Forget for a minute that these characters are each kinda scary and mostly unhelpful, and think about this: In an ordinary fairy tale or animated feature (or even just ANY feature, for that matter) these characters exist only to help the protagonist. They are little more than signposts, pointing the protagonist in a new direction, giving them some vital clue, or maybe handing them some object that will inevitably turn out to be “exactly-what-we-needed-to-surmount-our-obstacles-and-defeat-the-villains.”
In The Secret of N.I.M.H. every one of these characters has been interrupted. They have lives of their own, with goals that they are working towards for their own sakes, and Mrs. Brisby is a pain-in-the-ass distraction keeping them from completing their tasks. Really, for the most part, they only ever decide to help her out of some feeling of obligation, in order to fulfill debts owed to her late husband.
How much better is this than what we get from most animated features? For contrast let me give you similar descriptions of some classic animated characters: Princess. Orphan. Wicked stepmother. Prince. Fashionista with a penchant for dog-fur. Seems kinda lazy, doesn’t it? Sure, they’re archetypes, I get it. There’s a lot of value in that, to be sure, but, um… maybe we deserve a little more?
Another example is Jeremy, the crow, who should be little more than comic relief. Gentle and good-hearted like so many sidekicks that have come before him (and since), he would do anything for his friend, even overcoming his somewhat cowardly and panicky natural inclinations.
But really, he is driven mostly by a deep-seated loneliness, and is in many ways even more adrift than Mrs. Brisby, who at least has the anchor of her family to give her purpose and meaning. His relationship with Mrs. Brisby seems to form out of a desperation to connect with anyone who will accept him as he is. Having found her he clings with all he can muster, hoping to somehow become a necessary part of her family, and finally find a place for himself in the world.
WAITASECOND!
THIS is the comic relief? Jeremy is SO MUCH more than slapstick and pratfalls!
And is it just me? Or did anyone else out there get the feeling that Jeremy would’ve happily smothered Mrs. Brisby with a pillow stuffed with his own feathers, if it meant he could walk away with a sparkly of his very own? No? Just me, huh? Yeah, I get a lot of that.
And I haven’t even mentioned the SECRET of the Secret of N.I.M.H. Because probably more than anything else in the movie, this is what forever cemented its hold on my imagination, sucker-punching me in a way that I could never have been prepared for by any other animated film.
The rats of N.I.M.H. are escaped lab rats. They were collected in the alleyways of some urban cesspool and taken to the National Institute for Mental Health, where they were experimented upon alongside many other caged animals (and one can only imagine what happened to THEM). They were injected with mysterious glowing serums which appeared to meddle with their very DNA. The experiments prolonged their lifespans and increased their intelligence beyond that of ordinary rodents. Increased them to the degree where they were able to escape.
They were aided by a small team of mice, including the late Jonathon Brisby. Unfortunately, during the escape, the majority of the mice were sucked down an air vent, due to their lesser size, and to certain doom.
What. The. Hell?
If I could have paused the movie at this point, and stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air, I probably would have.
When has a movie secret been as satisfying as this? As shocking? Especially in the context of a film aimed at children?
It’s astonishing this movie was ever made. It’s a gift from the film gods, who occasionally reach down, and force some beautiful gem into existence, despite all of the forces working against it. It’s really little wonder that we haven’t had anything that measured up to it since. It’s actually more amazing that we ever got it in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, the flick ain’t perfect. I’m not unaware of this. There are things in it that don’t make a lot of sense, but even in its flaws there’s a certain mad joy.
I get that the rats are super-smart, can read, and have great mechanical prowess, but um… what’s with the magic?
*
If they age so much more slowly, why does Nicodemus look like he may have been present at the Big Bang?
*
Where’d the amulet come from? Why did Jonathon have it?
*
Why didn’t Nicodemus just help Mrs. Brisby when he saw she needed it?
*
Why does Mrs. Brisby seem just as clever and capable as the genetically mutated super-rats?
Ultimately, these and other questions are unimportant. None of them get in the way of enjoying the movie. Most aren’t plot holes, just unexplained things, which frankly, most movies could use more of.
