Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 2 - Bold

We're here!  We've reached the final death of Series 2, which brings us to the end of this retrospective after ten long, woodland carnage-filled months.  It's been a difficult but also really fascinating dip into some of the darker recesses of my personal childhood nostalgia.  A real bang we're going out with too - Bold's death, which comes at the very end of Series 2, is another candidate that's commonly cited as being the saddest of all the series.  Does it measure up to that reputation?  Well, let's take a look.

Much like Scarface's death, Bold's demise was a foregone conclusion by this stage, and the end- result of a character arc that had spanned the entire second half of the series, which means that it requires a bit of context.  Unhappy with how his father was handling the conflict between the red and blue foxes (Bold's view was that the matter was purely between Fox and Scarface, and that Fox therefore had a responsibility to confront Scarface directly) and frustrated by his father's heavy-handed efforts at disciplining him for some trouble he'd caused after crossing into enemy territory, Bold decided to leave White Deer Park for good.  To put it bluntly, he despised living in the shadow of his father and vowed to have nothing more to do with him.

Shortly after leaving the park, Bold encountered a carrion crow who, noting that Bold seemed to have no qualms about wandering around in broad daylight, advised him to start being fearful of humans.  Bold dismissed the advice and arrived at a game reserve, where he killed pheasants recklessly.  He befriended a young female badger named Shadow who gave him similar advice to the crow, warning him that the gamekeeper would not tolerate the presence of a predator who killed so rampantly.  By twist of fate, however, it was Shadow herself who wound up getting caught in a trap which had been lain by the gamekeeper to catch the creature that had been taking his birds - Bold managed to free her, but suffered an eye injury in the process.  His vision severely impaired, Bold later wandered right into the middle of a pheasant shoot, where he was shot in the back leg and badly wounded.  He ran into the same carrion crow from before and convinced him to fly to Shadow to let her know that he was now the one in need of help.  Shadow was more than willing to return the favour and, with help from Crow, regularly brought Bold food and enabled him to regain some of his lost strength.

Although grateful to Crow and Shadow for their care, Bold disliked being so dependent upon other animals for his survival and tried to return to his old life as a hunter.  After an unsuccessful attempt at raiding a chicken coop (ironically, Bold only survived because the farmer, noting his crippled state, showed him mercy) he followed Crow's suggestion that he live as a scavenger, raiding the dustbins of a nearby town.  There, Bold met Whisper, a young vixen, and was immediately smitten with her, but Whisper herself was not so impressed with Bold - that is, until she learned that he was the son of the Farthing Wood Fox, who had already become a legend among animals outside of the park.  Later, once she'd allowed Bold to get close enough to get her pregnant, Whisper shamelessly admitted that she took him as her mate purely so that her cubs could have some of that famous Farthing Wood blood.  Bold was crushed, but nevertheless remained loyal to Whisper, even when she dropped her ultimate bombshell - now that he'd planted his much-coveted seed into her, she wanted him to take her back to White Deer Park so that she and her cubs could experience that Farthing Wood kinship first-hand.

Bold reluctantly made the long trek back to White Deer Park with Whisper, although his health was by now severely declining and he was in no fit state to travel.  Whisper eventually realised this, but nevertheless forced Bold to keep going.  In the end, rather than break his vow never to return to his father's territory, Bold gave Whisper the slip once they'd reached the park and went off to find a quiet spot outside in which to die.  Which takes us into the beginnings of Episode 13.

Whisper never sees Bold again.  The only creature who knows of his whereabouts is Crow, who honours Bold's request that he not let on to Whisper but, out of his deep long-standing respect for the Farthing Fox, later shows Fox and Vixen where to find him.  By now, Whisper has met with the Farthing clan and informed them that Bold is nearby.  Bold's last moments are spent listening to his parents as they tell him that his cubs will be in good hands.  Then, Fox offers him an olive branch: "I'm sorry I was hard on you.  Forgive me.  You're the bravest fox I've ever met.  I'm proud of you."  Upon hearing this, Bold heaves one last breath and is finally at peace.

