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E-book Watership Down : Perspectives On and Beyond Animated Violence

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Penilaian

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Watership Down, the 1978 British cel-animated feature produced, directed and written by Martin Rosen, and the bestselling 1972 novel by Richard Adams on which it is based are indeed relatively anomalous. The novel is often considered uncategorizable: an adventure story about rabbits that might be a comfortable bedfellow with the works of Beatrix Potter and other children’s animal stories were it not for its epic scope, complex language and allegorical potential that have prompted comparisons with adult literature from Homer to Margaret Atwood.2 The film, though pared down in order to compress the 500-page novel into a 92-minute runtime, successfully translates the narrative and emotional core of Adams’s tale to the screen. The story begins with a young rabbit Fiver experiencing a premonition of the imminent destruction of his home, Sandleford Warren, in order to make way for a housing development. Fiver and his brother Hazel are joined by a small group of other rabbits to flee the warren in search of a new home, which they eventually find on the titular Watership Down, but not after encountering several dangers along the way in the form of other animals and from indifferent humans. On arrival at Watership Down, however, an existential threat emerges when the rabbits realize they have no female rabbits – does – among them to breed with. With the help of an injured seagull, Kehaar, the rabbits plan to break some imprisoned does out of a nearby rival warren, Efrafa, that is run like a concentration camp by the totalitarian rabbit General Woundwort. The film climaxes in a bloody battle in which multiple rabbits are graphically maimed on screen before victory and peace are secured for the Watership Down Warren.This brief summary should indicate that Watership Down’s subject matter is unusual for what is typically expected of mainstream, English-language feature animation. When we take this into account alongside the film’s difficult road to the screen it is, as del Toro describes, something of a miracle that Watership Down was made at all. Rosen, an American film producer who had never directed a film before, let alone an animated one, purchased the rights to the novel after it had received widespread acclaim and worldwide, crossover success with adults and children. According to his recollection, Rosen read the novel in 1975 while developing another production in the Himalayas and phoned Adams to purchase the film rights as soon as he returned to London.3 However, Rosen had little idea of how he would bring the story to the screen, either visually or financially. Help with the latter came from upstart Canadian producer Jake Eberts, for whom Watership Down would be his first project. According to Eberts it was a risky venture from the start due to the UK film industry being in a time of crisis, with falling cinema attendance and the closures of production arms of several major Hollywood studios.4 Even so, a budget was secured of nearly £2 million, making it ‘one of the most ambitious animated films to be produced outside the Walt Disney studios’ at the time, according to Rosen.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

791.43 ADA w

Penerbit

New York : Bloomsbury Academic., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

265 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781501376986

Klasifikasi

791.43

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Motion Pictures, Movies

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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