177: Netflix miniseries Episode 2 Part 1: Kehaar

[@SJHFoto]

I didn't notice Holly being in the shovel of the construction vehicle! Good catch!

[@thewatershipdownpodcast1300]

I only just noticed! 🙂

[@SJHFoto]

The seagull is Peter Capaldi!?!?! COOL! He did this and Paddington!

[@thewatershipdownpodcast1300]

I just learned something...

[@Higurashi_otaku]

Also watched the second part, so I should be able to catch up fully. The Raid how it is called was for me a mixed bag of really good scenes and bad scenes. A highlight for me of this miniseries is the portrayal of the destruction of Sandleford. The 1978 movie used a disturbing, horrifying distorted portrayal almost psychedelic, that is quoted as the most traumatizing scene of the movie for many (for me it is second, Blackavar is not to top). The miniseries showed, that a dramatich portrayal with the perfect use of music can work much better: feeling the desperation of the digging and panicking rabbits with the rising of the music leaves a much deeper impact of a tragedy happen than the traumatizing approach of the 1978 movie. Unfortunately of the rest of these ten minutes I disliked alot: for example Hazel keeping this story for himself and acting on this account to not decide to raid Nuthanger Farm. Why not tell anyone his reasons? Yes, this makes Hazel look weak as a leader. In the book the raid on Nuthanger Farm is his weakest moment too, but atleast he acts strong when laying out his plans. The Kehaar introduction feels weird, the bird crashes from the sky and in seconds Hazel comes up with a plan to use him for finding does instead of first making proper friends of him. This takes away alot of the dynamic between the rabbits and Kehaar, that was so well established in book, movie and even in the 1999 TV series. Kehaar than not agreeing to their plan is just a consequence of what we see first. And than there are good scenes like the digging and bucks actually fighting each other over a doe. But the take with the white blindness is very weird: I see the problem not so much with the anachronism (after all we don't know exactly at which time Watership Down is taking place at all, is it when Adams told the story to his children or is it from when he was a child ? ), but with the fact that the claim is that a rabbit in their group has a disease that could wipe out the whole bunch of them.

[@SJHFoto]

I don't like Kehaar's attitude, nor the way they have Bigwig here. In the book, he among all the rabbits was Kehaar's best friend!

[@thewatershipdownpodcast1300]

Exactly. And that was a very touching friendship.

[@SJHFoto]

I really don't like how the bucks are digging to hide from Ephrafa-the story is all out of order! And the Hawkbit/Dandelion tussle shows how the dynamic has changed since they made Strawberry a female. Such a shame-I really hate how they redo things like that!!!

[@thewatershipdownpodcast1300]

I can understand that.

[@SJHFoto]

Having Holly encounter Ephrafa so early seems rushed to me-especially in a 4 hour movie. Why didn't he encounter Cowslip like he did in the book? I don't think any rendition has that, and I always liked that scene

[@thewatershipdownpodcast1300]

One of the BBC radio plays includes it from memory.

[@SJHFoto]

I don't know enough about British history to take offence at Kehaar being Scottish. I thought the whole objective is to make him sound exotic and foreign. To me, Scottish is just as foreign as Russian or German to an English person (I didn't know otherwise) I actually never thought any of the accents were making fun of another nation-I thought the humour of Kehaar came from his goofiness (not the nation he is from, but his personal goofiness. But what do I know? People said Jar Jar Binks is racist. I knew the voice actor was Black, but I thought he was personally goofy, not that the movie is portraying all Black people as goofy (especially since Capt Pinaka, and Mace Windu are both Black, and serious characters in the movie)

[@thewatershipdownpodcast1300]

It's an interesting issue. I do think we have gone too far in the fear of how we portray "foreigness". I know what motivates this...but, as I pointed out here, from a british perspective, the result can be unfortunate.