The animation of this grim and sombre, yet to me deeply moving and beautifully-constructed short was incredible, the characters looked just like puppets without the strings, and even though they weren't perfectly to the scale of real human beings, I just completely bought them and everything about this magnificently heartbreaking short as real. Of course it's unpleasant, it wouldn't be respectful to the horrendous time it's set in if it wasn't. Even though it's setting is one tiny place with the view of another building across the way, I think it captures very well a good deal of the dire atmosphere of decay and tragedy of a period of human history that I'm quite sure you or I couldn't even imagine living in. So much death and tragedy, enough to change the world... At its worst it must have been like hell on earth. The mournful music theme perfectly compliments the tone and was very emotionally involving to me, I really got into it right away, and I just got a knot in my stomach and got misty-eyed at certain moments, like when the corpse of the poor orphan girl's mother is being carted away and falls out of the cover and the girl cries out and runs to her and is roughly shoved back by the undertaker. That's the thought that I find the most saddening about that time, the helpless innocent ones that must have been left alone in a very cold and hard world to die. The Periwig Maker himself was a fantastically realised character that was excellently voiced by Kenneth Branagh. For a mere quarter of an hour he goes through a real arc and I understood his point of view, he didn't want to die and was just trying to deal with a world gone mad in his own way, pretending not to notice the little girl right outside his window, and attempting to remain snobbishly detached from it all in the seemingly safe haven of his closed off store. But of course inside he's full of emotion. It's so sad when he's visited by the girl's spirit on the night of her death, bringing the supernatural into the narrative. Or, it could be a visual metaphor of his own guilt, it's open to interpretation. And in the end I was very impressed how an animation so laden with despair manages to turn itself around in a mere few seconds and actually end on a hopeful note. And I did find it positive because it was true, the world did change for the better after the Great Plague, the shackles of the almighty Church were loosened and people were more free to have new opportunities and different ways of thinking, that is the bittersweet silver lining that is presented in this short. I was also impressed by how the ending for me at least, didn't conflict with the somewhat bizarre and macabre image of the wig maker wearing a wig that he had fashioned from the beautiful red hair of the girl. Now I personally didn't think that he was wearing the hair out of madness, I think it was more a gesture of his regret that he didn't do anything to aid her when he could have, and the act of using his talent to make the wig and expose himself to the disease was a way of trying to make amends, and also possibly that for better or for worse, he was done being shut away in seclusion and wasn't going to cut himself off from life or death anymore. A truly excellent short, it was haunting, engaging, and I loved it. Take care.
Review of The Periwig-Maker
