Dreams to Dream

There's a scene, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West which may be the most hauntingly beautiful and sad thing I've seen in animation.

This one.

That cat, Cat R. Waul has tricked a large group of mice into coming out west so he can take first their money, and then their lives.

The American Tails series is essentially a metaphor for several conditions faced by immigrants to America. The first film was set in 1885, and Tanya and Fievel's family are Russian Jews, who are continually victimised by the cats, which tend to represent any corrupt power they need to. They come to America believing that there are no cats there, and the streets are paved with cheese. They quickly find this isn't the case, and are forced to pay the cats not to eat them. They beat them, of course, but then there was this sequel.

So, Cat R. Waul. A dreadful piece of work. If this wasn't meant to be a kid's film, I've no doubt he'd shoot and/or torture his associates occasionally, just so none of them got any ideas about disrespecting him (incidentally, that worked very well for Captain Hook in the original book of Peter Pan).

But, when he hears this young mouse singing, he's enchanted. He doesn't notice, in that scene or later, that the other cats wonder what's got into him, or that they're making fun of him. Considering that Miss Kitty, the other cat in the scene, doesn't seem to notice, the fragile bond between Cat R. Waul and Tanya seems entirely personal.

This doesn't change Cat R. Waul as a person. He's still perfectly willing to kill all the other mice, only panicking when "the Diva" seems about to be caught in the trap. Since he and Tanya have no contact with each other other than this (and she never really mentions him), he's never forced to confront this hypocrisy. At the end he suffers a symbolic death, and is, of course, never seen again, until another villian is needed for one of the spin offs.

I guess I can't really sum up why that scene touched me.

Incidentally, An American Tail, released in 1986, was the first Don Bluth film to beat out a Disney film at the box office, grossing more than Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (also a very good film about mice). All Dogs Go to Heaven, which I've also discussed here, another Don Bluth film, was later released opposite The Little Mermaid. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West was not directed by Don Bluth, and went up against Beauty and the Beast.

You can see why they tend to be cult films.

Don Bluth against Disney, in some ways, mirrors the development of Sacnoth against Squaresoft. Don Bluth originally worked for Disney, as the creators of Koudelka were refugees from Square. Interesting bit of trivia.