Review of Bambi (1942) by Milkshake_Vm — 23 Jun 2019

Bambi is an allegory on life. From birth to Adult hood. It so perfectly captures the personalities of newborns and their interaction with those of similar age and the beauty and evil that the world will throw at you. From kids saying almost rude stuff and their parents teaching them how to be civil, even though to them its not rude and coming from a place far from malicious. The film even cutely captures the first breath of life and how such young babies perceive the world. It beautifully makes the audience scared of what Bambi the doe is scared of too, even though its nothing to be afraid of. It wonderfully shows how Bambi comes to accept the world and learn danger from friend, love from rival, and so on. This coming of age tale has many tropes as such aiming at the subtle lessons of growing up. The film also excellently achieves a naturalistic feel of the wild animals. It brilliantly makes you empathize with the fauna. Nothing more highlights this than the fear of danger and the movements of the Deer. Thunder roars and everyone is quiet and nonchalant but Bambi, Bambi is frantic. You could almost imagine a real doe hiding under their mother, or perhaps even your dog cowering under the couch. You get a glimpse at their perspective and empathize through Bambi. This fundamentally is what makes a good child's movie. The ability to empathize and learn. A child too learns with Bambi to not be afraid. A child learns through Bambi what perhaps their dog might be feeling. A child learns through Bambi loss, love and loyalty. The deers also perk up and twizzle their ears to the faint sounds of danger while, with the audience, trying to decide if indeed it is danger. A common thing deers do yes but brilliantly makes you see why, and ultimately empathize. This is why the movie is a fantastic kids movie ultimately. It is great at making you empathize. Almost too much. The only downfall of this, and this is totally just me maybe seeing too much with a political lens. Is its anti hunting propaganda. The antagonist is "man". the faceless evil behind the fear of all animals. Whilst I wish perhaps man was just one danger instead of the sole reason of danger I can respect its decision to push the moral enigma of poaching. Its also worth noting the film is NEARLY 100 years old. So context may blur the lines of relate-ability as hunting laws today are in fact quite moral.

Ultimately however, no film of recent times has made me cry as much, empathize as much, and hate man as much. Whilst the latter isn't particularly a convincing reason for a good kids movie you've got to admire its achievement in artistically representing such an evil. I may have under sold the over all mood of the film however by focusing on my only issue with it. The film is happy, and as a 19 year old male I haven't seen any movie teach me as much about growing up than this movie. In my eyes this movie is a fantastic coming of age film with clear cut chapters, great character writing and interaction, and teaches easy to understand lessons for kids and even some subtle underlying ones that even the mature audience can learn from.

*was tempted to rate 9 because of the anti-man/anti-hunting propaganda but decided to give benefit of the doubt considering its from a different Era in the middle of WW2. Also whilst it may have distracted me a bit, the villain of "Man", altough faceless was much more well written than most villains. It makes me almost hate man which is more than most villains achieve. You fear them. You loathe them. But even worse, you don't know them. When they're going to come. How they do hunt. They're an enigma. I've written a lot about this for such a very small portion of the movie, but theirs definitely a beautiful horror element I wish some films would learn from. But don't let my over analysis of a 5 minute villain distract you from not watching this. I thus give it a 10 as a "contextual" masterpiece.