Absurdity

The movie starts with a very dark view of London, it's buildings all black giving it a very grim look. To help contrast this we soon see a flashback to about fifteen years earlier, when there was a barber who somehow managed to find the love of a very beautiful woman. The past seems very colourful and lively, but things go horribly wrong for the barber as he is taken away for the crime of loving a woman that Judge Turpin happens to lust after. We then go back to the present and we realize how bleak present London really is. It is also blatantly easy to realize that Sweeney is Benjamin Barker, the wronged barber.

Judge Turpin said that everyone has a reason be to hanged and this seems to ring true of almost all of the characters. There are the obvious examples of Sweeney Todd butchering the rich to pass time until he can fulfill his need for revenge. He justifies himself by saying the judge was a bad rich person, so all the rich people must look down on the average folk, so he feels like he is performing a cruel version of justice by killing the rich and feeding them to the poor, as if he is making the rich pay back their cruelty to the poor. There is also the less obvious examples of Lucy, trying to kill herself, which brings certain moral questions into the air, such as would killing herself really do any good, or would she have been better off staying and protecting her daughter from the judge. Anthony and Johanna seem to be the only ones who have not done anything worthy of the rope, however his throwing the asylum to his "patients" which brings up the debate of what evil exactly you must do to warrant death. This couple seems to be the only chance for a happy ending, however unconfirmed it is, although Johanna says she has nightmares that will plague her forever, they might recede as she spends time with Anthony.

Todd ends up with his old barbershop, above Mrs. Lovett's pies, who had the worst pies in London before he showed up. They end up taking in a boy to help them out, in a comical few scenes involving rubbing piss on a bald man's head. The Signor Adolfo Pirelli seems to be a little over the top, but he works out perfectly as a blackmailer and fodder for Sweeney's first kill. The boy , Toby, somehow doesn't realize what is going on until it is too late. Mrs. Lovett seems to care for him, but not nearly as much as she cares for Todd, as she is willing to try to kill the boy to keep Sweeney happy.

The deaths, slashing of throats, got a little comical around the end, and you would begin to wonder if Todd knew how to do anything else with his knives. Another great comical event was when they were at the picnic and she is daydreaming about the future, and Todd is perfectly awkward about all of this, works out perfectly. He ends up killing his long lost, thought dead, wife in a dramatic turn of events which should have been his moment of triumph. Upon realizing what he has done he becomes enraged at Mrs. Lovett for keeping him from his insane wife, even though she did it protect him from realizing what she has become. We finally get to see a death other than a simple slashing as she is thrown into the fire. Todd is then immobilized by the loss of his wife, and with no one else to seek vengeance on he finally grieves his wife's death, which he didn't do when he first heard/thought she was dead by Mrs. Lovett. In a wicked twist of fate the boy comes up from the sewer to find Todd grieving over Lucy's dead body. Toby then kills Todd, presumably to protect himself, as he would not be protecting Mrs. Lovett, not because she's dead as Toby missed her death hiding in the sewers and by now he lost the trust they built up.

This movie worked out very nicely in the end, ending perfectly at Sweeney's death. We are left wondering what happens to Anthony and Johanna, but we can hope things worked out in the end for them, as they seemed to have everything done to look after for them. Although Todd was consumed with vengeance so much so he didn't seem too concerned what happened to his daughter as much as killing Judge Turpin, he did help Anthony along, even if it was to help his own motives. There is one scene where we are worried he would even kill her, mistaking her for the boy, but he decides to show mercy, which seems out of place for this manic killer. I really loved the music for this movie, and I found "No Place Like London" to be very enthralling.