In Hamelin, a town ruled by money and status, the day begins with the slow turning of a hidden mechanism as gears hum and the sun rises over a skyline built on waste and vanity. The people are portrayed as miserly and petty, chasing rank and riches while neglecting one another. When night falls, a vast rat infestation erupts, gnawing through food and valuables and spilling into the streets by day. From a distance, a tall hooded figure watches the town and then steps into the fray—the piper, Eric Idle—who proves that the sound of his music can lure rats to their deaths. The town’s leaders, including Alderman James Edmond, are thrilled and offer him a reward of 1000 gold coins if he can rid them of the plague. The piper agrees and begins guiding the rats through the city, drawing them toward a cliff-side tower and a lake below.
Meanwhile, a jeweler among the elite enters a woman’s home and tries to seduce her. The woman, who stands out as the one innocent figure amid the town’s grotesque cast, resists, but the piper’s arrival nudges events in a fateful direction: at the sound of his music, the jeweler is driven to leap from the window, and the rats follow suit, vanishing into the depths below. After the rats plunge, the piper returns to the woman’s side and, as he lingers, blocks the jeweler’s advances once more. He and the woman sit on a bench while he plays a beautiful melody—an intimate moment rendered in a striking paint-on-wood animation sequence that breaks from the film’s usual style.
The town’s leaders, reveling in food and wine, offer only a black button as payment when the piper returns for his due. He leaves in anger. That night, the jeweler and his drunken friends break into the praying woman’s home and commit acts of violence that are implied rather than shown. The piper arrives too late to intervene and can only close the woman’s eyes in horror.
He then climbs to the highest tower, where the machinery that powers the sun sits, and faces Saturn, who holds an hourglass. In a silent, decisive exchange, all the sand runs out and the gears that make the sun rise cease their work. A new, still day begins, and the piper—now a singular figure of resolve—begins to play again. As his tune drifts through the streets, the townspeople transform into rats and follow him, leaping from the tower in a mirrored echo of the earlier exodus, with the last to jump being the once-tempted jeweler.
Only an old fisherman remains, watching from the outskirts. When the piper’s presence dissolves, his cloak is blown away by the wind, leaving no trace of him behind. The fisherman approaches a house and discovers a single survivor: a baby, untouched by the corruption that engulfed the rest of the town. He takes the infant and walks away, leaving the now-empty city to its quiet, lingering memory.
