The two musicals were composed and composed by Sondheim alone, and the two musicals only sang but did not dance. The original musical is not necessarily a musical, but can be an opera (opera).
Sondheim is American, but his "Sunday in the park with George" (1984) is about the French painter Georges Seurat, and his "Sweeney Todd" (1979) is based on an English story about a serial killer written in 1847 . When he encounters stories that inspire him, he insists on creating despite difficulties.
He wrote a singing drama and wrote about the life of the pointillist painter Seurat. In order to match the style of pointillism (pointillism is composed of a dot and a dot of color), he even adopted the same style of "monophonic connecting monophonic". A difficult song to sing. Most of the songs sound like a monotonous and rapid "dong dong dong dong, dong dong dong dong", which does not cater to the audience at all. He wrote "Sunday in the park with George" and won the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in the United States, for his Broadway opera, which shows that he is not a generalist.
Sondheim, the creator who is willing to challenge the difficulty, turned out to have created a more deformed "Sweeney Todd" (Sweeney Todd) before. The hero of the revenge story "in order to practice killing the enemy judge", he even used a haircut. At the convenience of the teacher, he kept killing people, and made the corpse into a pulp and used it as a filling for the meat pie.
Sondheim thought that the character in the story of Todd the Barber resembled the character of Oedipus in Greek mythology, so he adapted the story into a singing opera. Any stage worker thought it was incredible, but he decided to do it. When the opera was staged, the publicity should be packaged as a comic horror or musical thriller, but it would inevitably end up as a box office snub.
In a big world, there are always fellow travelers. Tim Burton, a director specializing in grotesque films, took a fancy to the musical "Sweeney Todd" and found his best partner Johnny Depp and his wife to collaborate on the film version. It is understandable.
The movie "Sweeney Todd" is not for the general audience. Audiences who understand that the character Sweeney Todd, to the songwriter Sondheim, to the film director Tim Burton, to the actor Johnny Depp, are all "grotesque" characters, and love these flavors, so the audience will feel that this movie is made by a group of " "Elite" will be considered a feast.
Don't ask if this movie is good or not, it's a cult film. Tim Burton did what he had to do. He has his own box office value and doesn't need to worry about the movie box office, so he doesn't need to compromise. He made the film to ditch the packaging of "horror comedy" and "singing thriller", and he wanted to show the tragic character naked, tricked by fate, and let blood spurt like an oil well. Blood is used to wash and cleanse in this film. Tim Burton felt the need to spray blood, and he didn't mind changing the way he played and the style.
This film version goes back to the original tune of the story, starting with a vision of London in the Dark Ages of 1840, where the song sings about any imaginable evil, any nasty thing that could happen in London at the time. Tim Burton builds dark tones, creates a moldy flaking environment, and even stinks.
However, this film is acceptable, because it has music that matches the plot and the emotions of the characters, and has appropriate picture processing. On the whole, this film successfully expressed with audiovisual elements is a work of taste. Tim Burton challenged the difficulty again this time, and the effect was good. I believe his fans are satisfied.
For non-Tim Burton fans, this musical movie will no doubt hurt them. The male protagonist keeps killing people, and he kills so bloody, smooth, and cold-blooded, while killing and singing.
But why does Tim Burton make his protagonist so perverted? The purpose is, of course, to make the audience think: recall the injustice in society, the abuse of the law by those in power, and thus the incident of cannibalism.
The disturbing images shown in the film are meant to send a message: the people in power "cannibalize" before the victims come back and "cannibalize". Compared with reality, in fact, all the "perversions" in the film are not a big deal, they are just short-lived light and shadows. In reality, "people eat people" is really scary! (over)
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