Melius’ dawn execution forms the climax of the film. As he is led to the stake, the piper takes up his recorder once more and begins to draw the children from their early morning beds. It’s a symbolic awakening, leading them into a new dawn whilst their parents sleep or watch the execution, and is in contrast with his enchantment of the rats, which took place in darkness, with the powers that be looking on. Here, the gloomy, benighted world is being left behind even as its violent authority becomes more overt, made manifest in the daylit town square.

Donovan’s piper leads the children away from Hamelin, from the sight of Melius’ burning, from the plague, from conscription into foreign wars, and from a future of political oppression and religious persecution. They dance out of the town and into the meadows beyond, singing and playing instruments. Gavin struggles to keep up with them, desperately calling out for Lisa, but to no avail. And then, in the blink of an eye or the splicing edit of a frame, they disappear in a solar flare of lens glare. The piper’s act is seen as one of salvation rather than of terrible revenge for the duplicity of the burghers in not paying him for ridding the town of the plague rats.

This mercenary aspect to the old tale is not a significant factor in the film. When the payment initially agreed upon is refused, and the piper turns down a derisory alternate sum offered by the Burgermeister after the rats have been washed away in the river, his reaction is akin to a shrug. It’s as if this was no more than he expected all along. His salvation of the town from the plague is instantly forgotten, the onlookers drifting off with little more than awkward and muted thanks. He communes with a single rat which has been left behind, just as Gavin will be at the end. His otherness is further evinced by the genuine empathy he seems to exhibit towards this reviled creature. It’s an exchange which seems more genuine than those he’s had with the humans he’s encountered here. But his reaction is one of sadness rather than anger or disgust, and gives an insight into his motives for leading the children’s parade at the end.