Watership Down (1978)
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Review #1,217 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Martin Rosen
Cast: John Hurt, Richard Briers, Ralph Richardson
Plot: A group of rabbits flee their doomed warren and face many dangers to find and protect their new home.
Genre: Animation / Adventure / Drama
Awards: -
Runtime: 101min
Rating: PG
International Sales: Hollywood Classics
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
“All the world will be your enemy,
Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when
they catch you, they will kill you. But
first they must catch you…”
I
will have the privilege to meet Martin Rosen in a couple of weeks’ time, and I
want to thank him. I want to thank him
for making an uncompromisingly dark animated feature, when everyone else at
that time, particularly those in the States, saw animation as a medium of joy
and optimism. Watership Down, only one of two animated features under his belt,
is adapted from Richard Adams’ novel.
Rosen’s other work, The Plague
Dogs (1982), was also adapted from Adams.
Watership Down centers on a colony of
rabbits whose lives are affected when one of them, Fiver, a kind of rabbit seer,
has an apocalyptic vision of a doomed warren in the hands of humans. A small group who believe in Fiver disband
from the colony, wanting to seek for safer pastures. Rosen’s film is a journey of tumult and
uncertainty, but also of freedom and hope.
By
having rabbits adopt human-like behaviours (they speak!), Rosen focuses on their
personalities as intelligent if territorial creatures. This is set in the backdrop of a picturesque English
countryside with farms, forests and rivers.
Such is the beauty of the hand-drawn animation that you can almost smell
the environment.
Watership Down doesn’t shy away from
graphic scenes of brutality – bunnies are being bloodied, even strangled. It also explores themes of hostility, mutiny
and survival, quite simply material that adults would better resonate
with. This is why the animation has been
regarded as unsuitable for kids, not to mention the film’s pacing may require a
certain amount of patience with Rosen privileging drama over action, often from
an observational lens.
Watership Down may not be one of the
medium’s greatest examples, but its cinematic and cultural reputation as a
landmark in British independent animation remains untouched. Its maturity continues to inspire animation
directors to take on the medium in a darker, more sobering light. It may have its flaws (the voice of the
seagull whom the rabbits befriend is quite frankly irritating), but the film is
certainly not to be missed.
Verdict: A landmark in British animation that explores
dark themes of hostility, mutiny and survival through a group of talking
rabbits, but the pacing may not be for everyone.
GRADE: B+
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