#1978Film

[fabioemme78]

[adamwatchesmovies]

Watership Down (1978)

If Watership Down had been made with a bigger budget, the visuals could've been a bit better. That's my only criticism. The drawings are fine, it's just that they don't quite match the level of the writing but I don't think I'd change them even if I could. This is a striking, emotional film that sticks with you.

When Fiver (voiced by Richard Briers) has a premonition about an incoming disaster, he convinces Hazel (voiced by John Hurt) and several other rabbits to leave their home and search for greener pastures. Their journey is filled with danger.

Unlike your typical animated film, Watership Down doesn’t sugarcoat anything. This is a story about rabbits. Not furry people with rabbit heads that drive cars and eat carrot sandwiches, just rabbits. They scurry around, dig holes, and are always on the run from predators. It means that characters are going to die - eaten by bigger animals. A floppy-eared dog becomes a monster. An open field of flowers is a place where death comes from above. I’ve heard some call this picture a childhood trauma waiting to happen. I disagree. As long as they’re old enough to understand what death is and recognize that what's happening on-screen isn’t real, this adaptation of Richard Adams' novel would be a great film for younger audiences and their parents. The fact of the matter is that death is real. No matter how many blinders you may place, eventually, your kids will see a rabbit dead on the side of the road or realize that mice run away from cats in cartoons because cats are predators. As rabbits, our protagonists are perfectly aware of their place in the world. Sure they’re upset when characters die and are fearful when they sense danger, but they understand that’s what life is.

This is a fascinating story because it puts you in shoes you’ve never stepped in before. If rabbits could talk, piece thoughts together, and formulate societies based on more than just instincts, what would it be like? What would it REALLY be like? What kind of rabbits would be in charge? From what headspace would rabbit poets come, what legends would they tell, how would they rationalize the world?

Writer/director Martin Rosen never trivializes the story's situations and never takes a cheap route by creating artificial, fanciful developments. This makes everything that much more intense when the action kicks in and deeply satisfying when these tiny creatures manage to triumph over the immense adversities they face. You can never be sure of where it’s headed next, but you’re eager to see. Its ending, is so truthful and melancholic it's perfect. It shakes you to your core.

Watership Down is an uncompromising film about rabbits and the lives they lead. You can tell that it’s been well researched and thoughtfully assembled. I don’t even mind the art style. It kind of reminds me of the kind of drawings that would be done in a high-school art class. Not innocent, but not grim either. It’s just a fact of life. Like Walt Disney’s Bambi, some will say that it’s too much, that children should be coddled and sheltered from the real world. I think its intelligence and honesty will reward and educate its viewers young and old rather than damage them. (Theatrical version on Blu-ray, January 27, 2017)