Charmer and Ranger then arrive, and are informed by Fox that they have come too late.  But not for nothing - realising that the residents of White Deer Park are weary from all the conflict and in desperate need of a new beginning, Fox finally gives them his blessing as a couple.  Here, the series ends, with Charmer and Ranger walking off together, finally freed from the feuds of their fathers and hopeful for what the future might bring.

HORROR FACTOR: 10. This might seem like a bit of a cheat, but I am counting the fact that Bold's injury was drawn out over the course of several episodes, and his physical decline within this time was genuinely painful to watch.  When Bold finally dies, it honestly comes as a relief, although the imagery showing his last gasp of breath as it leaves his body is nevertheless extremely stark.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 10. Bold did the honorable thing and led Whisper back to White Deer Park so that his cubs could have the best possible start in life (although note that, as per Series 3, only one of them, a male named Plucky, actually appears to have survived into adolescence).  It was an act of pure altruism - Bold probably wouldn't have lived to a ripe old age even if he had remained in his relatively comfortable existence at the town, but there's little doubt that the stresses and strains of the journey (not to mention that he was nearly ripped apart by a couple of greyhounds along the way) took a heavy toll upon him.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 10.  I'm going to play much the same card here as I did with the Hedgehogs in Series 1.  If you don't cry at this death, then nothing in this series can possibly move you.  You heartless bastard.

RATING: 30

Anyway, I lied.  Truth is, I'm not quite done with this retrospective just yet.  Time to bring on the special bonus round - ie: gruesome injuries which didn't actually result in death.  In Series 2 in particular, some of the most shocking instances of onscreen violence were surprisingly non-fatal.

The Trees (1991)

Alongside the various student films from UK universities that make up the bulk of the 1992 Connoisseur Video release Green Animation are a series of 30-second entries for a contest hosted by MTV under the banner of "World Problems, World Solutions".  One of the indisputable stand-outs of this series is The Trees (1991), which combines hypnotic imagery with wickedly tongue-in-cheek humour in order to deliver a message about the importance of recycling.  If the dream-like background imagery looks weirdly familiar to fans of Texan film-maker Richard Linklater, it's because this short was the brainchild of Bob Sabiston, who went on to found the Austin-based production company Flat Black Films, and to create the animation program "Rotoshop", which gave the Linklater films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006) their unique visual flavour.  Indeed, the tangled, untamed backdrop of The Trees looks as it could have come straight from the bizarre dream landscape that Wiley Wiggins' character must traverse in Waking Life, here given a distinctly (but also hilariously) nightmarish twist as the trees exact their revenge upon a kid with a somewhat negligent attitude toward paper disposal.

Sabiston would find further success with another MTV contest, 1993's "Free Your Mind", for which he submitted one of the winning entries, Free Your Couch.  His 1990 collaboration with Mike McKenna, Grinning Evil Death, was also featured in the first episode of MTV's Liquid Television in 1991.

As far as I'm aware, The Trees is currently the only short from the Green Animation collection to have made it to Blu Ray.  You can find it as an extra on Arrow Video's 2016 release of Waking Life (a wonderful package it is too).

Farthing Wood Deaths Revisted: Series 2 - Scarface

We really are now into the wrapping up stages of this retrospective.  It's time for the main villain's exit from the series and, despite some rather grueling, slapstick-heavy reaction sequences from members of the supporting cast, it's treated as a surprisingly sad and sombre affair.  In the final episode, the series succeeds adopting a more sympathetic tone toward Scarface, with Ranger suggesting that his father is now so deeply entrenched in hatred and paranoia that death would really be something of a release for him.  At any rate, the episode does a good job in acknowledging both sides of the occurrence, the happiness of the Farthing animals being balanced out by a clear sense of loss for Ranger and his family.

