He understands that he is not unique in being shunned, that the need to create outsiders is a weakness of human nature. And when he meets Esmeralda, gypsies suddenly gain a human face for him, and he changes sides.Īs for Quasimodo, who has lived so long in isolation, there is a kind of release in discovering the gypsies (“Were you once an outcast, too?”). Judge Frollo wants to rid Paris of its gypsies, and assigns Phoebus to lead the genocide, but the captain instinctively feels this cannot be right. The buried story of the film-the lesson some younger viewers may learn for the first time-is that there is room in the world for many different kinds of people, for hunchbacks and gypsies as well as for those who scornfully consider themselves the norm. The thing that animation can do better than any other film form is show human movement freed from the laws of gravity, and as Quasi clambers up and down the stone walls of Notre Dame, the camera swoops freely along with him, creating dizzying perspectives and exhilarating movement. Quasimodo moves through its upper reaches like a child on a jungle gym, and there are scary sequences in which he and his friends risk dashing their brains out on the stones below.
The cathedral itself is a character in the film, with its rows of stone saints and church fathers, and its limitless vaults of shadows and mystery. Then Quasi finds himself in the gypsies' Court of Miracles, in the catacombs beneath Paris, for a display of animation and music that is breathtaking in its freedom over time and space. The Festival of Fools is a riotous celebration in the shadow of Notre Dame.
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And we follow him into a series of locations in which the Disneya nimators unveil some of their most breathtaking visual inventions. One of Alan Menken's songs even looks on the bright side: “Those other guys that she could dangle All look the same from every boring point of view- You're a surprise from any angle.” But Quasimodo is an enormously sympathetic character we grow accustomed to his face. The movie is forthright in its acceptance of Quasimodo's appearance(“You've got a look that's all your own, kid”), and doesn't look away from his misshapen face. This is the first Disney animated film I can recall with two heroes who both love the girl, which makes heartbreak inevitable.
There are depths and shadows to it, the ending cannot be simple, and although the heroes may live ever after, it may not be happily. But Phoebus is not a bad man, and besides, he has fallen in love with the fiery Esmeralda. He rescues her in turn, giving her sanctuary inside the cathedral.Īnd then he finds himself in the center of a battle to save the gypsies of Paris from Frollo's troops, led by Phoebus (voice by Kevin Kline), captain of the guard. But his life changes on the day of the Festival of Fools, when he ventures out of the cathedral, is elected “King of the Fools,” and then hears Clopin, king of the gypsies, gasp: “That's no mask!” Quasimodo is made a captive by the mob and tied down at the orders of the heartless Judge Frollo, but rescued by the gypsy girl Esmeralda (voice by Demi Moore).
The vast gloomy gothic shadows of the cathedral become his playground, and his only friends are three stone gargoyles. The story involves the lonely life of the deformed Quasimodo (voice by Tom Hulce), born a “monster” and thrown down a well before being rescued and left to be raised by the priests of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.