This is the second Storyteller episode directed by Jim Henson, and it's one of the darkest and the funniest. "The Soldier and Death" is based on this Russian folktale, though it also contains elements of this story from the Grimm Brothers.
The star of this episode is the titular soldier. (That's an actor named Bob Peck. If he looks familiar, well, he probably is. Clever you.) He's fought in the wars for 20 years, and is down to his last three biscuits, far from home. His kindness leads him to give away his biscuits, though he's rewarded with a nice whistle and a joyful dance for each of the first two. The last gets him an empty pocket, a winning deck of cards, and a magical sack. He's able to use the sack to trap three geese, which he trades for a bed at an inn. (Folktales work strictly on the barter system, you see.)
After his rest is complete, he notices a rundown castle, and is told it's infested with devils. Our brave soldier isn't scared of a few devils, and after all, he has a magic deck of cards. Not to mention that sack.
The soldier breaks out his cards, and the demons gamble away all their gold. After they've lost their last coin, the fuming devils decide to kill and eat the soldier. Instead, he orders them into his sack, and bashes them around a bit. (Much less so than in the original folktale, where he calls a pair of blacksmiths to beat them on an anvil!) He lets them go, in exchange for a promise to stay away, and steals the hoof of the last one, threatening to call it into service in the future.
Sidebar: This is not an original thought with me, but those demons are the best part of this story. The puppets are all elaborate and complex -- watch how they sneer and blink and smoke. Each one is unique. It's a shame these puppets were only onscreen a few minutes; they could clearly carry their own show. Oh, and they're funny. Did I mention they're pretty funny?
The soldier slowly spends his new gold, and over time gets a wife and child, in that order. However, the child falls sick, and the soldier calls "his" demon, the one he enslaved, and orders it to cure his child. The demon trades him a magical glass for its freedom, one which lets the soldier see Death and know its ways.
So now the soldier-turned-lord turns healer, and travels the land, healing those who can be healed. Soon the tsar becomes ill, and our hero sees through the glass that Death will not relinquish the tsar. The soldier offers to trade his life for that of the tsar, and Death accepts. But our sneaky soldier still has his magical sack, and captures Death.
This is the most profound addition to the old folktale, as the Storyteller draws us pictures of the world without Death, using both broad strokes and fine ones to ground the fantasy. No one, and nothing, dies. Old people wander the earth, broken-down and useless, and the soldier is moved to release Death once again. Death, terrified, refuses to take him, so the soldier attempts to enter Hell. The demons, of course, don't want anything to do with the soldier or his sack, and give him 200 sinful souls to go away. (Barter!) The soldier ferries the souls to heaven, in an attempt to redeem his own sins, but the Holy Gatekeeper there (the original folktale quotes God himself, but this wisely doesn't show that) won't let him in there either. To paraphrase Tom Waits, Hell doesn't want the soldier, and Heaven is full. So our traveling soldier travels more, wandering the earth to this day, probably.
There are a couple of dissolves in this story, from the face of the soldier to the face of the Storyteller. On the third or so viewing, I began to wonder: could the immortal soldier, master of improvisation, have become the Storyteller? After all, the Storyteller wears the regimental insignia of the soldier, and owns his magical glass, and his sack. The story is "ancient, antique," the Storyteller says. While the two are clearly played by different actors, if the story happened several hundred years ago, the soldier's ears and nose could easily have kept growing (with plenty of time for "A Story Short" to happen in the meantime). I doubt there's any evidence outside this episode to support my wild theory, and I seem to recall other artifacts from other stories showing up in the Storyteller's hands.
(While we're discussing wild theories, here's one which is completely insupportable: What if the dog is immortal, too? He is able to supply a Greek phrase at will, and he also appeared in the Greek Myths series with a different Storyteller. What if this series takes place several thousand years after the Greek Myths series, before the soldier/Storyteller even set out for his first Russian battle???)
Oh, and speaking of dogs, our next episode is Dog City! I love Rowlf, and I'm really looking forward to rewatching that one. (First, I have tonight's episode of the new Muppet show, and a TV movie with turkey monsters or some damn thing, but I don't think I'll write about that. So weird.)