The film is action-packed, with many edge-of-your-seat sequences: being chased by a monster (Dragon, the farm’s cat), stopping the plow, drugging the cat’s food, and swordfights for starters. The Secret of N.I.M.H. is an animated thrill ride.
And there’s blood. And there’s death. And there’s real suspense, because there are actual stakes. You worry, because the filmmakers have shown that they are capable of raining doom and destruction (and mutation) down on their characters. The ‘happily ever after’ is far from pre-ordained.
The film culminates in a climax filled with tension and gravity and a very visual representation of the concept of the heroine having the strength she needed inside her all along. Fuck Ruby slippers, give me that sparkly!
So the thing ends, Mrs. Brisby succeeds in her quest, and seems to come out of the whole thing stronger, more confident, and aware of her own capabilities. I too was changed. I walked out into the sunlight of Saturday afternoon, with a path laid out ahead of me which hadn’t been there before. I wanted to be a part of this medium, and amazingly, the Secret of N.I.M.H. was the catalyst.
After all the cartoons I had watched, it took this one to make me realize a direction for my life. For better or worse, I’ve pursued it since.
And of course, sadly, the world is a bit more “Dream On, Silly Dreamer” than I possibly could’ve realized at the time. The animation industry is a very hard one to make your way in, and even then, very few of us spend a lot of our careers working on anything we can feel proud of.
A far greater percentage of the industry’s energies are spent on producing the cheapest, dumbest, most watered-down and lowest-common-denominator targeting garbage than is put into even dreaming about creating something like The Secret of N.I.M.H.
If you read Bluth’s press at the time, you’ll find that he claims his intention was to kick-start an industry that was already ailing. It was his love for animation, and his vision for its potential that started him on the journey. And sure, he, himself was only able to manage a few other films that merit mention in the same paragraph as the Secret of N.I.M.H., but what are the pressures that were (and are) working against making movies that respect their audiences and are worth the time spent viewing them?
By and large, artists don’t make the art… Executives do, and as a result, the art is formed by focus groups and statistics rather than by storytellers who want to speak to an audience.
Creative decisions are not being made by the creative people whose lives have been dedicated to the artform, who have spent their careers honing the appropriate skills, and just want to engage and entertain an audience, or maybe even challenge them just the littlest bit.
Instead, we get movies made by businessmen, lawyers, agents, and management… Important roles all, but only inasmuch as they remember their place. When they stray into the show side of show business, or get confused and believe themselves artists, or even just want to put their fingerprints on the work, they should be smacked down. Hard, and without delay.
I certainly don’t want to turn this appreciation of a fantastic movie into a premature eulogy for a very sick medium, but how do you measure a classic, except by its legacy and impact on those inspired by it?
Where have we come from the dizzying heights of The Secret of N.I.M.H.? This film threw down the gauntlet, and a few years later, there WAS a response. It was carried by films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Littlest Mermaid. There was a surge. A rebirth. But where is animation today? Who is answering N.I.M.H.’s call to action now?
Though I love a whole lot of animated films, and could watch and rewatch them, discovering new things in each viewing, only Miyazaki’s work has ever made me feel even close to the level of excitement that The Secret of N.I.M.H. managed. Then again, who could get more excited than a nine year-old?
Maybe just me, today, talking about my love for the Secret of N.I.M.H.
The Secret of N.I.M.H. acted on the animation industry like a defibrillator. Shocking it awake again when it had seemed on the verge of flatlining. But the effects have now worn off, and most of the industry busies itself chasing trends, instead of blazing trails.
There is hope, of course. As it was in 1982, The Mouse has been putting live-action ahead of animation, and once again seems to have forgotten or turned its back on the traditions that made it great in the first place. But this time, the artists with vision have not revolted, escaping to build something fresh outside of the Disney Company. This time they have INVADED, and appear to be trying to jumpstart a new golden age of animation from the inside-out. My fingers are crossed. Tightly.
