Arceneaux-A Close Shave

In Sweeney Todd Tim Burton encourages the viewer to sympathize with Mr. Todd and Mrs. Lovett because of the way Victorian Era London is. In the film we see the murder of many people, which is often very bloody and gory, who are then used to make Mrs. Lovett's famous meat pies. The viewer is detached from the emotional response to feel sad about the death of the victims because they are under the influence that this is how the world works. The dramatic shift in the movie takes place when Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd sing the song about man eating man just after killing Signor Perelli. It is then that Todd realizes that in time his revenge on the judge will come but taking revenge on the more affluent members of society is just as sweet. Todd and Lovett represent the lower or middle class of society and of course the affluent people represent the upper class. In that time period the lower class was getting trampled on by the affluent. It would seem as if Todd killing the affluent would be the lower class's revenge on the society they live in and the meat pies would be an iteration of "man eating man". As people, it is easy to sympathize with Todd in the first five minutes of the film but after that all sympathy is gone when he begins to slice open necks. See, what is difficult about trusting Todd is that we know his backstory already so the rest of the movie is pretty much about vengeance, which is understandable in its own right but Todd begins to focus less on the judge and more on society as a whole. Even if the most sympathetic of viewers can see through the veil, all that is left is the wretched soul of a man who has been beaten, kicked, and jailed all for the sins of the flesh. Mrs. Lovett, on the other hand, is more wicked because she has no tear-jerking backstory. Other than the fact that she lusted for Todd, she has no reason to kill except for making her meat pies tastier. For a brief moment we can sympathize for her when she takes in young Toby but we can soon see that rather than want to she is chasing after a lost dream where she has Todd as a husband and Toby as a son. When she soon realizes that he can foil their plan for vengeance, she quickly ditches the caring mother act and damns Toby into the meat room, where she then plans to kill him. I think that the movie is more of a homage to revolution than it is anything else. It shows the entrepreneurship of two individuals who work hand in hand to get what they want. In this way the movie further reiterates its point that rather than vengeance, the movie also focuses on how people have to make a living in Victorian Era London and how anything goes.