Watership down

Britain 1978

Dir: Martin Rosen

92 mins

Cast: John Hurt, Richard Briers, Michael Graham Cox; based on the novel by Richard Adams.

Rating: PG - The content is mild in impact

The field … it’s covered in blood!” This is the young visionary rabbit Fiver, voiced by Richard Briers, in the British animation from 1978 by Martin Rosen, based on Richard Adams’s classic children’s book. The rabbits’ warren, quite as important as Tolkien’s shire, is about to be destroyed by a property development, announced by the humans’ heartless wooden sign, which of course none of the rabbits can read, but twitchy, squirming Fiver can sense the disaster it represents.

... Watership Down is in fact a film very much concerned with spirituality and the afterlife, with a Kiplingesque story at the very beginning about how the rabbits came to be, with a belief system that has the Frith god at its centre and his angel of death, the Black Rabbit. The awful possibility that Hazel might have died is what ushers in Mike Batt’s hit song Bright Eyes. The animation reportedly disappointed some at the time, for its lack of expressiveness compared with Disney figures; it’s fair to say the rabbits are impassive compared to Bambi’s Thumper, and perhaps the film doesn’t have the richness of Adams’s book. But now they seem to possess a charm and simplicity, and perhaps Rosen’s animation style was the closest Britain came to a homegrown Studio Ghibli.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

The sixth most popular film of the year in the UK circa 1978, Martin Rosen’s Watership Down is something of a sacred and profane text; an adaptation of the enduringly popular Richard Adams book, it’s a cherished and adored film that’s also proved deeply traumatic to many sensitive souls. If such rites-of-passage movies as The Wizard of Oz and Bambi have memorably endured because of their willingness to confront us with frightening moments or ideas, this tale of runaway bunnies must have similarly scarred generations. ...

So be aware from the get-go that Watership Down has a violent edge that reflects violent nature, a Bunnyball Ferox/Lepus Holocaust movie which some might find at odds with the cutie patootie animation, but surely that’s exactly the point; by the time the credits roll, there’s blood and dead rabbits everywhere, so trigger warnings apply. John Hurt, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews, Richard Briers, Simon Cadell and a troupe of classic British character actors lend their voices to this animal fable which steers clear of knowing humour or pop culture references or even overdoing the usual anthropomorphism. ....

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