Polarities. Art as a lifeline. Where was his best director nom?

Rating: 10/10 (8 April 2019)

Just five minutes in I felt a melancholy for how great it is making me sad it would finish. Its bipolarity shows both ends are 'us'. Losing your soul in aging, such works of theater are society's lifeline to feel. It's strange because of how American audiences are so puritan and usually despise theatricality, self-awareness or romanticism; it's as if the musical gives permission to partake.
See how the shave is presenting dignity for 'appearance', being the cleaned face of the societal machine; even there's a rival barber, it's a 'cut-throat' industry to make people nice to service the rotting. The rot is hoisted up by the broken; so the craziness of this is how Todd integrates as a twisted functional. It even rewards him with a checklist of fulfillment, but he could not embrace it. "The ghosts don't leave. They never leave."
This is because he is not real but a stand-in for Dante's London. See how he always creeps up, appears, or looks in the mirror as if surprised he even exists. The film brings this point home showing him as a stuffed figurine behind the window from afar, or as a mannequin in Lovett's fantasy. He is a symbol, a hero redeemer of this demonic ritual; an outgrowth of the dregs where the demon humanity run free for mischief. I like how early on the camera dances through the streets like an imp making sure every rat is still in its place, "I'm home!"
Those powerful gushings of blood show as feeling. We trade allowing this for the civility of living. The mad women ripping the asylum keeper apart, who kept a collection of crazies. There are hints of many different Sweeneys across this, difference being ours redeems, making his evil woke. This is the only Batman you're going to get here. Gotham wept.
Depp; when ever do you get a vehicle for this sort of one dimensional purity of rage? The face as performance landscape. A complete reversal in Edward Scissorhands. "My arm is complete," in both films. Both are these glam rock figures. There, goth within suburbia, here, musical theater within goth. Art as always is the great symbol; the hair cutting versus the shaving as creative and destructive tools for shaping the universe; Burton's paintbrushes.
It's about the torture of certain kinds of men who seek control, and can't bear life not offering that, so seek it at all costs in other ways outside their failing. Its tragedy shows how fate is very much in favor of those with purpose; you realize if only Todd sought industry rather than murder he would rule Judge Turpin politically not violently, and with ease.