I haven’t even mentioned the use of color, the effects work, the voice acting, or the score, all of which are incredible and more than noteworthy, and any of which only serve to underline the amount of careful consideration that went into this film. It’s a spectacular piece of work in every possible way, and deserves to be thought of as a shining light in the history of animation, if not a masterpiece of the medium.
Amazing, Cartuna. It’s a shame that Don Bluth never really matched the high of NIMH again. The animators I know who have worked for him over the years were almost all heartbroken by their exposure to him, and it’s little wonder he managed to run his studio into the ground on at least three separate occasions based on the stories I’ve heard about his management style. To see someone start with something as great as NIMH and then eventually end up churning out garbage like ROCK-A-DOODLE and THE PEBBLE AND THE PENGUIN makes you think that maybe they didn’t learn the lessons of their own success.
At any rate, there’s a special edition of this one coming out on DVD later in the summer, and I can’t wait to revisit it with my son at that point.
22 May 2007, 02:56 PM
YellerDog
TLDR.
06 Jun 2007, 03:14 AM
Space Pirate Roberts
I don't think this is actually part of Moriarty's series, rather that Merrick decided to do something on his own (particularly since Poltergeist has already been done)... but regardless, it's worth reading:
Quote:
Death And Life On June 4, 1982
Merrick here...
June 04, 1982. 3:45am.
It was a still Summer evening not unlike a thousand evenings of my childhood. The night was humid; sweat beaded around my forehead and neck with film noir intensity. I was staying overnight with a friend – one of those childhood friends who mean the universe to you when you’re growing up…whose every secret you know, and who knows your every secret. He was the kid who holds a place in all layers of your life, but somehow slips into oblivion as the years go by.
Unlike most of our sleepovers - which were dominated by endless hours of frivolous conversation, late night broadcasts of cheesy Sci Fi / horror flicks, and stealing glimpses of titties and vaginas in girlie magazines (where did he get those, anyway?) - this night was different: spirits were high, adrenaline was at a fever pitch. There would be no sleeping. That it was unusually hot in the house didn’t matter (his mom was single and kept the AC off to lower her bills). There were two huge movies opening in a few hours, and…good geeks that we were…we were going to see them both. On the first day, we were going to see them both. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, and POLTERGEIST. Between the two films, we’d be waiting in lines for close to ten hours – with no sleep the night before. It was going to be a long, tough haul - but we had to see them both THAT DAY. We never perceived another choice. To us, in that moment, there wasn’t one.
We laid there silently, waiting for his mother’s footsteps. We didn’t speak for a while – each of us already knew what the other was thinking, so there was no need. We listened…closely. Waiting for footsteps - when we heard them, it would be time to go. FOOTSTEPS. Funny how such simple things take on so much importance when you’re young.
My friend’s mother was always profoundly tolerant of our madness, and dutifully did anything within her power to appease our passion for Science Fiction / adventure / fantasy material. She staggered out of bed in her bathrobe around 3:55am. Bully eyed and puffy faced, she groggily donned her purse and palmed her car keys. For an instant I wondered if she was too tired to drive us across town to the theater – I wondered if we might crash and die on the way. I quickly shrugged off my misgiving: I didn’t understand death yet, and Admiral Kirk was waiting for me. I wasn’t going to let him down.
So, through the night we went. It was the first time I’d driven through the city so late in the evening. The familiar streets looked different to me. Emptier. Lonelier. Like they were waiting for something, or someone, to come back. Like they were awaiting life. The night, it seemed, had rewritten the world.
Then we arrived at this theater: the Aquarius 4 in Austin, TX.
There were already people there – they’d been waiting in line since 10pm the night before, which made them bastards. We weren’t too far back in line, though – we were against the middle “wall panel” of the theater (slightly to the left of the bulldozer in the picture above). We waited. We tried to sleep, but we couldn’t. We were hungry, having quickly exhausted the little snacks that had been lovingly prepared for us the night before. We baked in the increasingly hot morning sun…it often gets into the mid-90s before noon in Texas…we were surrounded by concrete with no shade.
