Hey, everybody. “Moriarty” here with some more Rumblings from 1982.
I’ve had a lot of people write in to ask me if they could contribute articles to this special series we’re doing this year. And I appreciate that. Some of the films people have mentioned aren’t films we’re going to be including in the retrospective, and some of the titles they’ve asked to do have already been claimed by ongoing contributors to the site. But what’s apparent to me is that the films of 1982 are burned into the memory of filmgoers who saw them that year with a special sort of intensity. In some cases, these are the movies that led people to do what they’re doing now.
Case in point: Don Bluth’s THE SECRET OF NIMH.
I’ve met a lot of animators in the time I’ve been in LA. A friend of mine from the early days in town was one of the first people I ever met who told me that it wasn’t Disney films that inspired him to pursue a career in animation... it was NIMH all the way. You have to remember that in 1982, Disney was in a slump. They weren’t the commercial powerhouse they are now, and they were barely releasing films at all. They sat out 1982 completely, but there were a few animated pictures released. THE LAST UNICORN has its fans, and I’ve always thought THE PLAGUE DOGS, based on the Richard Adams novel, was a dark and interesting film. But when Don Bluth led a small uprising and took a bunch of Disney-trained animators away from the studio to set up an independent company with the intent of adapting Robert C. O'Brien's Newbery-award winning novel, I doubt he had any idea just how much he’d be influencing a whole generation of young film fans.
One of those guys who had his future set in motion that summer was our very own Cartuna, the guy who is responsible for all those fantastic animations you see in the upper left-hand corner of the site. As far as I know, this is the first time Cartuna’s ever contributed a full-blown review to the site, but when he wrote me to say he wanted to write about this particular title, I knew we’d be in for something special.
Check it out:
I’ve always wanted a sparkly of my very own…
And holy cow, did we get one. In 1982, The Secret of N.I.M.H. flared into life, filled with magic, excitement, slapstick and beauty. It was darker, scarier, funnier, and had more heart than any animated feature that had graced the screen for MANY years prior.
It was proof that animation could offer more than simple fairy tales. It told a story that was, at its core, adult, but still didn’t need to have its nuts cut off in order to appeal to kids.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I didn’t catch The Secret of N.I.M.H. in the movie theatre. In 1982, I was eight years old, and had seen exactly three movies during their theatrical release: Song of the South, (re-released in 1980) Empire Strikes Back, and E.T. There was no theatre in my hometown (a rural backwater in the armpit of Ontario, Canada) and visits to relatively nearby cities which did have movie theatres were entirely dependant on the whims of my parents, and as a result, frustratingly infrequent.
But about a year later, the new canadian Pay-TV network, First Choice (which has since become The Movie Network) had a “Free preview weekend” where anybody with a cable converter could watch the channel unscrambled. The result, naturally, was me sitting in our basement for three days, mainlining whatever happened to be scheduled. I was a film-deprived kid, and I had to take it where I could get it.
I consumed whatever they fed me, and have no real recollection of the programming absorbed that weekend, except for one film: the Secret of N.I.M.H. From its first dark moments, with a pair of aged hands working magic over the pages of a diary while a voiceover lamented the death of a friend, I was slackjaw-hooked to the screen.
I was no stranger to cartoons, of course. Saturday mornings found me up early, eating soggy Fruit Loops in my couch-cushion fort, with the color bars humming on the television until the national anthem interrupted. I didn’t want to miss ANY cartoons, especially the older ones that were on earliest. I hadn’t quite put together that this was something I could do for a living, but I certainly recognized that the name Charles M. Jones signaled that the next cartoon would be a good one.
I don’t think I ever had much use for non-funny cartoons up until this point. They were always so corny and precious. There was never anything really at stake. Beyond the villains, characters tended to be either exceedingly bland, or nothing more than comic relief. I’ve come to appreciate these films. Quite a bit, in fact. But as a kid, they really held very little magic for me.
But this? A revelation. The Secret of N.I.M.H. was SO much more than I had known was possible with the medium. And it was the very first thing that made me think to myself: That’s it. That’s the thing I want to be involved in. I want to make animation.
