In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) (aka Sweeney Todd) has all that he wants, which is a wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly) and a daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener). The antagonist Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) takes a liking to Benjamin’s wife and he accuses Barker of a crime that he did not commit. Fifteen years later, Benjamin Barker adopts a new identity and vows to seek vengeance against the people that hurt him the most. The vengeance starts when he befriends a poor pie owner Ms. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who uses the human bodies that Sweeney kills for meat pies, which eventually leads to the demise of Ms. Lovett of being thrown into the pie oven and Sweeney Todd by having his throat slashed.
To understand Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the viewer must first understand its creator who is Tim Burton. Burton, who is known for films that contain dark and macabre themes makes the viewer think about film in a more distinct way. Tim Burton is known to be a director that makes non-statitc films, which means that its lessons are applicable today. He purposely does this so it would be hard to justify his films into one specific category. Sweeney Todd is a representation of the applying his views on film and making it relevant to the modern day.Tim Burton uses dark and macabre imagery by the song “There is no place like London: and the death of Sweeney Todd to help the viewer understand how 18th century ideas can be applied to the modern day. He uses London as a representation to complement these two particular events and its outcomes in both of these two particular scenes.
Before one explores Sweeney Todd, it is also imperative that the viewer understands Tim B...
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...re merriment to an unremittingly nihilsm vision of humanity”. (Death). This comparison to cannabalism helps us understand capitalism in its cruelest form. Throughout the film, we see that Sweeney Todd has an aversion to London, which the privileged few ruled. In comparison, Sweeney thought that in order to get back at the rich then one must be able to fight back and resist their power.
In conclusion Tim Burton uses dark and macabre imagery by the song “There is no place like London: and the death of Sweeney Todd to help the viewer understand how 18th century ideas can be applied to the modern day. He uses London as a representation to complement these two particular events and its outcomes in both of these two particular scenes. In effect, the viewer has a better understanding of who Tim Burton is as a creator and showing his creativity through Sweeney Todd.
In the film, symbolism was everywhere. In the beginning of the film, the pictures of the city were in black and white and dull shades, giving the city a gloomy look. The camera angles made the cars in the city appear tiny, and the buildings appear very large to symbolize how small everything was amongst the city. The interiors of the office buildings and the panic symbolized that there was no way out. The soundtrack of the film was symbolic to the tension of the film. The darkness of visual composition of the lighting in the film, symbolized the darkness of the human nature in the story.
...ss. Arthur Miller, on the other hand, was disappointed by critic’s reactions. He claimed, “No critic seemed to sense what I was after, which was the conflict between a man’s raw deeds and his conception of himself”. Not only was he disappointed by critic’s reviews, he was disappointed by the “hostility of New York audiences”.
Tim Burton’s films depict his lashing back from a tortured childhood. Somehow, his movies tell his story. His first big budget movie, Batman, was a huge hit. He then chose to make Edward Scissorhands, his most personal film. Despite the fact that Batman was a hit, movie executives were reluctant to give Burton authorization. His use of cinematic techniques displays his unique style.
My choice of characters for this paper was based upon the impressions and the energy I got from them. I thought the play would not be as captivating and impressive without these particular characters and their behaviors. Dorine gives the play a certain spunk and scandal, while Tartuffe impresses the audience by his ability to senselessly lie without hesitating. The overall impression of “Tartuffe” is certainly positive. To be honest, I did not expect the Production to be at such grand level. Usually, when you think about a college play you imagine a middle-level cast, minimal props and “okay” acting skills. Normandale’s “Tartuffe” completely brought down that image and demonstrated that a college play can be a great success when professionally directed.
Sondheim is known for including moral ambiguity in his shows. There were many characters the showed good and bad moral characteristics. The first character with mixed morals is Benjamin Barker a once honest man, loving husband, and father, who spend the last 15 years of his life in prison. Now wants to start all over becoming Sweeney Todd by returning to his old job a now driven by grief and overcome with desire the revenge. Another character is Mrs. Lovett a pie Mrs. Lovett suspect Sweeney Todd as being Benjamin Barker she tells him the story of what happened to his wife. That his wife poisoned herself, but fails to tell the whole truth when she doesn’t mention that the poison did not kill his wife, leading Sweeney to think his wife is dead.
O’Brien, Tim, and Jonathan D’Amore.” Every Question Leads to the next: An Interview with Tim O’Brien.” Carolina Quarterly 58.2 (Spring 2007): Pages 31-99. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 123. Detroit:Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 May 2014.