But, we were there for STAR TREK – how could one rest when a new movie was at hand? Heat was irrelevant, discomfort a minor consideration. STAR TREK was important now, which was joyous. We could now like space ships and pointed ears without getting beaten up at school. Plus, Orson Welles' voice on the unforgettable teaser for the first–ever TREK movie told us the franchise was important:
We’d memorized every moment this trailer, often emulating Welles' voice for endless hours and hours. That voice…could make you believe anything. It could make you believe STAR TREK was utterly classy and biblically consequential. He could even make you believe Nostradamus was right, and that our world will end in 3797 (I started second guessing this one a few years later). My friend and I recited that damn trailer to each other over and over again, for years, until finally becoming distracted by this trailer:
This trailer told us a lot about what to expect from THE WRATH OF KHAN. A STAR TREK movie that existed in a different photographic and physical universe than STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Gone were the austere sets and decidedly “epic scope” of the first film – injected were a sense of immediacy, intimacy, grit, and truth of character. STAR TREK and been effectively rebooted for a third time (I’m counting THE ANIMATED SERIES and THE MOTION PICTURE). It was now older, wiser, simpler, and a lot more dangerous. TWOK would set a dramatic and conceptual standard that many fans….25 years later…feel best represents the franchise’s full potential. It’s an approach many feel should be TREK’s direction in whataver lies down the road.
THE WRATH OF KHAN was the first Science Fiction film I recall seeing that focused so heavily on character, and dared to show that human imperfection was not only constant…but somehow okay. This was certainly evident in the original STAR TREK series, but never as significantly as in TWOK.
My television heroes got kicked around in this film, and so did the Starship Enterprise itself. We’d seen that fine-ass vessel get the crap blasted out of it time and time again…but we’d never seen the physical scarring resulting from this damage. We’d never seen the ship in pain. We’d never seen “cool” space battles resulting in burned and bloodied crewmen. What used to be “fun” was now a tad scary. It had higher jeopardy, and I loved it.
And then there’s Spock. He died. The guy whose lines I used to memorize got jacked up by radiation and died. The guy whose fucking poster used to hang on my wall, staring down on me at night, died. How dare he do that! What the hell?!
When he croaked, he looked thin and ashen, as if all of his energy had been ripped away. Maybe I was too innocent, perhaps I was just naive, but it never crossed my mind that someone I cared about might (suddenly) no longer be there. I’d understood the existence of loss on a different level – people I’d known had lost people they cared about, and I’d even lost folks in my own periphery – but never someone to whom I was truly attached. It never crossed my mind that this could happen to me; kind of narrow-minded and stupid of me in retrospect.
As I already knew Spock was coming back, and as I didn’t have a context for the emotions driving that scene…I just didn’t get it. I understood Kirk was upset because his buddy kicked off an all…but I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel that punch to the gut that takes ages to go away.
A few years later, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He died slowly for close to a decade. He’d been big and strong and I remember seeing a tear or two in his eyes when Spock passed. When my dad finally moved on, he looked a bit like Spock looked in that final scene. Then, and only then, did I understand the full truth of that agonizing, desperate, final moment between Shatner and Nimoy…separated by glass…in which one man would do anything to stem the tide of what was coming…but couldn’t. All Kirk could do was sit there and watch a best friend die before his eyes; just like I watched my father die before mine.
In August 1993, I finally got it. And it hurt like hell.
We left the movie for the next leg of our adventure; my friend was shattered and speechless because that green blooded son-of-a-bitch had died. He wasn’t much fun for the rest of the day, but I could deal with it. I was obliviously obsessing about what we were going to eat for lunch. We had Taco Bell, and farted throughout the afternoon. It was bliss.
An hour later we arrived at the Lake Hills 4 theater for POLTERGEIST.
This time we got to wait inside. Distracted by glorious air conditioning, the smell of popcorn which constantly permeated the lobby, and the presence of cutting edge video games like JOUST and GALAGA, we waited for several hours. Playing, talking about KHAN, and about nothing in particular.
I’d been really, really curious about POLTERGEIST since seeing it’s initial trailer. I loved its trailer. I loved Mr. Voice’s line reading: “The house looks just like the one next to it…and the one next to that…and the one next to that.” We don’t get set-up like this anymore in trailers; it’s awesome.
