The Power.

A few nights ago I noticed that the Walt Disney Short Films Collection was put on Netflix. I didn't have any plans so I decided to watch it expecting to see the short films that they had already released. And about halfway through the shorts I was greeted by The Little Matchgirl. Now there had been shorts before this one that I had never seen but this one especially stuck with me.

WARNING: I am going to spoil it.

The Little Matchgirl follows a little girl trying to sell matches on the street in (I assumed) Russia. Soon night comes and she is bundled up in an alleyway trying to warm up from the snow and protect her matches of course. Eventually she becomes so cold that she gives in and lights one of her matches. As she revels in the temporary warmth she starts to daydream. She imagines a fireplace warming the whole alley that she's in. But then the match goes out and her daydream dissolves. She lights another and imagines a giant feast full of wonderfully cooked food. The match goes out again. She lights a third match and sees a house. The door to the house opens and an old woman greets her and she takes the young girl in her arms, warming her. But then the match goes out. And in desperation the little girl lights her last three matches all at once just to get a glimpse of the sweet "grandmother" again. She gets what she wishes. But when the matches go out we see her curled up in the snow. The old woman we saw walks up and we think that the little girl will get that happy ending. But when the old woman picks her up and we still she a body left behind it hits you that the little girl had died.

I don't know why but I didn't expect something so powerful out of Disney. It left me stunned and all the shorts that followed it seemed sort of arbitrary. The Little Matchgirl left me thinking about poverty in its rawest form. Children are the most likely to be poor out of any other group of people. Now granted this is only a short but if this is the kind of filmmaking Disney is hiding why aren't they utilizing it? These are the stories that will grab people's attention. Not all endings are happy and not all concepts are easy to swallow. And if big companies like Disney start cranking out films that are about something and challenge people then who knows what would happen. Because like we talked about in class today this art form is powerful. Much more powerful than we realize. 

I'll put a link to the short here: https://vimeo.com/58193245