Bunny Business

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

WATERSHIP DOWN Directed and Written by Martin Rosen

Readers for whom Watership Down is a cult object will doubtless find the animated screen version of Richard Adams' tale lacking in those metaphorical, humanistic overtones and undertones that made this novel about a warren of freedom-loving bunny rabbits a bestseller. The film treats the story as a straightforward adventure, full of, shall we say, harebreadth escapes and ear-chomping fights. But given the care with which the animation has been accomplished, the good flashes of wit in the script and the brisk pace of the direction, the result is a first-class family entertainment. That is to say, it is a rare movie that keeps kids on the edge of their chairs without inducing in their parents an overwhelming desire to escape theirs for a smoke in the lobby.

The story involves a shy visionary rabbit named Fiver whose precognition that real estate developers are about to wreck his warren leads sensible Hazel and tough old Bigwig to organize a group of dissidents and set out for Fiver's dimly perceived paradise, the Watership Down of the title. In time they are aided by a delightfully loony seagull (whose wonderful vocal characterization is supplied by the late Zero Mostel), who acts as scout and air arm in the climactic struggle against the fascist warren of the evil General Woundwort. Along the way there are troubles with the dogs, cats and humans of a nearby farm, some semimystical encounters with the Black Rabbit (death), not to mention such mundane problems as snares and hrududus (rabbitese for motor vehicles).

The philosophy that sustains the creatures throughout is mildly liberal and humane (somewhere between Bertrand Russell and Hubert Humphrey), and there are moments when one feels that perhaps the whole thing is just another cleverly put ecological tract. What sustains the viewer, however, besides the sound plotting, is the stylishness of the piece. Except for an unfortunate arty prologue with featureless backgrounds and stylized bunnies, Watership Down is made in the classic manner of the old, excellent Disney films. The background painting is rich and highly detailed, and this allows the multiplane camera to exploit its ability to create the illusion of three-dimensionality, rather like the great tracks through the forests of Snow White and Bambi. Disney's craftsmen might have made better visual definitions of characters--it's sometimes hard to tell one cottontail from another --but the vocal characterizations by such English worthies as Ralph Richardson, Harry Andrews and Denholm Elliott are never confusing. The English pastoral tradition, both in painting and hi literature, informs the movie in a subliminal way that is very attractive. It even makes the largest miscue, a dreadful pop song called Bright Eyes sung by Art Garfunkel, almost bearable.

Watership Down may not be the ideal rendering of a book in which a lot of people have a vested emotional interest, but it is a worthy addition to the classic tradition of screen animation. Like the great Disney pictures of the past, it is illuminated by a darkness and an energy that rescue it time and again from blandness and cuteness and give it those resonances that will reverberate in a child's imagination. --Richard Schickel

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