Watership Down 1978

Often decried for being unsuitable for children (presumably based on the ridiculous notion that animation is purely for children), this is a film that can be appreciated at the right age for not talking down to its audience and presenting some pretty weighty themes. Whilst many project their own adult sensibilities onto how children might react and deem the film inappropriate, for adults of a certain age, however, it is one of those memorable film experiences from childhood that did not leave you mentally scarred, much to the surprise of modern viewers. Rewatching the film as an adult, it is one of those rare occasions that those memories of seeing the film from childhood remain untainted. Rosen deserves a lot of credit for ensuring that both the cruelty and beauty of nature were given equal footing in the film when it would have been so easy to create an animated film about talking rabbits that pandered to the audience. He never shies away from depicting both the sudden, unexpected nature of the violence and the physical and mental consequences of it - it's a cruel world out there and nature is often unforgiving, his characters often bearing the wounds and scars to remind us. In doing so, he immediately endears us to the central characters, with Bigwig and Fiver, in particular standing out. Equally, whilst the violence is presented in a realistic way, Rosen doesn't dwell on it - life goes on and characters move on too. There are haunting images to be sure that the very young should probably avoid - an abstract sequence of rabbits being poisoned and a particularly memorable villain still disturb. But in context they lend the film an edge and a tension that is often missing from animated films. With a stellar voice cast, beautiful artwork and a memorable score (even without the famous "Bright Eyes" sequence), this is a film that reminds people that animation is medium that can work for everyone.

[7.2/10] There’s an animation “ghetto” in the United States. For a long time, almost anything featuring a cartoon character was considered something for children. And while shows like The Simpsons have proven that the greatest television show of all time could be one composed with pen and ink, and Pixar has shown that animated films can make a dent at the Oscars, there’s still a baseline assumption that if you see an animated character, and they don’t start cursing or doing something ribald within a couple of minutes, what you’re watching must be for kids.

Watership Down, then, is an odd duck. On the one hand, it’s seemingly aimed at children, with its story about rabbits leaving their warren and facing trials and tribulations once they do. (My first reference point was Once Upon a Forest. It has some cute characters, its own little world, and the call to adventure that emerges in so much kiddie fare.

And yet, it’s also a very adult film. On a surface level, there’s a fair amount of blood and death in this one. This isn’t a sanitized Disney ecosystem. Hawks snatch their prey off the ground, bulky rabbits get into bloody duels, and snares and shotguns leave more than a couple of rabbits on death’s door.

It’s those things that would make me reluctant to show this 1978 film to any actual children. It’s not that kids can’t handle a little intensity -- lord knows the classics from my childhood like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast have their fare share of high tension moments -- but there’s a realism to it, a rawness to it despite certain impressionistic flourishes, that makes these moments scarier and liable to linger in the bedtime worries of younger viewers.

But that’s also part of what makes Watership Down unique. The general visual quality of the film is half-nature documentary, and half-pop up book. While drawn distinctively, the rabbits here look and move more like the real thing than, for example, Bugs Bunny, or even Thumper from Bambi. There’s some of what looks like rotoscoping that gives the viewer a bit of the uncanny valley effect, but for the most part, these bunnies feel real in a way that many of their cartoon brethren don’t.

At the same time, the backgrounds they play on are sumptuous. The image of distant hills, or flowing rivers, or gnarled rabbit holes all create settings that grab the viewer before our heroes really interact with them. That’s a good thing, because the framing and layering of the images stands out, with the rabbits seemingly more superimposed on many of their environments than genuinely interacting with them. Still, the look is unique and captivating, and lends to the storybook quality of the film.

That’s especially true in the brief scenes where the film departs from that realism and instead embraces a more symbolic art style. The image of the black rabbit, the montage set over Art Garfunkel singing “Bright Eyes”, and especially the initial scene telling the fable of the rabbit, allow for more flourish and ornate elements, that contrast from the main style of the movie and give a nice otherworldly quality.

That helps when juxtaposed with the realistic bent, which extends beyond just the imagery used. One of the most unique things about Watership Down is the way that it creates a genuine and distinctive culture for the rabbits, one that feels appropriately foreign and in some ways, inscrutable, as opposed to the “it’s mankind, except using animals” that some furry friend movies opt for.

There’s a complex society at play, with hierarchies, terminology, and specific concerns. The rabbits we follow encounter any number of different societies, from their own staid warren, to the seeming equivalent of a death cult, to farm rabbits in captivity, to a military government, each with its own character and vibe. There are unique terms, with religious or cultural significance. And there’s even a creation myth, the one we’re introduced to at the beginning, which seems to pervade the thoughts of the protagonist whether cool-headed or prophetic.

Which provides the other reason that Watership Down feels more adult than its critter-featuring competitors. The film is, at a broad level, a meditation on death. The overarching narrative, laid out by that opening segment, is of rabbits constantly running, constantly moving, to escape all the myriad dangers and predators in their way, until they can run no longer and must face the black rabbit, the spectre of death. It’s there in the moments when the rabbits prematurely mourn their bulky protector; it’s there when Garfunkel asks how the light that burned so brightly suddenly burns so pale, and it’s there when Hazel, the main rabbit, greets the black rabbit as a friend.

It’s heavy stuff for a kids’ film, often foregrounded even if done with a fairly light touch. There is weight to the events and incidents that populate the film, if for no other reason than the fact that death is not simply some abstract and uncontenanced phantom, like so many Disney villains who fall from a great height with nominally ambiguous but clear fates. At every level, Watership Down is engaging with the notion of how we live, how we go on and scratch out lives for ourselves, when death’s shadow is always lurking around the edges of the frame, a sense that our lepus cousins share.

There’s also the sense of a specific political or social allegory that I was not immediately able to grasp. The nature of these societies gave the sense of a particular kind of commentary not readily identifiable to viewers in the distant year of 2017. But that just adds to the sense that while the movie may be accessible to children, there’s much more going on under the hood than a child could understand.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s easy to imagine young viewers being scared and scarred by the more gruesome or harrowing scenes in Watership Down, and missing the broader observations and thematic material at play. But there’s also the sense in the film of pushing the boundaries of that “ghetto,” using the medium to express something profound, something mature, at a time when people still believed that cartoons belonged solely in the funny papers. It’s film like Watership Down that helped pave the way for Inside Out, and Rick and Morty, and Don Hertzfeldt, and anyone else who’s used the endless possibilities of this medium to not just entertain, but graze the sublime and poignant.