"Danny Boy" Review: Why I think he made the right choice

“Danny Boy” is a Polish short directed by Marek Skrobecki and produced by Se-Ma-For Studio.

Plot (SPOILERS)

The setting is a bleak modern-day city with one huge twist- its residents are all headless… Despite this, the Headless go on about their lives untroubled- getting ice cream, catching the bus ride home,
and even driving (yikes!). Needless to say, this Headless society is dysfunctional and oftentimes perilous. When we begin to wonder what direction this short will take we are introduced to the one, and possibly last, person with a head. For the sake of convenience let’s call him “Danny.”

Danny is able to see the chaos around him and is cautious of this world. Throughout the film we see him in a large room crafting over a large piece of wood- a mysterious project he seems to have been working on for a long time. After encountering a Headless woman and going to the movies with her, he falls in love. And this is when the story really gets interesting.

On one of their dates, the Headless woman takes off running after accidentally touching Danny’s face. Distraught and heart-broken, he returns to the large room and pulls the drape covering his project to reveal… a guillotine. And you can probably guess what he did next.

Danny’s freshly decapitated body makes its way to the Headless woman he fell in love with and the film ends with the happy couple walking off into the sunrise.

Let’s Talk About It

Living in a headless society is a dark and intriguing concept. I consider being headless as symbolic to being “mindless.” My definition of mindless is being incapable of creativity and original thought. This is why I was horror-struck when Danny unveiled the guillotine and devastated after he took off his head. I saw it as a waste of his free-thinking, creative ability. It saddened me that he chose to conform to a dysfunctional society headed for doom. That said, I think he made the right choice. And here’s why:

At first I felt the world had lost something precious. But after giving it more thought, I don’t believe Danny alone would’ve been able to make the world a better place if he had kept his head. More importantly, up until he met the Headless woman, Danny was lonely. The fact that he fell in love so easily with a headless body shows how desperate he was to feel a human connection, even if it was mindless. It was a high price to pay but the only way for him to be accepted. Now he is loved, no longer alone, and happy.

What would you have done?

My Critique

“Danny Boy” won a number of “best animated short film” awards, and rightfully so. The creators did an amazing job orchestrating the story, animation and music to make a compelling and thought-provoking short film.

The theme of “Danny Boy” was quite dark and creepy, which is why using stop motion animation was the best choice for illustrating this story. Stop motion by nature has creepy undertones that make an audience feel uneasy while also drawing them in. There’s something very unsettling about watching headless bodies walking around, but it’s even more unsettling when they look realistic. That’s one of the beauties of stop motion animation- everything from the settings to the characters is real to the touch.

There was very little music in “Danny Boy” which I think worked very well for this short film. It was easy to hear every thud from the Headless as they tripped over the bodies on the ground or got ran over. During the climax of the film we hear loud tick-tocks from the clock that build suspense as Danny unveils the guillotine. At the end of the film they play the Irish ballad “Danny Boy” which is the namesake of this short. This song feels like a sad farewell which suits the ending perfectly and helps create that sense of loss for Danny’s head.

Overall, I found this stop motion animated short film to be one of the best I’ve ever seen. What I appreciated most was how it showed a realistic (albeit sad) approach to coping with loneliness and how well the stop motion animation style enhanced the story. My key takeaway from this short: If we must live in a doomed world, we might as well do our best to be happy.