The Transcendental Man
SWEENEY TODD
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
that transcendental gentleman - anguished, aloof, & adored
The way the camera caresses Todd and Turpin as they duet in ‘Pretty Women’ - is such a seductive dance, as Todd’s arms, hands, fingers, blades, so gently and surely encircle Turpin’s throat, the camera circles almost imperceptibly in the other direction, counter-clockwise to Todd’s ‘dance of death’, and you, the seduced viewer - because I am well and truly seduced by this point - is caught up in a silent and gentle maelstrom, a vortex, that sucks you down and spits you out at the same time, repulsed and fascinated, fearful and worshipful - to a world of emotional contradictions, harsh contrasts, much like the sepia toned film with splashing gouts of crimson - each scene is a microcosm of the entirety of the film -
Todd’s embrace of Turpin builds with aching, pounding, grinding slow tenderness - then is cut off so cruelly before it’s inevitable climax - it’s an exercise in frustrated desire, which pretty much sums up Misser Todd - that pretty, pretty man who is only alive in the midst of death.
Johnny Depp... rather, Sweeney Todd... I don’t want to say he’s like a proud, untameable, beautiful wild & totally badass panther, prowling, stalking back and forth within his cage - all lean sinew, and deceptive gentleness and calm which belies his tumultuous, focussed interior -
I don’t want to say that because, one, it’s such a tired, haggard old cliché, and two, because it’s not perfectly correct - partly so, yes, but not wholly -
He is graceful, certainly, and in great possession of his body (every move feels calculated, exact - but not predictable, instead, utterly inspired - like a grand champion chess player) but he doesn’t have that fluidity, the feline trait, rather a certain stiffness, or unabashed self-consciousness (so indicative of trying physical and mental trials - this is a man who has known great pain, and it shows in every line of his face and body)
that is just as equally suggestive of a great restrained, reined in strength, and just as mesmerising... the little antelope that walks willingly, delightedly!, into the maw of the panther, just because he whistled, and flashed his eyes so -
Mr Todd is very damaged, incredibly so - everything unnecessary to ‘The Quest’ has been burnt away, he’s become something very pure, and very focussed, and it’s as horrible to watch as it is beautiful, or admirable, in a certain strange way.
I’m completely helpless before the physicality of the man - this preternaturally beautiful, yet undeniably, indefinably, intensely masculine man. God, that sounds weird. But Sweeney Todd is more, and simultaneously less than, a man; he’s love, and he’s revenge, he’s devotion, and he’s blind hatred, given physical form - idea made unto flesh -
which is why his movements sometimes seem stiff - because the body is just there as a tool, part of a cold polished silver machine - “At last! My arm is complete again!” - but his eyes are always alight, always moving, always scheming, always bright & gleaming with the faint reflection of the passion that consumed his soul, that idea of love & death, and now infuses the mechanical body with some semblance of life.
If he’s not dispensing death with an awful and majestically serpentine grace, his body seems to struggle to remember how to live, to breathe, to interact - it becomes automaton, until the devil inside is roused to it’s task once again, uncurls it’s tail, and spews it’s fiery gin-soaked breath into a depraved and deserving, yet unsuspecting underworld - and yet even this horror doesn’t seem out of place in that ugly, stinking fog laden necropolis - there’s no place like London.
The final scene was... well, it reminded me that sometimes words truly fail. Not that they’re inadequate or anything, but that sometimes things can only be expressed through images. I don’t have the vocabulary for this, doubtless a cinema student would know how to describe the scene better than I, because all I can dredge from my awe struck soul is: SUBLIME.
The sublime and the ridiculous, truly. Sweeney offers his throat up (that minute tilt of the head back, and the light already gone out of his eyes) to his unwitting spawn* in the end - the poor lamb, a broken sacrifice.
Because he knew Toby was there, of course he did; the boy picked up his razor - he may as well have stroked Todd’s cheek & caressed his hair as he whispered some cruel, final parting words - so much are those gleaming silver blades a part of Todd.
*the boy Toby: who undergoes that horrifying transition from innocent urchin to demon - a smudge of coal dust beneath his eyes, sewer-stained clothes and spirit, coupled with a broken heart, and the burning dragon in Todd sees that - recognises it - scets fresh flesh, and wrenches itself out of Todd’s reanimated corpse, and flies to Toby, curling itself up in the ashes of his chest around whatever charcoal is left of his once trusting heart.
