Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller made a parable that still resonates today. Not just a kid\u2019s movie, the story of Babe and his talking animal friends deals in both hope and regret. It\u2019s a surprise 20 years later.<\/b>
\nA deep melancholy lies at the heart of Babe: Pig in the City, and is felt by all of the film\u2019s many human and animal characters \u2014 even the ever-optimistic pig. Now 20 years old, George Miller\u2019s idiosyncratic tale still carries the emotional heft that audiences turned away from in 1998. This was not the \u201ckid\u2019s movie\u201d anyone was expecting.
But the film\u2019s sometimes overwhelming atmosphere of regret is tempered by hope: no matter the wrongs we\u2019ve caused, Miller suggests, it\u2019s always possible to redeem ourselves with thought and kindness.
Pig In The City finds Babe \u2014 the \u201csheep-pig\u201d that could do no wrong \u2014 committing what in any family film would amount to an atrocity. The pig\u2019s attempt to help Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) repair his well pump lands Hoggett in traction, a likely horrifying sight for young viewers. That action sets off a plot that takes Babe to the city of Metropolis, but the bulk of Pig in the City is devoted to a series of rich and emotional B-stories about regret, spider-webbing out from Babe\u2019s own atonement.
Hoggett doesn\u2019t blame the pig for his accident, but Babe blames himself. As the ironic refrain of \u201cnon, je ne regrette rien\u201d recurs on the soundtrack, Babe amasses sadness and guilt. But he doesn\u2019t dwell on or beat himself up over it. The pig simply sets about righting as many wrongs as he can. He\u2019s barely aware of the situation with Hoggett\u2019s wife Esme (Magda Szubanski), the bank and lapsed rent payments at the farm, but he can see the injustice and unfairness in front of him in Metropolis.
Babe comes to the city accompanied by a cloud of guilt, though he\u2019s not the only animal on the block with demons to face. Metropolis is a hostile place, full of angry punks, bullying police, crazed gun nuts and animal-hating bourgeoisie. Nearly everyone has some hurt in their past \u2014 either hurt visited upon them, or worse, hurt they\u2019ve caused.
One incident has enormous emotional repercussions for both Babe and the apes he meets in the tiny hotel around which the film revolves. In one the film\u2019s many Rube Goldberg-esque ballets of chaos, Babe takes part in a clown show at a children\u2019s hospital, but accidentally causes a disaster, doing ruinous damage to the set, the hospital, and Fugly Floom (Mickey Rooney). Later, in the film\u2019s finale, Babe disrupts a fundraising event for the very hospital he nearly burned down earlier on.
Babe is arguably to blame, and he immediately understands the gravity of what he\u2019s done, but it\u2019s orangutan Thelonius who most directly takes on the guilt of his eventual death. \u201cI tried to wake him,\u201d he says, staring at the ambulance taking away his former master. \u201cBut he wouldn\u2019t wake up.\u201d
Thelonius\u2019 companions, chimpanzees Bob and Zootie, have an even bleaker outlook. They speak almost exclusively in grim platitudes, exhibiting a borderline nihilistic outlook on life. Hardly surprising, coming from characters who\u2019ve spent years in hiding, and in servitude to their clown master Fugly. Babe\u2019s arrival causes a rift in the apes\u2019 established order of things, with Thelonius declaring his only purpose is to be eaten. Subsequently, the chimps attempt to get Babe out of their hair by sending him to be killed by pack of murderous dogs, setting off a new chain of guilty consciences.
The most vicious of those dogs, the Bull Terrier (Stanley Ralph Ross), is introduced as a villain, but he experiences the most elaborate of epiphanies. Chasing Babe along the city\u2019s Venice-inspired canals, in an unlikely homage to the late Nicolas Roeg\u2019s Don\u2019t Look Now, he ends up suspended by his own chain, dropped face first into the canal.
