Hmmm.
From the director of Cube, Vincenzo Natali…
Apparently it’s going to be a television miniseries.
For more information, click here.
The original film adaptation of Watership Down severely abrdiges the story, but considering that it would be impossible to tell the whole story in a two hour period, Martin Rosen did a marvelous job of capturing the personalities, the tone, and the meaning of Richard Adams’s masterpiece.
The animation was gorgeously naturalistic and honest about the hard lives of wild animals… at times discomfortingly honest. I remember being shocked and fascinated, at ten years old, watching a hawk swoop down and carry off one of the characters, and then realizing that this was NOT the kind of movie in which the brave rabbits can mount some kind of rescue. I was even more surprised to see the rabbits fighting and ripping each others’ throats out.
But for all of its intense blood-and-guts reality, the film also served up some truly exhilarating moments, and some meditative passages that still haunt me and move me to tears when I revisit the film today. To most people, Art Garfunkel’s “Bright Eyes” is a sentimental song on easy-listening radio; for those of us who have seen the film, it’s a powerfully moving piece about death and mystery.
I’m not saying that the film shouldn’t be re-made. Indeed, it would be great if someone told the whole story. But it’s got to be told carefully, without any “Disney-fication.” We don’t need a cast of famous voices. We don’t need pop culture references or a wisecracking sidekick. We don’t need a pop-star soundtrack or a re-location to America. I care about this story even more than Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and I’ll be nervous about the project until it’s delivered.
Please… Mr. Natali. If you take this on, be very, very gentle with it. It’s a rarity among animal stories, one that will burst like a balloon if anybody dares to mess with its spirit.
In the meantime, everyone else should read the book BEFORE they give anyone a chance to spoil it for them. For me, it’s almost as important and compelling as The Lord of the Rings, even if it’s “worldview” is a bit bleaker.
Also in the works… BEOWULF, with Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, and Robin Wright Penn. Strangely enough, I have NO misgivings about another version of this story. My apologies, Christopher Lambert.
The Beowulf project has been kicking around for a while now. With Neil Gaiman involved, not to mention the other names, should be interesting.
As for Watership Down, I’ve loved the book, but never seen the film. If it receives a worthy re-make, great!
But I’m even more interested to see that the same production company has two of Robertson Davies’ novels waiting for some eager director, writer, etc. Now that could be my idea of a good time at the movies.
Oh gosh. Don’t apologize to Lambert and company. They should apologize to every English teacher in the country foolish enough to believe that this was some sort of adaptation of the great epic poem. Or any viewer thinking it may have some sort of redeeming facet because it was based on said work. Wasn’t even a good B-movie. Give me 1970’s exploitation anyday over this.
As far as bad adaptations, 2004’s ‘Troy’ ain’t got nothin’ on 1999’s ‘Beowulf’. (Not that I’ve actually seen Peterson’s work.)
I would like to see a fuller version of Watership Down but I don’t know how they would match the watercolor backdrop and tribalesque fantasy scenes. FWIW I think Beowulf is unfilmable because half of the joy in the poem are the lists of ancestors. Also the poet was adapting pagan motifs to Christianity. A movie would probably involve some sort of reversal.
Eriol,
Re: the secularization or paganization of Beowulf, I think your point is certainly valid. From my understanding (mostly from Norton), scholars now believe that the composer of the epic himself was a Christian, even as he was utilizing historical legends. The piece seems a sort of lament of those who died without Christ, or before the Kingdom of Heaven entered their land.
I think a modern-day, serious adaptation would be more akin, though, to Peterson’s ‘Troy’ or Fuqua’s Arthur, taking out the supernatural to try to get at the realities of the story. Which in itself is a tremendous fabrication. It really is a mass secularization.
As far as the lineage lists in Beowulf, you’re joking, right? Of course, I don’t remember so much a listing as I do maybe stories attached to them.
FWIW, a Canadian film called Beowulf & Grendel is also coming out this year, starring Stellan Skarsgärd, Gerard Butler and Sarah Polley — and the advance bumf suggests the film will explicitly deal with the Christianization of pagan hero myths.
Peter,
I don’t know who those people are, simply because Joan Rivers never mentioned them, but thanks for the heads up.
Time will tell just how revisionist the treatment may be. What I’ve noticed with English teachers (my own and those I’ve been privileged to work with), however, are that most believe that the Christianity was added ad nauseum by the Christian scribes who transcribed the original, solely pagan works.
By the way, I haven’t read all of Grendel, but it’s pretty decent, somewhat along the lines of the post-modernity of Wicked, which I think is more honest than some more straight-way adaptations, which Beowulf and Grendel looks like it could become and which 1999’s Beowulf (arrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!) certainly was. Why’d they use that title?
Yeah, I just visited Kate’s site a couple weeks ago to see if she was ever coming back to America again (apparently not, it’s only been 4 years) and found that she’d put out a new album in the meantime. Lovely!
I’m really looking forward to this, though I’d have to say, the more traditional Little Lights rings truer for me than Underneath the Stars. I want to like it, but I don’t know…
Raise a glass for hoping.