How To Cope With Death

****

Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray

How To Cope With Death
"Three minutes go by and there isn't a bad camera angle, or a character defect."

Death comes to the door, like God's chauffeur, and waits discreetly in the hall. As he drives you through a tunnel of white puppy freshness to the Other Side, a feeling of euphoria fills the spaces that life has left. Not a tear, not a backward glance.

"Thank you, sir," a voice that used to be yours says.

"The pleasure is entirely mine," the chauffeur replies.

If you had a face, you would be smiling.

This is an advertisement for The Path To Peace Funeral Homes.

Let's look at it again, through the eyes of animator Ignacio Ferreras. An old lady snoozes in her rocking chair before a flickering, blank TV. Death hovers over her, like a mummified skeletal warrior from Mordor, preparing her head for the scythe.

She awakes and fights the beast. Far from going gently, she turns into kung-fu gran and gives it large. The battle is fierce; feathers fly. Death's grinning skull takes a bashing from the splintered rocking chair.

And the message is: "Don't let the bastard take you."

If old-fashioned animation means clean lines and subdued colours, this is old fashioned. Death is truly scary. Three minutes go by and there isn't a bad camera angle, or a character defect.

Also, it's true. Even the chronically sick find strength for The Final Battle.

Reviewed on: 15 Feb 2004
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Do not go gentle into that bad night.

Director: Ignacio Ferreras

Writer: Ignacio Ferreras

Year: 2003

Runtime: 3 minutes

Country: UK

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