That Adder would be the one to off Scarface had been evident for some time - following the misdirected assassination scheme that wound up claiming Bounder's life, Scarface temporarily knocked Fox down to no. 2 on his public enemy list and focused his attentions instead upon wiping out Adder; not merely to avenge his son's death, but because Scarface recognised only too well that he had been the actual intended target of her attack, and it was therefore imperative that he destroyed Adder before she had another chance to strike at him.  With Ranger's help, Scarface was able to locate and sneak up on Adder while she was basking in the sun - Adder escaped (although not without enduring a fairly gruesome injury), and the two creatures vowed that they would meet again in order to settle their vendetta.  For the remainder of the series, Adder had kept an extremely low profile, as she recovered from her wounds and awaited the moment when Scarface would let his guard down.  When, finally, Scarface is forced to return to the lake to drink, Adder launches a stealth attack from underwater, and Scarface receives his belated lethal injection.

Scarface knows immediately what's hit him and that the game is up, but he dies warning Adder that his death will not go unavenged.  He’s not the last of his line – there is still Ranger, after all.  He doesn't bank on his son having a greater capacity for magnanimity than himself, however.  When Ranger learns of his father’s death, Charmer implores him to forgive Adder, asking him to "let it end here."

HORROR FACTOR: 6.  We see some pretty nasty-looking twitching coming from Scarface's body before his lights finally go out.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 8.  I can't say that I see anything noble or heroic in Adder's actions (after all, the plot has her do the dirty deed precisely so that Fox can preserve his own heroic integrity).  I prefer to see this from Ranger's perspective - namely, as a release for Scarface - and from Charmer's, as means of allowing one chain of violence to finally end, and for the cycle of life to renew itself in a more positive and hopeful manner.  It is in Ranger's presumed act of forgiveness that such hope is facilitated and, I think, where the real heroism of the series lies.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 7. The shot of Ranger consoling a mournful Lady Blue over Scarface’s body, along with Charmer asking Ranger to forgive Adder, is surprisingly affecting.  So much so that the Farthing animals who raucously celebrate his death frankly come off as a bit callous.  I suppose that a bit of light comic relief was needed for such an emotionally heavy episode – hence, there’s this silly little subplot where Mr. Rabbit gets hiccups and the animals try various methods of curing him, along with some ridiculously cartoony scenes of Toad jumping up with elation and sailing high up into the treetops.  Sadly, these sequences were an early sign of the kind of general cringe-inducing goofiness that was to positively dominate Series 3.  Still wonder why I'm stopping short of that one?

 RATING: 21

Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 2 - Mrs. Rabbit

It's been a while since I last covered one of these.  We're actually nearing the end of this particular retrospective (as stated, I do not intend to cover Series 3), so I've been purposely looking to spread out the last remaining entries a bit.

We've reached the final episode of Series 2, and we've actually gone for quite a significant stretch of time in which no character deaths have occurred (two whole episodes, which frankly says something about the kind of mortality rate we've been experiencing for Series 2).  Episode 13 compensates for this by managing to pack in no less three more deaths before the series is through.  There are a whole lot of loose ends to be tied up here, and by now it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that two of the major character arcs are going to result in the deaths of the characters in question.  But before we get to those, we haven't killed off a random Missus in a long, long time (four whole episodes in fact), and there are at least three of them left standing, so let's all tip our hats to what appears to have been a bizarre tradition for this particular series for the very last time.

Episode 12 climaxes with the long-awaited showdown between Fox and Scarface.  Despite Scarface getting an early lead, it is Fox who finally emerges as the victor – but of course, he cannot actually kill Scarface because that would make him no better than he.  Ultimately, Fox has to take the higher moral ground and let Scarface go, and while Fox is able to preserve his integrity in doing so, it comes at a cost to Mrs. Rabbit.  Once Scarface has recovered from his battle injuries, he falls back into his old habits of stalking the outskirts of Farthing land in search of easy prey.  It seems that Scarface has long since crossed the point from which he could have backed down from the conflict with Fox, and that he now intends to carry on with his vendetta with the Farthing animals until it leads, inevitably, to his destruction (which won't be very far from now).

