. Todd, with pale face and big hopeless eyes portrays somebody how has lost the good side of his soul forever but nevertheless is filled with all human characteristics: loneliness, anger, memories of lost love, despair. That is why it is rather confusing to see him, by the end of the movie, develop into unmerciful, thoughtless, and mechanical slayer who slashes innocent people's throats and dumps them into the dungeon.

At the beginning of the movie, the viewer naturally feels compassion toward poor Todd and his strange and repulsive companion, Mrs. Lovett, whose dirty image and cooked cockroaches are contrasting with her large, dark eyes, those of a lost, desperate but not cruel human being.

The problem is that Burton abruptly cuts off emotional connection with Todd, Mrs. Lovett and even a poor, seemingly kind boy who works for their shop. At the end of the movie they all turn to mechanical marionettes that endlessly and unjustly cut throats of innocent people.

The personages become repulsive, and unrealistic. The development of the plot stops and the rest of the movie portray caricatures wet with bright red blood. Disgusting acts of cannibalism disconnects the viewer even more, and it becomes funny to observe all this grotesque madness.

The meaningless end, where Todd pushed Mrs.Lovett into the bright flames of the stove after slashing a throat of his poor wife, who he did not recognize, adds to the series of stupid slayer acts Todd is performing.