Sweeney Todd (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #22 extract: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007)

Sweeney Todd is, somewhat ironically, a beautiful tragedy, one with astounding songs and brilliant characters. Whilst all the performances aren't universally excellent and the CGI has aged badly, this is a film I can return to at anytime. 

In essence, Sweeney Todd is about tragic characters who fail to find love, and so resort to evil, violence and revenge to the consequence of becoming a monster that can never be loved, and cannot accept love, no matter how much they, themselves, try to love others. We see this with almost every single one of the main characters with the youngest and most innocent falling victim to an initial act of vanity intertwined with an abuse of power. An age-old story, Sweeney Todd is essentially about a place that bleeds rubies: in this film, London, archetypally, any place in which vanity and revenge chase their own tails.