Get Thee to a Netflixery
Sometimes the stars align and the universe conspires to drop a bombshell in your lap — hopefully not literally — and you’re left wondering what just happened to you. Take for example that I had never before heard of Suzie Templeton’s interpretation¹ of Peter and the Wolf, which she made into a 30-minute stop motion animation. And which then blew my fucking mind.
Replace the cat with an Atmo and you have my dad.
The film is, in brief, a revelation. Having come from a generation that solely associated Peter and the Wolf with Disney’s roly-poly version, I found myself overwhelmed with the complexities and layers of morality that surround the tale.
Don’t get me wrong – Templeton’s Peter and the Wolf is rich with nuance and warmth. She eliminated dialogue in favor or saturating every character with spirit and grace, where Peter’s minor shoulder hunches convey an instantly identifiable mix of sullen wistfulness and where Grandpa’s every endearing wobble reveals his gruff mannerisms as not cruel, but protective.
But there’s an adult level to the story that is so often missing in contemporary retellings (see: aforementioned Disney version), an unwelcome invitation for reality and all its ugliness to come in. Templeton handles the reminder with real skill: Peter and the Wolf is about the relationship between predators and their prey, and while much of the film is charming, the meat of the story is one of menace and power. Perhaps the most surprising is Templeton’s final gesture at finding our own boundaries for hate, an unexpectedly moving twist.
Anyway! Get on it, for reals! It might not be appropriate for very young children, but the story is true to the original and I’d hate to see someone avoid it just because they didn’t want to explain to their kid that indeed, wolves eat other animals to stay alive. If you have a Netflix account, the film is currently available to stream online (or Xbox, or Playstation3, or whatever else they’ve invented since I started writing this post).
¹ Did I mention it won an Oscar? It won a 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
December 11th, 2009 | Totally Unrelated
Totes appropriate for very young children. Sylvia loved this. We watched it sometime just after Linnaea was born, I think, when Sylv was obsessed with the Leonard Bernstein recording of Peter and the Wolf.