"Todd the Barber" tells the story of Todd, who was framed by Judge Ta Ping and wandered away, and returned 15 years later to take revenge. Todd's wife Lucy is beautiful and moving, and is coveted by judge Taping, who frames Todd to get Lucy, and then raises Todd's daughter Joanna at home, looking at the increasingly beautiful Joanna, and Tapping wants to take it for herself. After Absconding back to London, Todd met Mrs. Lovett, whom he had always loved. Filled with hatred, Todd opened a barber shop upstairs in the pie shop, killing many innocent people, and here, waiting for an opportunity to hand blade the enemy Tarpin.
Released in 2017, the film is based on the famous Broadway black stage play of the same name, and the story is based on real events in the eighteenth century. This kind of thrilling and mysterious subject has always been Tim Burton's favorite. He directed the film, starring Todd by Johnny Depp, and the two joined forces to show us the brutal fog behind a thriving economy.
In 1990, Tim Bolton and Johnny Depp teamed up to contribute a film called Edward Scissorhands, and since then, the curtain has been on the gothic film renaissance in Hollywood. Today's "Todd the Barber" is a typical representative of Gothic films. I will interpret this film in terms of color and music in terms of the content of the film.
What is Gothic style? What we now call the Gothic style is another social voice, a way of expressing ideas, produced by extracting their old, dark elements from the earliest Western European cultures. In Gothic films, through the use of a variety of modeling languages, such as color, brilliance, structure, material, etc., to show the gothic unique suppression of darkness, religious plots, death aesthetics of the pursuit, and rose to the level of artistic concepts and even value systems, with a very high artistic standard.
So gothic movies are generally spooky, spooky and absurd.
In "Todd the Barber", the film begins with a drop of blood in the rain, and that drop of red is the only bright color in the entire dark picture, and as the blood drips onto the windows, the basement, and the sewer, the last disappearing end is the ship carrying Todd's return, and the view is a dim, foggy sky, and a dull street lamp.
The extensive use of black, white and gray colors in the film sets the dull tone of the film. The use of dark and cold light color temperature makes the film feel cold, thus creating a depressing and absurd society.
Todd, who had absconded, learned from The Lovett that his wife had committed suicide by poisoning and that his daughter Joanna had been imprisoned by Tappin. Todd's life is full of happiness is with his wife and daughter, his wife is beautiful and moving, and the decoration of the barbershop also uses a lot of yellow, bright and warm. At this time, Todd, who returned to his original home, not only was the corner of his eyes always filled with blood, but the bright room was already dim and the walls were tattered.
These two sets of scenes form a sharp contrast, warm and cold, light and dark form a strong contrast, showing the opposite of love in front of us, like a silver razor hidden by Mrs. Love, cold and sharp. Todd took it and stood in front of the window, the cold silver glow of the razor foreshadowing him for a bloody revenge.
There are very few bright scenes, and Mrs. Lovett also has a time. It was her imagination of a happy life with Todd in the future, and the two eventually entered the palace of marriage. Mrs. Lovett, immersed in her own love, did not notice that Todd's expression had always been gloomy. Mrs. Lovett had a crush on Todd for many years, and even hid the news of Lucy after Todd's return, and she looked forward to her happy life in the future, and was finally thrown into the oven by Todd. The tragic character of love, the beauty of imagination and the cruelty of reality, vividly display the image of a tragic woman who is overwhelmed by love.
"Todd the Barber" has been carefully processed in terms of music, making the film's story stronger, the character shaping more distinct, and more intuitively guiding the audience to empathize.
Todd waited for judge Taping for the first time to get a haircut, but he didn't expect to be destroyed by the sailors for revenge. Todd, who missed the opportunity of the enemy with a blade, was full of anger and blood, and pointed a razor madly at every passerby. The sound of music, with the lyrics and the changes in the film picture, more directly expressed Todd's inner world, bringing an extreme sense of shock to the audience.
After a misstep, Todd vented his anger on one innocent person after another. The people who kept falling in the barbershop, Mrs. Lovett's shop was brightly lit, and business was getting better and better. The sailor who misses his beloved girl, the beggar woman who keeps running away from the evil pie shop and Todd, who constantly kills people with a knife.
The addition of scene music has played a role in promoting the plot, and the audience's sense of substitution is also stronger, more intuitively showing the inner world of the characters, and also with irony and ridicule of the society at that time.
Finally Todd died, and on the day he stabbed his enemy, he recognized the beggar woman he had killed as Lucy, his beloved wife. Todd's revenge for his family indirectly makes himself the real killer of his own family. Such a dramatic scene is something That Todd did not expect, and it is also something we did not expect, and Thattode, whose faith collapsed, died under his razor in the same way.
"Todd the Barber" is set in the Victorian era of Britain, and behind the booming economy is a huge gap between rich and poor, and as depicted at the beginning of the film, all the ugliness hits there. Director Tim Bolton shows us the cruelty of society at that time, ending with Todd's death, and the ending of Joanna and Sailor outside the camera, which may be the director leaving us with a yearning for a better life.