The bloody rain that falls from Todd upon his dear departed wife is... the ridiculous. The painfully exquisite ridiculous. I wept, and smiled, and faded to black - how I adore my transcendental gentleman. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
that transcendental gentleman - anguished, aloof, & adored
The way the camera caresses Todd and Turpin as they duet in ‘Pretty Women’ - is such a seductive dance, as Todd’s arms, hands, fingers, blades, so gently and surely encircle Turpin’s throat, the camera circles almost imperceptibly in the other direction, counter-clockwise to Todd’s ‘dance of death’, and you, the seduced viewer - because I am well and truly seduced by this point - is caught up in a silent and gentle maelstrom, a vortex, that sucks you down and spits you out at the same time, repulsed and fascinated, fearful and worshipful - to a world of emotional contradictions, harsh contrasts, much like the sepia toned film with splashing gouts of crimson - each scene is a microcosm of the entirety of the film -
Todd’s embrace of Turpin builds with aching, pounding, grinding slow tenderness - then is cut off so cruelly before it’s inevitable climax - it’s an exercise in frustrated desire, which pretty much sums up Misser Todd - that pretty, pretty man who is only alive in the midst of death.
Johnny Depp... rather, Sweeney Todd... I don’t want to say he’s like a proud, untameable, beautiful wild & totally badass panther, prowling, stalking back and forth within his cage - all lean sinew, and deceptive gentleness and calm which belies his tumultuous, focussed interior -
I don’t want to say that because, one, it’s such a tired, haggard old cliché, and two, because it’s not perfectly correct - partly so, yes, but not wholly -
He is graceful, certainly, and in great possession of his body (every move feels calculated, exact - but not predictable, instead, utterly inspired - like a grand champion chess player) but he doesn’t have that fluidity, the feline trait, rather a certain stiffness, or unabashed self-consciousness (so indicative of trying physical and mental trials - this is a man who has known great pain, and it shows in every line of his face and body)
that is just as equally suggestive of a great restrained, reined in strength, and just as mesmerising... the little antelope that walks willingly, delightedly!, into the maw of the panther, just because he whistled, and flashed his eyes so -
Mr Todd is very damaged, incredibly so - everything unnecessary to ‘The Quest’ has been burnt away, he’s become something very pure, and very focussed, and it’s as horrible to watch as it is beautiful, or admirable, in a certain strange way.
I’m completely helpless before the physicality of the man - this preternaturally beautiful, yet undeniably, indefinably, intensely masculine man. God, that sounds weird. But Sweeney Todd is more, and simultaneously less than, a man; he’s love, and he’s revenge, he’s devotion, and he’s blind hatred, given physical form - idea made unto flesh -
which is why his movements sometimes seem stiff - because the body is just there as a tool, part of a cold polished silver machine - “At last! My arm is complete again!” - but his eyes are always alight, always moving, always scheming, always bright & gleaming with the faint reflection of the passion that consumed his soul, that idea of love & death, and now infuses the mechanical body with some semblance of life.
If he’s not dispensing death with an awful and majestically serpentine grace, his body seems to struggle to remember how to live, to breathe, to interact - it becomes automaton, until the devil inside is roused to it’s task once again, uncurls it’s tail, and spews it’s fiery gin-soaked breath into a depraved and deserving, yet unsuspecting underworld - and yet even this horror doesn’t seem out of place in that ugly, stinking fog laden necropolis - there’s no place like London.
The final scene was... well, it reminded me that sometimes words truly fail. Not that they’re inadequate or anything, but that sometimes things can only be expressed through images. I don’t have the vocabulary for this, doubtless a cinema student would know how to describe the scene better than I, because all I can dredge from my awe struck soul is: SUBLIME.
The sublime and the ridiculous, truly. Sweeney offers his throat up (that minute tilt of the head back, and the light already gone out of his eyes) to his unwitting spawn* in the end - the poor lamb, a broken sacrifice.
Because he knew Toby was there, of course he did; the boy picked up his razor - he may as well have stroked Todd’s cheek & caressed his hair as he whispered some cruel, final parting words - so much are those gleaming silver blades a part of Todd.
*the boy Toby: who undergoes that horrifying transition from innocent urchin to demon - a smudge of coal dust beneath his eyes, sewer-stained clothes and spirit, coupled with a broken heart, and the burning dragon in Todd sees that - recognises it - scets fresh flesh, and wrenches itself out of Todd’s reanimated corpse, and flies to Toby, curling itself up in the ashes of his chest around whatever charcoal is left of his once trusting heart.
The bloody rain that falls from Todd upon his dear departed wife is... the ridiculous. The painfully exquisite ridiculous. I wept, and smiled, and faded to black - how I adore my transcendental gentleman. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.