Title: How Beat the Heart of Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Rating: T
Genre: Character Study
Author's Note: I just watched an old interview with Johnny Depp from way before he was cast in Sweeney Todd and something about his inspiration for each of his diverse characters just prompted me to write a piece on what I felt was behind Sweeney's eyes in every scene on the big screen. Reviews equal love. I have an idea in mind of for a Sweeney/Lovett one shot, but I thought I should get out my characterization of Sweeney and see if people appreciate it before I bothered with a larger piece.
Disclaimer: If I owned Sweeney Todd, Johnny Depp would be in my arms right now. Alas, sadly I do not own it.
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Desaturated. He lived in a world desaturated. No, he did not live. He walked a weary limbo between the realms of earth and hell where the most immoral, contemptuous acts of greed and lust were practiced, perfected as a fine art.
He was an empty shell of a man - a man who once knew what it meant to love with a swollen, bleeding heart. A heart which had since bled itself dry. A shriveled heart which thirsted for revenge, an insatiable, unquenchable need for recompense for the unforgiven sins of one man of righteous title.
Turpin - the honorable Judge Turpin had ripped his life apart with a single swoop, a single poisoned word issued to servants of that yearn for a particular woman. The wife of a particular barber. Stolen her away and left the poor barber to sulk and wallow in a mind boiled sharp and deadly as arsenic, plotting, always plotting a revenge.
And that's how he sat, leather belt outstretched as the glistening knives of this silhouette of a proper barber scratched at it, sharpening, sharpening to penetrate the skin of that living, breathing demon in a bleary hell.
Obsession. Relentless, inexorable, ruthless passion flowed through his veins. Obsession was the only fuel in his body, the only reason his heart kept up the steady, shallow beat in a withered rib cage.
Death, the only trifle that lingered in his corrupted mind. The corrupted mind of a corrupted man tossed to the wayside. And in his dying breath of ardor and nativity breath of vengeance, a new man was born. No longer Mr. Barker, a vivacious man starved of love, but a dastardly creation known as the demon barber, Mr. Sweeney Todd - the proverbial angel of death, bringing upon the undoing, swift and untimely demise of men who's depraved, disturbed actions warranted a gory outburst of rage onto death.
Revenge was neigh.
And so beat the heart of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.