Dark & Complex

I have to admit something.  Though I see myself as a "good girl" and have never been a fan of the horror genre per-se, for some reason I found myself wishing for the recent film version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  And, when for Christmas my darling husband presented it to me, I was faced with yet another dilemma: do I actually open it?  Should I really, watch it? Gasp!  I had heard it was violent.  Bloody and full of gore.  

I was familiar with the story and music thanks to my sister's love of musical theater.  It doesn't get much more way out than Sweeney's quest for vengeance carried out by his army of razors. At his side, the ever resourceful Mrs. Lovett.  What a pair!  Yes, I knew the story.  But something inside me said, "If you open that and watch it, you're creepy.  I mean, he kills people and she bakes them into pies and serves them up!  Don't do it!  Get rid of it now!"

And still, I was intrigued.

What was it that had always drawn me toward dark music? As a pianist, what do I love to play? Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Brahms.  I was obsessed with the Phantom of the Opera and you couldn't pry my Mahler CDs out of my hands when I was in college.  The more dramatic and romantic, the better.  But Sweeney seemed different somehow.  More threatening.  Where as my other favorites leaned toward the dark side, Sweeney makes no attempt to hide it.  It's over the top.

And I loved it.  Yes, it was a good film.  I enjoyed watching the actors, loved the music and was pleasantly horrified by the story line.  The real victory for me came for me, though, in embracing my own inner dark side.  When we're caught up in seeing ourselves only as the "good girl" or "nice guy" we deny the complex reality of who we really are.  People think that by pushing the darker things in life away, that they will actually get rid of them.  Instead, like trying to hold a beach ball submerged, eventually and when you least expect it here it comes to smack you in the face.  Only when we embrace all of who we are - good and bad, light and dark - can we be free to choose how to be in the world.