On August 25, 1958, Timothy Walter Burton was born (“Biography”). Burton had a painful childhood in which the relationship with his parents and brother was nonexistent (Morgenstern). Through his intense feeling of isolation, his visual talent began to develop. The comfort found in hobbies such as writing and drawing led him to attend the California Institute of the Arts which led him to his first job in any artistic field at the Disney Animation Studios (“Biography”). Burton has since been referred to as one of the most visually gifted writers, artists, and filmmakers that America has seen (Hanke). His short stories, poems, and film scripts are centered on an inner darkness which he has been slowly acquiring since his childhood. He throws himself into everything he writes and makes even the simplest characters have a deep, complex meaning. His famous darkness and symbolism is shown in his book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories. The book contains a collection of his short stories, poems, and illustrations about a variety of fictional characters that can be compared to Burton and his life. Tim Burton’s home life and previous hardships have made a significant impact on his work. In my paper, I will draw parallels to his life and work as well as prove that there is reasoning and beauty in the way he is.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber on Fleet Street is a 2007 musical horror drama film directed by Tim Burton. I believe this film is the only musical Burton ever directed. Sweeney Todd is a dark film that explores the idea that evil is inextricably connected with the human condition. When the story begins, it is clear that the past overshadows the present in such a way that the characters live in permanent darkness. In a grim analogy with the victims consumed in Mrs. Lovett’s pies, Sweeney Todd is consumed by revenge. He starts out as a respectable and respected barber with a loving wife and a beautiful baby and ends as a murderous demon guilty of acts so abhorrent that he and the man he once was share on common ground.
Both examples create suspense; by making the audience wonder what will happen to the characters, Burton shows that his style is creative and mysterious.
This essay by Jonathan Swift is a brutal satire in which he suggests that the poor Irish families should kill their young children and eat them in order to eliminate the growing number of starving citizens. At this time is Ireland, there was extreme poverty and wide gap between the poor and the rich, the tenements and the landlords, respectively. Throughout the essay Swift uses satire and irony as a way to attack the indifference between classes. Swift is not seriously suggesting cannibalism, he is trying to make known the desperate state of the lower class and the need for a social and moral reform in Ireland.
Film adaptations based on particular works such as Dickens’s Great Expectations are not the only means through which we get a glimpse of Victorian culture and society. Animated films such as Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) represent the Victorian era through humor and exaggeration and reveal Burton’s awareness of 19th century English society. In his study Gothic Fantasy: The Films of Tim Burton, Edwin Page argues that Burton’s films are not realistic in nature, but like fairy tales they communicate through symbolic imagery, as they speak of “things far deeper within our conscious and subconscious minds than most films would dare to delve” (7). His films are believed to be personal and reflect dark humor, as he combines elements of fairy tales, the gothic, parody and grotesque. Most importantly, Burton usually identifies himself with subordinate characters in horror films that exhibit grand melodramatic emotion and also finds himself “identifying with the monsters rather than the heroes, as the monsters tended to show passion whereas the leads were relatively emotionless” (13). The monsters in his films symbolize the outsider and the alienated, a figure that defies society and is almost always exaggerated in representation. Significant examples from his numerous films include Edward in Edward Scissorhands (1990), demonic Mrs. Lovett and the blood thirsty barber in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and the tragicomically grotesque jilted bride Emily in Corpse Bride (2005).
The film remains faithful to the themes of Macbeth. It does not dilute the eternal qualities of evil and treachery that are so viscerally expressed in the play.
The University of Georgia’s theatre adaptation of the penny dreadful story, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, was very similar, design wise, to Tim Burton’s 2007 film of the same name. While the two were very comparable, they did differ in many design elements which include, lighting, costumes, color, and key structural set-ups.
Tim Burton’s 2007 film Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who is imprisoned unjustly and seeks vengeance by killing off his indicters with razors. Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) returns to his old barbershop in London after fifteen years of imprisonment, and with the help of his neighbor, a pie maker by the name of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), sets up his business again. However, Todd has another goal in mind for his razors: to lure in and kill Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) and his secondary, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), who imprisoned him and took away his wife and child. As the movie plays,Todd becomes progressively more obsessed with redeeming himself and regaining his once comfortable life with his beloved wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and young daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener). This obsession with redemption is the central theme of the film. However, the problem it presents to society is whether or not obsession in this manner is healthy.
Edward Scissorhands, written by Tim Burton, tells the tale of a young man who is lovable, childlike and sensitive, bewildered by the humanity around him, yet is terrifying- someone who has scissors, the deadly weaponry, for hands. Many viewers may read this film as a “Tim Burton” type of fairytale which includes both an alternative aspect and romance. However, through the presentation of mise-en-scene in this film, Burton drives in a much more serious subject of social criticism by establishing two different understandings of life in the movie.