A hare-raising tail that's not so bunny

"Watership Down" plays as a cautionary tale more for grown-ups – designed to remind us how tenuous and fragile this thing called life is for all creatures, not just lapines. Here's a recap of what we learn about this film after viewing and discussing it last evening:

HOW IS THIS FILM DIFFERENT FROM DISNEY’S APPROACH TO ANIMATED FEATURES?
• This is much more adult in tone and content, featuring violence, bloodshed and dark, existential themes.
• The aesthetic visual approach is more naturalistic and realistic than Disney’s approach, which is typically to make their animals look more anthropomorphic and act more like humans. “Nature is presented not as the Disney version but for what it is: wonderful, adventurous, but very dangerous. Being cute is no guarantee of survival. Characters are killed off or disappear into unknown fates with a naturalistic randomness not usually found in children’s fare,” wrote film reviewer Glenn Erickson.
• The characters in this film do not break out into song, as often happens in Disney films.
• There is a noticeable lack of comic relief in this movie, probably to stay consistent in its dark tone, compared to ample comic relief provided in Disney features.
• There is no love story or love interest, as well as very few female characters, in Watership Down, in contrast to numerous Disney films.
• The main character in this movie is not an orphaned child, as is often the formula for the main protagonist in Disney features.
• Watership Down is also set in Britain and is imbued with British dialects and sensibilities; most Disney films feature Americanized characters who, although the story may be set in a far-off European-like land, speak and act like Americans.
HOW WOULD THIS FILM HAVE BEEN CONTROVERSIAL AND/OR INNOVATIVE FOR 1978?
• On its surface (meaning its marketing materials, including the movie poster and trailer), it appears to be a typical animated film geared toward children; however, it becomes quickly apparent, even to those who have not read the original novel by Richard Adams, that this story, and the movie’s visuals, are more appropriate for preteens and older who can better handle and interpret the dark subject matter and bleak themes.
• The 1970s marked a period during which animated feature films began diverging away from the Disney model and toward more experimental and adult fare.
o Consider that Walt Disney died in the late 1960s, and his studio remained mired in mediocrity for two decades before it rekindled a resurgence with The Little Mermaid in 1989.
o Ralph Bakshi and other innovative animators began releasing R-rated and X-rated cartoon films throughout the 1970s.
o Yet, in Britain, where Watership Down was created and first released, it received a “U” certification – designating that it was suitable for all ages, like our rated G. This led to many complaints from parents and families that the film was not appropriate for younger children, many of whom ended up seeing the film.
• This is one of the first “adults” animated features that was not rated R; it depicts violence, bloodshed, death, pain, terror, betrayal, and the everyday dangers of life.
• It also doesn’t try to cutesy up the characters by making them more anthropomorphic, caricatured, or stereotypical. Instead, the filmmakers adopt a naturalistic style to the characters’ appearances and behaviors as well as the environments they inhabit.
• To its credit, the filmmakers present a fear of mortality and death as a real, personified threat in the form of the Black Rabbit of Death. Gerard Jones, Criterion Collection essayist, wrote: “(Director Martin Rosen) could have used death only as a threat to the hero, a resolution for the villain, a tear-jerking mechanism, or a way of raising the plot stakes, as movies typically (cynically, reductive, use it. But he was brave enough to let it be what it was in the novel: a defining element of existence, and ever-present note of melancholy, the sleep that rounds our lives.”
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE PRIMARY MESSAGES ESPOUSED BY WATERSHIP DOWN?
• Life and existence is random, unpredictable, and often unfair. Despite the fact that these characters are rabbits and look like real rabbits instead of cartoonish hares, they can easily represent human beings and the fragile nature of our human lives.
• Fascism and appeasement are dangerous – which was is true before and during World War II as it is today.
• We often turn to myths, legends and supernatural beliefs to help explain and cope with the mysteries of life.
OTHER FILMS OR STORIES THAT REMIND US OF WATERSHIP DOWN
• The book of Genesis and book of Exodus from the Old Testament
• Bambi (1942)
• Animal Farm (1954)
• Many of the “adult animated features” of the 1970s, especially more mature-themed and graphic cartoon films by Ralph Bakshi, including Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Wizards, and Lord of the Rings
• The Plague Dogs (1982)
• The Secret of NIMH (1982)
• Disney’s Dinosaur (2000)
• Coraline (2009)