The Periwig-Maker is an
Oscar-nominated short
claymation film at www.atomfilms.com. What follows is my interpretation (and a few
spoilers). You should definitely see the short before you read this; it's about 15 minutes long, and
very good.
One of the most
subtly disturbing films I've ever seen, and a
stunningly beautiful tragedy. After seeing it, I sat and thought for more than fifteen minutes about what this fifteen minute
film meant, and what
moral, if any, it held. In the end, remembering that "Fools learn from their own mistakes, and wise men from the mistakes of others," I tried to decide what was the
central mistake made in the film.
At the
beginning of the film,
the periwig-maker refers to "a
good person like I am." He was concerned by the
state of the world outside, but not by
himself. But after the girl's mother died of the
plague, the Periwig-maker
turned away from the girl's
suffering at the hands of the guard out of
fear, to
preserve himself from
infection.
Predictably, she soon died a
gruesome death after a
short and painful life, and the periwig-maker was still physically as
healthy as he ever had been. But his fear and horror of the city of
London overrun by
plague, and more important, his
guilt over turning away from her, grew until he was almost
mad- at which point, he went to the
graveyard, cut off her
hair, and made a
wig from it, to
honor and
remember the girl and
preserve her
beauty, while
destroying himself by the same infection from which she died. In the end, they both died
miserable, one
abandoned and the other guilt-stricken because he failed to help her.
The moral, of course, is that
he probably wished he had helped her, even if
they would have both died either way-- and after all, even without plague, they were both
mortal. The periwig-maker's great mistake was to attempt
self-preservation, which is never a certainty for long, at the expense of
Christian charity and
mercy. I'm not sure if this way of urging the
audience to greater
compassion is truly "hopeful," but being
hopefully, recklessly compassionate probably IS better than being
hopelessly, single-mindedly
suicidal in response to this kind of massive
danger and
tragedy, which is of course only an exaggerated version of the
death that is present at all times and places.
A little
historical context for the
plague can be found at http://www.britainexpress.com/History/plague.htm