The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass (Part 2 of 3): The Last Unicorn

 My wife is currently in the midst of taking her qualifying exams for her Ph.D.. And so, last night, I atavistically devolved into a little child: I was relegated to our bedroom with a pot of decaf, some cookies, and a DVD copy of Rankin and Bass’s masterpiece, The Last Unicorn.

And now, having had breakfast at a local breakfast joint, Kalie’s Family Restaurant, a couple of real cups of coffee, I’m now poised and ready to continue my series, The Animation Masterpieces of Rankin and Bass.

For those of you who are interested, in my previous post, I reviewed Rankin and Bass’s animated adaption of The Hobbit. Tomorrow I’m going to review my personal favorite, the less widely known flick, The Flight of Dragons.

But first, The Last Unicorn. Be forwarned. This review is a little different. I don’t say anything about the film’s style. Thus, it is more a nostalgic remembrance/homage to it, a sentimental remembrance of the lesson I took away from it as a kid.

I’m not going to waste time summarizing the classic work this film is based on, Peter S. Beagle’s novel of the same name. It appears on many “best works of modern fantasy” lists and is widely considered to be part of the fantasy canon (right next to, say, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin). Suffice it to say this is the story of the last unicorn in the world and her attempt to bring unicorns back.

Let me be clear: this isn’t the most “macho” of movies. It’s a love story about a unicorn. When I was first introduced to this movie (around 10), I felt slightly reluctant to watch it, pressured as I was to love football, baseball, wrestling, and camping and not Atari. How I got over this feeling, came to love unicorns, is an important part of this review/homage.

I remember: when I first saw The Last Unicorn it was broadcast on television, and I was irritated by how the wizard looked: Schmendrick the Magician had teeny-tiny legs, NO BEARD, and was wearing tights! This disturbed me because as a little kid because I had a very clear idea of what wizards were supposed to look like: long gray beards, pointy hats, robes with stars and moons on them.

As I watched, however, I made this connection, came to terms with the irritation Schmendrick’s appearance caused me, and thereby glimpsed the simple yet powerful “message” of the film: “appearances” and are often deceiving.

Sure, you may think a 10 year old is too little to extrapolate “messages” or “lessons” from stories. I beg to differ. I think "sponge-minded" kids are often much more inclined to try to seek out a didactic message or “point,” if you will, in the media they consume than us "rock-minded" jaded adults. That being neither here nor there, trust me on this: I got it. The message of the film, that is. That appearances on deceiving.

In spite of the fact that Schmendrick looked like a twerpy sort of guy, he was actually a powerful magician. In spite of the fact that “Lady Amalthea” looked like a beautiful human princess, she was really a unicorn. Consider the entire sequence of Mommy Fortuna’s circus. Some summary: this witch lady has all of these animals—a lion, a snake, a monkey—bespelled to look like creatures from mythology. People fall into the trap of her illusion and believe in them. I won’t give away a cool part of the film, where one creature—who, like the others, appears to be a creature of mythology—actually is one. But, here we have it again, the message: appearances are deceiving.

Through some twist of thought I applied this lesson to the film and as a little kid I began to happily celebrate unicorns, to doodle them in my notebooks, to draw them shooting lasers out of their eyes.

My logic, though not as elegantly put, went something like this: you, sir, may think unicorns are just for girls. But, sir, they aren’t. They’re awesome. They’re a symbol for how the surface of the world is an illusion. And that there are other things, beyond what we can glimpse with our senses, that are sometimes more and sometimes less fantastical than this life.

In reality it probably went something more like this: I like unicorns, so @#$% you.

Pretty deep thoughts for a little kid. You can believe it. Or not. But take this story of my first experience with the film as a testimony to its artistic power. It was powerful enough to make a little, self-conscious, asthmatic kid afraid of being called a nerd (who is now quite happy to accept that appellation) come to love unicorns as a kind of protest.