Peter & the Wolf

The new Peter & The Wolf begins during a snowstorm. Winds whoosh, white flakes swirl, and Peter’s Grandfather keeps watch on his rooftop, sure that a menace lurks just beyond his ramshackle wooden fence. Even more striking, the first six or so minutes of Suzie Templeton’s Oscar-winning animated short features no music and no one speaks throughout its half-hour running time. And yet, the inventive stop-motion imagery invites you to immerse yourself in a bleak, wintry world — where young Peter learns about violence, unfairness, and moral choices.

The film’s sophisticated visual take on these themes is utterly disarming. As his Grandfather clambers down from the roof, Peter peers out the window, his pale countenance fierce and focused. He wants to get outside, where his much-loved Duck waits, patient and loyal. When his Grandfather sends him into town for supplies, Peter trudges off, obedient yet anticipating trouble. On the street, he passes other children, playing nearby the giant bearded Zookeeper’s display (his posters boast a wild bear, caught and trained to perform), and is soon accosted by a pair of Hunters, bullies with guns and grimaces who deposit him in a garbage dumpster.

Escaping from this initial trouble, the boy makes his way back home, where again he faces his Grandfather — now less odious, asleep with his own darling pet, the Cat, snuggled up under his chin. Once again, Peter seeks escape, this time from the grim hutch where he lives with his overbearing elder. As he steps into the landscape, icy lake and frosty trees stretching before him, you hear the first bars of Sergei Prokofiev’s famous score (here performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra), and suddenly the entrancing puppety details are launched into another dimension.

The score has long been understood as an effective means to introduce children to the various components of an orchestra, each character associated with a particular instrument, Peter with strings, the duck an oboe, the Grandfather a bassoon, and the wolf three French horns. Here the soundtrack’s emotional elements are illustrated in action as well, as when Peter, the Duck, and the Bird (associated with the flute and here a pigeon flailing about with an injured wing) take time to slide about on the ice, in fun and in an effort to escape from the Cat (clarinet). When the Cat, pursuing the Bird, hurls himself into the air, the score helps to shape the predator’s experience, as the Cat stalks (briefly huge in the foreground), leaps (the camera following his brief flight), and crashes — splat — through the ice. Peter and the Bird watch quietly as the Cat emerges, careful and proud, shaking the cold water from its fur, then flicks a few lingering drops from a paw.

All this is build-up for the appearance of the Wolf, whose menace is underlined by low angle close-ups of its yellow eyes and sharp fangs. This menace is fulfilled when the Wolf gulps down the Duck, Peter watching wide-eyed and horrified through a patch he’s opened in the house wall, having been locked inside by his Grandfather. Here the film complicates what looks like to be a conventional moral lesson. Peter initially seeks vengeance, trapping the Wolf (ingeniously and precariously, as his own body becomes a counterweight to the Wolf, hung by his tail over a tree branch), and plans a violent retribution. But the boy — a onetime victim of the Hunters’ brutality and perpetually oppressed by his Grandfather — takes another tack. Templeton’s resolution is at once surprising and resonant, as Peter breaks the chain of aggression and revenge.

The last image of the Wolf, scampering into the moonlit night, is strangely hopeful, another way to think about balance and forgiveness. Peter has seen a broader picture, the Zookeeper, the Grandfather, and the Hunters embodying an old-fashioned view of the world’s order, while the newly healed Bird, flitting into the sky above him, suggests a new appreciation for other lives.