Now, Mrs. Rabbit was something of an iconic character, at least as far as the supporting characters went - she was considered important enough to get her own plastic figure among a series of Farthing Wood toys manufactured by Hornby (no other minor character received this honour), and her whole "Don't panic!" shtick (as totally unoriginal as it was - see Clive Dunn's character from Dad's Army) was frequently quoted and referenced by fans of the series.  The Farthing Wood Friends tie-in magazine also featured her quite prominently, in always including an image of her and her catchphrase above the bit where they told you how to order back issues. So I was frankly rather surprised to see her killed off in as abrupt a fashion as this.  But kill her off they did.

HORROR FACTOR: 6.  The execution here is more or less identical to Mrs. Vole’s death, only Mrs. Rabbit goes down a lot more noisily than did Mrs. Vole.  Hearing her cry out for help might make this death seem more horrific to some, although in my view it was a little ill-judged for them to slip in one final "Don't panic!" before Scarface dashes off with her.  On the one hand, it seems only appropriate that those should be her final words - it has, after all, been her character's running gag.  On the other, she says it right after Scarface looks to have already broken her neck, which makes the line seem awkwardly pasted on and, consequently, robs the moment of a lot of its potential horror.  Maybe I’m just getting tired of this particular manner of death, and of the fact that Series 2 had such a transparent and totally inexplicable preference for killing off the female supporting characters (even when, as was the case with the Rabbits, the female was clearly the more popular of the pairing).  Honestly, it vexed me as a nine year old and it still vexes me today.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 1. This death is a drag through and through, its sole purpose being to demonstrate that Scarface is beyond redemption.  It does at least lead onto one of my all-time favourite Owlisms - "Even a fool can be wise after the event.  But can he then be called wise?"

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 4. Not really played for tears, although the shots of Mr. Rabbit fretting and later mourning for his wife are enough to drive home a sense of what a loss this is for the rabbits.

RATING: 11

Conversations By A Californian Swimming Pool (A Sweet Disaster)

"Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool" by David Hopkins from Sleeping Weazel on Vimeo.

The only two dimensional animation of the Sweet Disaster series, Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool is also (as the title might indicate) one of the wordier entries into the series, being the only film in which the dialogue takes the form of a two-way discussion (Dreamless Sleep has no dialogue, while Babylon, Death of a Speechwriter and Paradise Regained each contain only one speaking character). The featured voices (courtesy of Julia Hills and Philip Manikum) are those of two former First Ladies, who reflect upon a variety of topics relating to communists, nuclear warfare and their husbands' degraded physical anatomies as said husbands indulge in a bit of horseplay in an outside swimming pool.  Conversations by a Californian Swimming Pool was directed by Andrew Franks, whose other contribution to Sweet Disaster was Paradise Regained.

Conversations has a notably more playful and surrealist vibe than the other Sweet Disaster films (the electronic soundtrack by Martin Kiszko, coupled with the sheer oddness of much of the imagery, gives it the vibrancy of a contemporary pop music video), although the swipes, aimed here at Ronald Reagan and at US foreign policy, are no less scathing.  The two ex-Presidents, seen only in their swimming trunks and splashing around in a distinctly infantile manner, come off as predictably ludicrous figures, although things take on a more sinister turn when we follow them below the water surface and see a barrage of imagery - some of it weird, much of it utterly macabre - unfolding against a backdrop of square pool tiles.  The swimming pool, it seems, is a gigantic burial ground (one of the film's favourite techniques is to hint at the decay lurking beneath the affluence, hence why we later see a fly buzzing around the surface of the pool), and the bizarre chlorine-drenched fantasies of the two former Presidents offer an acidulous blend of buffoonery and horror.  The scene in which the ex-Presidents are seen obliterating various communist figures with futuristic ray guns recalls how closely interlinked aspects of Reagan's career were with the Star Wars fixation which had permeated the zeitgeist of the time - both his reference to the Soviet Union as being an "Evil Empire" and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Reagan's proposed space-based anti-ballistic missile system, popularly dubbed "Star Wars" by a media which widely deemed the initiative as belonging to much the same realm of science fiction fantasy as George Lucas's 1977 film.  Reagan was keen to promote the notion that nuclear warfare was little more than the logical extension of an ongoing battle between Good and Evil, a rhetoric arguably better suited to the sensibilities of a Hollywood narrative than to conflict in the real world.  Here, the battle for US supremacy is framed within the context of a childish pool game, with the commentary of the ex-Presidents' wives emphasising just how delicately the fate of the world hung in the balance ("one telephone call") and the skeletal remains at the bottom of the pool signalling the graveness of the potential consequences.

