Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

"Something broke through the terror--flickerings, fragments of his short life, the random events that delivered him to this, his moment of annihilation. As terror gave way to exhaustion, Babe turned to his attacker, his eyes filled with one simple question: Why?"

    fuck my fucking world. its been a long time since a movie has made me cry this dramatically. babe: pig in the city has the exterior shell of a 90's children's romp, but thats merely a vehicle for telling a deeply resonate and mournful story about the death of empathy in our industrialized hyper-capitalist hellscape shitworld. but pardon me im getting ahead of myself.

    its a movie about talking animals, thats probably the central and most obvious thing going on. they have like airbud-style cg mouth movements. and ok, im with you. i know where your heads at. i know when its like theres this film or piece of media or whatever that you wouldnt expect to be amazing but then someone tells you its good and then thats a fun conversation starter and then a bunch of people start echoing that opinion because it makes you seem interesting when you say babe: pig in the city is an eloquent commentary on capitalism. listen to me!!! look at this fucking film!!!

look at what they did with the MONKEYS!!!!

    ok you get it. how does this film do what it supposedly does? how does the pig end up in the big city? well, its a sequel to babe, a film ive never seen before but am now realizing i desperately need to see. babe is about a prized hog who is the best sheepherder ever or something (im going purely off info i surmised from the beginning of this film). until one day! babe accidentally brutally maims his human dad in a well repairing accident (which yes is depicted on screen about as graphically as you could for a G movie) and now the Babe Estate has no one to tend to the farm and no money. so babe and his human mom head to the big city to take up an offer to have babe show off his sheepherding talents at some fair for financial compensation. because of pretty much no reason outside of the unyielding brutality of the world, the two miss their flight in a layover and have to bunk up in this random city where the animals are cruel and the police are crueler. a series of unfortunate events occur, babe becomes separated from his mom and is left to his own devices surrounding by city-slinkin' talking animals like chimps and dogs and cats and whatever.

    the animals are cruel to babe, horribly cruel. there's one scene where babe is kidnapped by the chimp family and forced to be apart of a clown show for sick kids with promise of reward. after the show falls apart and the clown FUCKIN DIES, this exchange happens:

BABE: Just tell me. There is no reward, is there? Was there ever such a thing?

WIFE CHIMP: As Bob always says-- What do you say, Bob?
BOB (HUBBY CHIMP): It's all illusory-- it's ill, and it's for losers.
WIFE CHIMP: Naw, that wasn't it. You know, that stuff about no yesterday and no tomorrow.
BOB: All you got is this actual "now-ness." The past is gone, and as for the future-- [ Blows Raspberry ]
WIFE CHIMP: Yeah. No guarantees, my little pork pie. It's a dog-eat-dog world and there's not enough dog to go around. So you look after number whatsy. Get my drift?

    afterwards, babe looks longingly out the window at the almost fantasy like sprawling cityscape. the narrator reads:

"It's tough if you're a pig alone in the city. It can leave you empty. And whom do you turn to? Where was the boss's wife? He thought it might help if he could recall Fly and Rex and their steadfast words, and he tried really hard, but he could barely remember the face of his beloved boss. The farm was fading. It had become just a comforting dream, an echo."

    the film is about the apathy of industry and the dangers of unattended capitalism, how it kindles selfishness in the human soul. it brought me to tears, really fuckin' guttural tears. but this film isn't nihilist. at its core, the film truly believes in kindness. babe is kind to the animals around him, despite their ravenous violence and vitriol. babe shows kindness, even to the dog that chased babe into a river, babe responds by saving the dog from drowning. even when all is lost and animal control herds off all the animals to a testing facility, even when an animal control pole is stuck around his neck, babe pushes on to save their lives. a duck friend from the farm named ferdinand tries to convince babe that they should go home instead:

FERDINAND: Pig! You're unraveling here! "A," they are long gone. "B," they were not nice people. "C" is for kamikaze and "D" is for delusional, which is what you are in the head!
BABE: Ferdy.
FERDINAND: Face it. You're just a little pig in the big city. What can you possibly do?
What can anyone do? Why even try?
(BABE turns around and sees one of the stray dogs in a creaking doggy wheelchair, wandering aimlessly in search of his friends. BABE turns to his newfound monkey friend.)

BABE: Would you help me off with this, please?
(the monkey aids BABE in removing the animal control pole and the two of them walk on into the rainy night)

    elegant. fucking elegant. not a resounding speech. just a profound image, a doggy in need of help, and the unstoppable empathy of our hero. what a beautiful fucking film.

     this films eye for visual metaphors is incredible, there's one sprinkled in every beat of this film. this write-up would be so boring if i was here relaying every single one to you. instead i'll say that one of the most valuable storytelling devices i discovered in this film was the power of symbolism. symbols and metaphors and small stories will say so much more about the greater context and message of a film than any soapbox speech could. this film is chock full of profoundly moving images and scenes that contribute immensely in this films success in articulating very complex, ambitious, and deeply political themes.

    this reminds me, theodore is probably the deepest, most interesting orangutan character ever put to screen. see him above clasping a fish bowl before his capture, and see him above that at the stain glass window mourning the loss of his owner. he's enters the film for the first time from offscreen as the chimp family is trying to figure out what the fuck kinda animal babe is:

THELONIUS: You drooling imbeciles. This is an omnivorous mammal of the order Ungulata, an inconsequential species with no other purpose... than to be eaten by humans.
This lowly, handless, deeply unattractive mud-lover... is a pig.

    hes like a harbinger of the logical, hes an objectivist douchebag, but throughout the film he is trampled by authority figures, whether it be the police or the authoritative hand of fate, the death of his caregiver. he is stripped of his dignity and made a victim of the snobbish values that he embodies. he's even literally stripped after being kidnapped by the scientists in the final act of the film and as everyone is making a break for it courtesy of the pig, thelonius halts the operation: 

CHIMP KID: Wh-- Where's Thelonius?
BOB: What are you doing?
(thelonius is dressing himself in the corner)
THELONIUS: I-- I'm not dressed.
WIFE CHIMP: But, Thelonius, you're an orangu-thingy.
THELONIUS: I'm not dressed.
BABE: Mr. Thelonius? Time to go.
(thelonius ignores babe and continues dressing, despite security being hot on their trail)

     this is maybe the most complex commentary in the film. as if traumatized by the formalities of the big city, thelonius puts his life and the lives of his companions at risk by getting dressed instead of escaping. thelonius clings to this ego, his selfish ideals, even as his life is destroyed before his eyes by goons acting upon the very same ideals. idunno. could just be a funny dressing monkey scene.

    i've analyzed about all i can analyze with this film. i am blown away, wasn't ready for this film in the slightest. a truly fantastic film with a lot of really great ideas to offer. i hope the animals were treated nice? <:)

FINAL SCORE:

9.5 / 10