As all the other gathered animals watch him drown in silence or turn away, it\u2019s only Babe, full of empathy and compassion, who reaches out to help the creature that moments earlier had pushed him nearly to, the narrator intones, \u201cthe moment of his annihilation.\u201d The terrier is changed by his near-death experience and rescue, verbally atoning for the violence he\u2019s wrought. The event turns him into Babe\u2019s most ardent supporter.
The apes\u2019 betrayal of Babe is never mentioned again, but their staunch, silent support of Babe after his near-death experience speaks louder than any apology. These characters understand they did wrong, and become markedly less outspoken against Babe afterwards. Perhaps their shame, their inability to communicate, prevents them from speaking up and apologising. One only needs look at their dialogue to see the pain in these characters\u2019 lives:
\u201cAll you got is this actual nowness. The past is gone, and as for the future?\u201d
\u201c[City life]\u2019s all illusory. It\u2019s ill, and it\u2019s for losers.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s a dog-eat-dog world, and there\u2019s not enough dog to go around, so you look after number…whatsie. Get my drift?\u201d
Babe wages war against this philosophy with the weapon of kindness. Simian and canine alike fall in line with a regime of clemency and acceptance that Babe, through sheer force of will, brings into effect. All these animals, most of them strays, are starving and suffering from profound psychological issues. Babe solves their collective food crisis through communism, essentially, doling out food to everyone \u2014 even the apes \u2014 with the Bull Terrier acting as enforcer. No looking after \u201cnumber whatsie\u201d here; the new benevolent dictator is Babe, the sheep-pig!
Babe: Pig in the City forces its likely young viewers to engage with these concepts and more. The film touches, to various degrees, on death, self-loathing, abandonment, distrust, and even suicide. The audience isn\u2019t coddled, and the film doesn\u2019t talk down to anyone. We are, all of us, subjects to unbearable emotions, and Pig in the City is a rare film that more or less encompasses all of them. It\u2019s grim stuff at times, even evoking the Holocaust at one point, but it\u2019s always turned around by simple acts of decency, from helping a dog to his feet to feeding all the dogs.
Babe: Pig in the City \u2019s messages ring clearer than ever in today\u2019s digital age, in which we are trained to viciously defend ourselves on all fronts, admitting flaws in public or atoning for what we\u2019ve done wrong is seen as a sign of weakness, and snark is a shield. Much like Miller\u2019s next live-action film Mad Max: Fury Road later reiterated, the Babe sequel teaches us that vulnerability isn\u2019t just okay, it\u2019s a virtue.
James Cromwell shows up again in the film\u2019s final shot to say \u201cthat\u2019ll do, pig,\u201d not just as a throwback to the original Babe, but because forgiveness isn\u2019t something you can ask for, but something you can be given. Many characters in this film have reason to ask for forgiveness, but none of them do. They simply admit their wrongdoings to themselves and others, and endeavour to improve their ways from then on. Much of the film\u2019s communication goes unspoken \u2014 or inferred, as with Cromwell\u2019s catchphrase \u2014 but nearly all of it reflects and radiates from Babe\u2019s unique willingness to talk about how he feels and get the work done.
A nuanced and exceptionally strange story about empathy, atonement, forgiveness and decency might not have been what audiences craved in the stabler 1990s, and indeed, Pig in the City was a box office flop upon release. But in today\u2019s environment of Twitter feuds, hate movements and wall-building, it feels absolutely vital. Critics and audiences have responded enthusiastically to the Paddington films\u2019 lighter exploration of similar ideas \u2014 just look at the cries for Paddington 2 Oscar nominations this year — but Babe: Pig in the City\u2019s doesn\u2019t fluff the pillow. There\u2019s weight to the hope, and struggle. The story set \u201ca little to the left of the twentieth century,\u201d might just hold some important lessons for the twenty-first.
Andrew Todd is a Montreal-based writer seen at outlets like Polygon, IGN, SlashFilm, Gameplanet, The Spinoff, and Birth. Movies. Death., where he is Gaming Editor. He also makes movies under the Mad Fox Films banner and is an enthusiastic patter of cats.<\/p>\n