Watership Down (1978, Martin Rosen) (Patreon)

48/100

Hilarious confession first: As an American unfamiliar both with Hampshire and with the geographical definition of "down(s)," I've spent decades assuming that this childrens' adventure film, adapted from a novel that I inexplicably never read as a lit-devouring kid, depicts some sort of maritime disaster involving anthropomorphized rabbits. Thought of the title as akin to, say, Black Hawk Down (even before that film existed). So one can perhaps chalk up at least some of my disappointment to the fact that I expected a cuter version of rats fleeing a sinking ship—Titanic with rabbits, basically—and instead got a pastoral road movie about the search for a new warren. But it was also just too late for me to be traumatized by realistic cartoon violence, as many folks who initially saw Watership Down in pre-adolescence apparently were. Very easy to see why this would be nightmare fuel to an impressionable ten-year-old (even as parents would naïvely assume the film to be ideal kiddie fare), and its harshest moments, like Violet becoming hawk chow, certainly did provoke a mental "Daaamn!" Can't say that it truly rattled me, though, and I feel as if perhaps that experience is integral to having it stick in the memory, since I can already feel it fading fast just a few days later. In truth, I'm struggling to come up with worthwhile criticisms, or even just useful observations. My response was one of nearly pure indifference, the sole exception being Zero Mostel's strangled vocal performance as the gull, which reliably annoyed me (though the character's pidgin-esque dialogue is partly to blame, I think).

On the other hand, Zehaar the obnoxious seagull is distinct from the rest of the ensemble, and that distinction was welcome. Rosen and the animation team do their best to give each rabbit identifiable visual characteristics, and a few, like Hazel, benefit from voices I know well (though of course I wouldn't have been familiar with John Hurt or Ralph Richardson or Nigel Hawthorne in '78). But they were mostly a generic lot, making little individual impression, and after a while I began to understand why A Bug's Life, which throws in a grasshopper and a stick insect and a caterpillar and a ladybug and so forth, works so much better than Antz, in which everyone's an ant. (Okay, stronger writing and animation were also factors.) In the absence of vivid personalities, there's little to grab hold of apart from the narrative, which starts out deeply rooted in leporine myth (loved the prologue's extremely stylized look) but quickly becomes a simple picaresque journey dependent upon Fiver's convenient premonitions. I wanted something like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, not another Secret of NIMH, with its goddamn magic amulet. Apples and oranges, maybe (I see that Fiver's paranormal abilities are straight from the book), but I frequently eat apples, rarely pick up an orange. The film's pleasant to look at, within its budget constraints—every background beautifully replicates that specific stretch of English countryside, in the slightly hazy style of picture-book illustrations—and passes the time agreeably so long as Zehaar's out of earshot. But I'm afraid I never really connected with it, except to occasionally wince at unexpected harshness.