These sequences are framed within yet another context - the rather snarky discussion between the two former First Ladies, which cumulates in a mutual joke regarding how, although it is never explicitly stated, the stresses of the Cold War have affected their husbands' abilities to satisfy them sexually ("really, they're not much fun").  The two woman are shallow and cynical much as their husbands are childish and absurd, and the vocal performances from Hills and Manikum are both excellent, conveying perfectly the snark, vapidness and bored indifference which stands in contrast to the wordless raucousness of the two ex-Presidents.

The decay and physical degradation of the human body is a recurring theme of Conversations, beginning with the former First Ladies' reflections on how each of their husbands has been physically compromised by their years of service in the White House ("there are parts of them missing" as Hills' character observes).  One of them lost a kidney in an assassination attempt, while the other has a pacemaker installed in his heart (here, it's difficult to miss the pun on "peacemaker", with Hills' bored and oft-repeated remark, "If you say so", slyly undermining the suggestion).  We might notice, meanwhile, the rather striking manner in which their character designs differ from those of their husbands - whereas the two ex-Presidents are depicted as graceless, overgrown schoolboys, the former First Ladies have an almost inhuman, vaguely sinister guise, what with their lack of certain corporeal features.  They themselves have been rendered with parts of them missing - they lack hands (the drinks glass that Manikum's character is "holding" appears to move all by itself), and their heads are mostly invisible, with facial features protruding from long, pole-like necks and their hairpieces unattached to their bodies (in another of the film's surreal sight gags, their hair is buoyed upwards as they practice breathing techniques - their comments upon the importance of proper circulation adding in further nods to the fragility of the human body, and those on complexion seeming particularly ironic given their lack of fully-formed faces).  Their wiry frames and the recurring emphasis on their clothing, which changes at multiple points over the course of the film, gives them the appearance of coat hangers, or of shop window mannequins, and with it a superficial, materialistic vibe, which acts as a further symbol of affluence (and hints that, in spite of their complaints, both women are living comfortably as a result of their husbands' activities).  At the same time, the grotesqueness of their depleted, almost skeletal forms hints, much like the fly circling above the pool, at a macabre underbelly to all this luxury, the thin line between life and annihilation being continuously evoked in their repeated emphasis on the "one telephone call" that would, in the words of Manikum's character, have "got the problem out of the way".  As the two women snicker about what's left of their husbands, the mass of human remains seen lining the bottom of the pool shows this physical degradation at its most horrific and provides a gruesome contrast to the levity of their musings.

In the end, Manikum's character draws a line under the ribbing with the assertion that, "It's time for them to get out of the pool.  God knows what they get up to in there."  There's the insinuation, yet again, that these former presidents are little more than overgrown kids whose primary impulses are to butt heads and make giant splashes, but it also hints toward a darker side to these games of childish empowerment, as something that the world cannot afford to underestimate or turn its back on.  For fun, as we have been told, was not part of God's plan for the universe.