I had always drawn. I filled boxes with looseleaf paper covered in scribbles. People gave me attention for it, told me to keep it up. It was definitely part of my identity. But until that point, though I had thought in a round-about way about drawing a comic strip, I had never really considered art as a profession. And so, in this way, N.I.M.H. altered the course of my life, like an injection of a mysterious glowing serum directly into my belly.
But where did it come from, this beautiful gem?
Disney Animation was at its lowest, having all but abandoned animation, in pursuit of what seemed to be more lucrative opportunities in live-action.
In the middle of production on the Fox and the Hound a small band of artists, led by Don Bluth, revolted. They packed their bags and departed Walt Disney Animation, where they had been groomed to replace the aging old guard (who had practically invented the art form) and turned their skills to the task of jump-starting a new golden era for feature animation.
Their first attempt would involve adapting a story that Disney had rejected, crafted by artists that Disney had ignored and undervalued, using techniques that Disney had discarded and a fraction of the budget that Disney would’ve spent on any of their features. And in the end, they kicked Disney’s sorry ass all over the place, creating something with more life and appeal than anything the Mouse had ever produced.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t reflected by the box office in what was a VERY tough summer, but the test of time has ultimately proclaimed The Secret of N.I.M.H. a classic, and an example of the best of what can be managed in the medium of animation.
It’s telling that Bluth’s Studio began with a bunch of animators working after-hours in a garage, because that labor-of-love feeling really comes through in The Secret of N.I.M.H. It feels like the sort of work that animators do for themselves, after they’re done earning their living for the day. They’ve finally been unshackled, and can just run free, letting their abilities define the edges of what is possible.
I suppose at this point, most folks have had the chance to view early pencil test animation. A sad and kinda frustrating truism of animation is that in the translation of a pencil test to cleaned-up and painted final cels, something is always lost. Some magical spark is blotted out, and however great the final work may be, it never quite measures up to the promise of those first scratchy drawings with their construction lines showing through.
The Secret of N.I.M.H. feels like a pencil test, in that the spark is still there. Somehow, they managed a lossless translation, and the result is a kind of energized vitality that is simply and frankly absent from the vast majority of animated features.
Our lead, Mrs. Brisby, is damaged. In her most lighthearted moments there is a sadness and fragility to her. Through great internal strength and the love of her children, she manages, but since the death of her husband she has been broken. Her marriage had always defined her. It still does - she is only ever referred to as Mrs. Brisby. Without Jonathon, she is rudderless. But her mother role gives her purpose, and her task to save her sick son gives her focus.
She seems to want so desperately to pass her responsibilities to someone else. She doesn’t want to make the hard decisions or plan her family’s course of action. But she is tougher and braver than she ever let herself realize, and though it seems as though she is exhausted by the weight on her shoulders, she really has no other options.
This is a children’s cartoon, folks! Why bother with all this? Surely no kid will identify with a widowed mother’s struggle? Isn’t this too bleak? Isn’t this too complicated? Too confusing?
HELL, NO!
This is an extremely compelling heroine with an easily communicated quest: Keep her family safe at all costs. That is why this movie is a classic. It is simultaneously simple AND complex, because somebody cared enough to go someplace deeper, and refused to dumb things down for the kiddies.
And who are Mrs. Brisby’s allies on her quest?
A miserable old bastard who’d prefer not to be bothered with her (Mr. Ages). A horrible, opinionated windbag who looks down her nose at the entire Brisby family (Auntie Shrew). The rats of N.I.M.H., who consider themselves above the ‘lower creatures’ and are more interested in their own political power struggles. And two terrifying monsters whose character design would seem to mark them as arch-villains in any other animated feature (The Great Owl and Nicodemus).
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?
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If they age so much more slowly, why does Nicodemus look like he may have been present at the Big Bang?
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Where’d the amulet come from? Why did Jonathon have it?
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Why didn’t Nicodemus just help Mrs. Brisby when he saw she needed it?
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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.
In the meantime, you can catch up with the earlier articles in this series here:
Nordling Remembers E.T.!
Harry Remembers TRON!
Obi-Swan Remembers CREEPSHOW!
Capone Remembers POLTERGEIST!
FlmLvr Remembers FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, PORKY’S and THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN!
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
