Sweeney Todd
So I’ll admit it right up front. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of musicals. (Unless you count The Blues Brothers, but that’s for another post.) Nevertheless, I hope to catch Sweeney Todd when it hits theaters later this month, especially after I went to visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site. A psychotic hairdresser out for revenge in 19th century London? Not bad, for a musical.
Revenge has had a long history throughout film that occasionally captures the power and emptiness of the emotion. The best movies reveal the constant, overwhelming force of revenge that consumes every part of the soul. After the act of revenge is carried out, only a husk of a person is left.
One of the greatest scenes of revenge that I can think of offhand is the finale of Mad Max. The biker punks ran down his wife and child and turned a committed policeman into an emotionless shell with nothing left. Max leaves the last of the bikers chained to a wrecked car that’s about to explode but gives him a hacksaw and the advice to saw through his arm instead of the handcuffs.
Sweeney Todd similarly seeks revenge against those responsible for the death of his wife and also comes up with the ingenious idea of disposing of the bodies and turning a profit with a new recipe for meet pies.
You can also visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace.
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