Uncle (1996)

Before he went onto create the Academy Award-winning short Harvie Krumpet (2003) and the feature film Mary and Max (2009), Australian claymation animator Adam Elliot kick-started his career with a trilogy of shorts based (somewhat loosely, as Elliot indicates) upon his relationships with various male family members: Uncle (1996), Cousin (1998) and Brother (1999).  The three shorts, combining greyscale aesthetics with Elliot's now-familiar bug-eyed stop motion models, follow a similar narrative format - a collection of miniature anecdotes in which the narrator (voiced in all cases by William McInnes) attempts to piece together his various recollections and impressions of said family figure (invariably, these are all relations who, for one reason or another, no longer play an active role in the narrator's life), blending the banal with the eccentric and, on occasion, the truly tragic.  The result is a vivid, charming and haunting picture of who each relation was, but also one which leaves a number of deliberate gaps, hinting at further aspects of their life and character which were either unknown or not understood by the narrator.  The full human, now gone, remains a mystery; this is what still exists of them in recollection.

The first of the trilogy, Uncle, made while Elliot was studying at the Victorian College of the Arts and based upon a composite of eight different uncles from Elliot's life, gives us a portrait of a man in his retirement years, and of the various quirks, qualities and contradictions observed by his nephew in their interactions.  We do not, at any point, learn the name of this man, but we learn much about his intense hatred of snails, which seemed at odds with his generally very gentle and tolerant nature, his fondness for burning various household items in his incinerator, and his devotion to his prized lemon tree, which he by turns urinated on and adorned with fairy lights.  While it cemented the tone for the rest of the trilogy, and for Elliot's subsequent work, Uncle is unique in the family trilogy in focusing upon an elderly figure (Cousin and Brother deal with much younger relations), the underlying narrative of the short charting the increasing isolation and physical decline of the titular character.  After the death of his wife (in one of the film's darker spots we learn that she took her own life by ingesting ant poison), his primary sources of companionship become his pet chihuahua, Reg, and a pair of Mormon missionaries who pay him regular visits (a relationship which clearly made the narrator feel uneasy, although the missionaries remain one of the uncle's few steadfast sources of moral support to the end).  Animals tend to be ill-fated in Elliot's shorts - in fact, pet loss is one of the unifying themes of the family trilogy (a fixation Elliot attributes to his failed childhood ambitions of becoming a veterinarian) - so you can bet that sweet-faced little Reg isn't going to make it through this intact.

 

Uncle does not offer an uplifting or comforting depiction of the aging process.  The film follows the titular figure as he goes from earning the awe and admiration of the narrator (then a small child) by twisting a pipe cleaner into the shape of a spider, to his inevitable deterioration and, finally, death within the alien confines of a hospice.  In between, the unnamed uncle is seldom afforded much in the way of dignity (exemplified by the close-up shot of his exposed buttock crack as he tends to his piss-soaked lemon tree) and for all of his eccentricities, his existence largely seems to flicker between dullness and forlornness (his declension in the narrator's eyes is apparent in an anecdote regarding one Christmas in which the family humoured him during his feeble attempt at pretending to be Santa).  And yet the narrator's affection for him is evident at all times, ensuring that the film never takes on a mean-spirited or derisive vibe.  Certainly, we genuinely feel for the uncle, and the final moments of the film, which concern the uncle's near-complete loss of autonomy (to the extent that the last semblance of "control" in his life comes in fastening his dentures to his clothing while he sleeps for fear of them being stolen by other patients), come off as utterly heart-breaking.  As do the words of wisdom he dispenses to his nephew shortly before his total decline, which convey the terrors and frustrations of feeling that one has reached the end of the road and is left with nowhere to go beyond one's reminiscences: "Life can only be understood backwards, but you have to live it forwards."  The feeling that this man's best days are now behind him is somewhat abated by us sensing that his life was never a particularly exciting one to begin with, and yet his final epiphany, that life's greatest joys are to be found in the very simplest of experiences and pleasures, leaves him, finally, with a glimmer of nobility.

Availability: Uncle can be found on Disc 2 of the Cinema 16 World Short Films DVD release.  This includes a commentary from Adam Elliot, although he has very little to say there about Uncle specifically.