Disney's State of Grace

Having, for a home, an abandoned mill, different animals inside it cope not just with the changes of nature, but with unpredictability. There is not just an immense humbleness in their taking one day at a time, but a generosity that makes room for love and beauty in their simple lives. Thanks to this, the old mill, a ruin for all effects, becomes more magical than if it were a castle adorned with riches. As the short closes, one can see, through a spider’s web, the old mill by its mother-of-pearl colored lake, as if in heavenly elevation. It is more than significant that the sight of this elevation, by a watery base of rainbow tones has, on the first plane, the spider’s web. The old mill, in the light of natural glory, continues to be a ruin (for human purposes) but, deferring priority of sight to the spider’s web, becomes an assertion of concern for all things living. The short is like a graphic expression of the Sermon on the Mount, in its message of detachment, humbleness and openness to that which is not only beyond riches, but also beyond fear and petty planning.
Like the animals in the old mill, Walt Disney had the necessary self- detachment to live in constant discovery, or, in Christopher Finch’s words “fly by the seat of his pants” (Walt Disney’s America- Finch)