For the longest time, Watership Down didn't bother me. To my younger self, it was a beautiful, rather sad book about rabbits that had been made into a beautiful, rather sad animated film about rabbits, and I watched it every chance I got plus a few more times on VHS.
Being honest, I'm not entirely sure when the sheer darkness of it hit me. It might have been once I left university and became sharply aware of how unforgiving the wider world could be, or it might have been after I got married and I was hit with the sudden, dizzying realisation of all I had to lose. Heck, maybe I was somewhere in my mid to late teens and worked out that myxomatosis probably wasn't the most enjoyable way to die. Whatever the catalyst was, however, I felt pretty disgusted with my younger self for not having been traumatised in the way that all the cool kids apparently were from their very first viewing. I still haven't stopped watching the movie every chance I get, of course - the only difference is that now I spend about half of it as a sobbing wreck.
Inventive soul that he is, today Mr. B came up with a creative solution to this: every time he heard me weeping, he shoved a piece of Easter egg in my mouth. It actually worked pretty well, but I have my worries - will this sort of Pavlovian conditioning eventually turn me into a fully-fledged bunny killer in my own right?
That's a worry for another day, though, and a million miles away from the film I've probably watched more often than any other in my life. I've watched it so often, in fact, that I'm not convinced I can write any sort of critique, not when it feels like an extension of my own thoughts and feelings.
For what it's worth, though, I think Watership Down is a top piece of moviemaking that crams a surprising amount of content into its hundred-minute runtime, occasionally trimming some of the detail from the book but leaving the meat of it intact, including the dreamtime-style mythos that underlies the real-world action. This is what opens the film, in fact, in the form of a stylised short that tells the creation story of El-Ahrairah, first of the rabbits, and Frith, the sun/creator. It's an evocative little piece, and a not-so-gentle forewarning of the violence soon to follow.
With this out of the way, we are introduced to our protagonists - Fiver (voiced by Richard Briers), the nervous, possibly clairvoyant runt of his litter, and Hazel (John Hurt), his sensible, protective brother. The sun is setting, and Fiver has a vision of the fields turning to blood. They must abandon the presumed of their warren, he insists, and Hazel reluctantly agrees to join him. Accompanied by a handful of others, the pair depart that evening, but they have no idea of the dangers they stand to face, much less those they leave behind.
The animation is serviceable, if on the crude side; certainly, it's no worse than anything else from that era. Where Watership Down really shines, however, is on the audio side. The voice cast reads like a Who's Who of British acting talent of the period, with each and every participant playing it totally seriously. The soundtrack, too, is superb, richly textured but restrained, imbuing the piece with a quiet dignity and never descending into the sort of sonic hysteria that seems to punctuate the majority of animated films these days (Coraline is a very welcome exception). The real killer, though, is the film's single song, Art Garfunkel's discreetly devastating Bright Eyes.
In some ways, there's something rather comforting about the way the film doesn't shy away from the messier parts of existence. It deals almost entirely in moral grey areas, where even the worst villains are driven not by malice but by the sort of self-interest that doesn't allow for empathy. The world it paints is a harsh one, yes, but there is always room for mercy.
I know there's always a danger in saying X happened to me when I was a kid, and I turned out okay - every kid is different, after all, and no two people will ever draw exactly the same things from a shared experience. That said, I can't help but bridle a little at all those reviewers out there saying Watership Down isn't for kids. I think there's plenty there that the smallest ones might not understand at first, certainly, and that it has the potential to raise some difficult questions, but isn't it the role of any caretaker worth their salt not to shy away from these sorts of uncomfortable truths?
Recommended for all ages.
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