In an oblique way, POLTERGEIST complements THE WRATH OF KHAN thematically. Both films are about death and how we relate to it. Both are about continuance (emotionally for those left behind, and cosmically for those who have moved on). Both are about angry forces intruding upon the love of a family. There are other similarities, but you get the idea.
I had a lot of fun with POLTERGEIST. I liked it’s slightly unpolished look and style. I loved Goldsmith’s score. I had a sexual crush on JoBeth Williams, and a man crush on Craig T. Nelson. The movie was cool, scary, funny, a little bit thought provoking, and memorable. Yet, something about it didn’t ring true to me, even then. It was a little too over the top. It always felt like this excess undercut the atmosphere in which the film functioned best – diluting its sense of dark mystery, the majestic notion that there’s a universe out there which we’ve only begun to understand – to which our smallness is humbling in comparison.
14 years later, I moved into a brand new house – freshly built by my family. Within the first few months of moving there, odd incidents started to occur. Strange displays of light and sound. Insoluble anomalies in the electrical system. The systematic disappearance and reappearance of objects (including pets vanished from, and returned to, locked cages). Footsteps on the second floor when I was the only person in the house. My (then 5 year old) son reported being awakened by “alien voices” night after night, and talked about “fireworks” outside of his window (his window looked directly into a towering wall of cedar trees through which no light could shine at night).
My sister was the first person to posit that everything I was experiencing was paranormal. I didn’t want to hear this, and wasn’t even certain that I “believed”. The events continues, on again and off again, for months…then years. Slowly gathering in intensity, the nature of the occurrences became more and more spectacular. More and more deliberate. As much as I resisted the notion, I slowly came to the conclusion that something beyond my understanding was happening to me and my son. My best friends (from out of town) would call me to check on how I was doing; they could sense I was rattled and knew me to be consistently level headed, and rarely dramatic. If I said something was going on…something was going on. It was that simple.
When I tried to tell my friends about what was happening in the house, my cordless phones would be blasted offline by a deafening burst of static. I could call someone back immediately, the conversation would progress normally. But, as soon our conversation revisited to what was happening in the house…the phone would again disconnect noisily.
I went to the Internet in an effort to research such phenomenon. My computer would gradually slow down (then stop working completely) when I searched for terms like “paranormal”, “ghosts”, “hauntings”…and especially “ghost hunters”. Eventually, I actually needed to leave my house and drive far away in order to discuss the matter on my cell phone. Eventually, I fled into the night with my son – much like the Freelings in POLTERGEIST. We couldn’t take any more. I’m no longer living at that house, but…stuff…still happens there. It’s occupants are trying to explain away the occurrences, blaming it on each other’s forgetfulness or carelessness. Somewhere down inside, they know better.
So, POLTERGEIST got it all wrong. The truth nature of the paranormal and haunting is far more insidious, vastly more disquieting, and infinitely more nerve-wracking than portrayed in most movies.
It’s 25 years later…today.
The theaters I visited on June 4 are no longer there. The Lakehills 4 is a gargantuan music store now. When I was a kid, I chipped the bathroom wall – that mark is still there. And, I swear that…if you try hard enough, wander long enough, and find just the right place in the building…you can still smell the popcorn. The Aquarius is gone, too.
25 years later…POLTERGEIST is now a horror “classic”, targeted for remake. People don’t loose sleep over STAR TREK movies anymore, at least not yet. There’s another TREK movie coming out…which means another reboot of the franchise and mythos. We’ll see what there is to see; we’ll see how well people sleep the night before. Two and a half decades out, this all feels bizarrely familiar.
And, 25 years later, I’m finally beginning to feel my age (it’s not the years, it’s the mileage). I’ve seen friends come and go, and people I cared for have left me like Spock left me. I think about life, death, and the universe a lot – how they relate to each other, and how we probably understand very little about what comes next. And my memories often carry me back to June 4, 1982 – when I was first slapped in the face by the notion that there’s more to existence than the myopic little shell in which I grew up for so long. Including death, and beyond death.
