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Brisby and the Secret of NIMH (1982), D. Bluth
A fascinating and terrible profession is that of a relentless reviewer (an extremist by nature and by choice, we might say), especially one without any compensation: a bit like the profession of living, with its sweet and gentle yoke, at times burdensome. The orthodox critic, rightly guided by an ethic of duty and commitment, instinctively feels, almost as an ethical imperative, the necessity to clear the field of the gross critical-ideological misconceptions that have plagued the scene and the metamusical, metacinematic, and metaliterary atmosphere of the past, tragicomic decades. Our work, therefore, is to be understood as a compensation for all the injustices stubbornly perpetrated against genuine masters, and at the same time as an anathematization of sordid clowns and mediocre plagiarists passed off as indispensable avant-gardists and/or innovators: when instead they were just annoying nuisances. We've already named a few, thus, serenely, concerning the musical domain, historically dominated by the sordid gnostic soldiery answering to the sinister salons (apart from "neofolk" and some enlightened sector of "shoegaze" and metal): others we will soon reveal to the precious audience we have, albeit virtually, before us.
Returning from a sublime, phantasmagoric concert by the "Europe" (at the "Atlantico," last November: it was an evening soaked with interstellar moods), one of the greatest ensembles of white music that the history of the West remembers, we paused on the urgency of composing this brief note, which can serve both as a declaration of intent and as a heartfelt proclamation to the four winds, which will presumably remain mostly unheard (if not, God forbid!, outraged): we are facing the textbook case of "vox clamantis in deserto."
"Brisby and the Secret of NIMH" (original "The Secret of NIMH") is a 1982 American animation with bookish origins, in the first direction by D. Bluth (who, with a gesture of a Western samurai, had left Walt Disney and its mephitic connections in 1979) and the music of the ingenious Eskimo J. Goldsmith. A true "dark cartoon" for adults, with a mythical-adventurous cut: we would like the avid reader to pause a little on this microcategory – or subgenre, if you will – to wisely introduce it into their own semantic taxonomy. The darkness and the subtly adult destination, under the guise of a purely superficial polish, lead to more than a comparison with AOR (ethical and aesthetic offshoot of "prog," already recently and shamelessly mocked in other contiguous domains): an analogy that we present, offering it to the sharp, intrepid hermeneutics of the reader, without however developing its considerable threads.
Brisby is a charming little mouse, widowed, who opposes an infernal master, who wants to till the land where the little creature lives with her large brood; the option of relocating to another place is initially impracticable, as one of her little ones is ailing. This tugs at the most hidden chords of the soul of the unsuspecting viewer, who would never expect such audacity in depicting the vertiginous emotions of the heart of the little one's mother. Brisby will eventually succeed in moving with the help of a handful of mice used as laboratory test subjects at N.I.M.H. ("National Institute of Mental Health"): ça va sans dire.
An engaging plot – that is founded on the weave of a healthy star-spangled manichaeism – rich in arcane and complex symbolisms and with a handful of characters for the anthology, which will remain forever within the folds of our indomitable European heart: among which stand out, above all, the edgy but wise Mr. Ages, an old friend of the husband who greatly assists Brisby, and the wacky crow Jeremy.
A superb, unrecognized classic of the early '80s: a cartoon of fear and emotion, which supported us in crossing the Tibetan bridge, just after having danced with swords: the guardianship of that mysterious threshold called childhood.
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