Lingering Over the Lessons of ‘Babe’

You can tell a great movie by the way the audience lingers in their seats after the last scene, pretending to read all the credits, but in fact not wanting to exchange the movie’s world for the world outside the theater door.

So, it may seem strange that most of the people who linger after seeing “Babe” are adults; this film is generally described as child’s fare, and therefore it was truly special that it received a nomination this month for the best picture Oscar, an award more likely to go to serious drama.

“It seems a little story,” said “Babe’s” producer and writer George Miller on receiving the Golden Globe for best comedy film, three weeks after winning the National Society of Film Critics’ best picture award, “but it’s about the big things in life--mortality and having an unprejudiced heart.”

To understand what Miller means, look at “Babe’s” first scene. Darkened, faceless workers use electric prods to roust the mother away from her litter and into a slaughterhouse truck, leaving Babe the pig with only the lies surviving children tell themselves to cope with their parent’s mortality and their own.

Moving along to the story’s turning point, we find Babe, on the night before the shepherding competition, forced to confront the truth--he has come into this world for the purpose of dying. What is worse, he will probably die to satisfy the appetite of the Superior Being he loves, namely the farmer. The pig despairs. He tries to run away and is found huddled chilled and ill in the shadow of a gravestone. The lies that he had believed about his mother’s fate now threaten him with spiritual death.

The farmer rescues Babe from the graveyard. First, as an adoptive mother, he nurses the ailing pig with a baby bottle, and as an adoptive father, he lifts the pig’s spirit with the song and exuberant dance of a bonding ritual. The screen fills with grace, Babe heals from despair, then we are on our way to the sheep dog super bowl with a sheep farmer resolved to face public mockery for his faith in a pig’s ability to herd sheep by being courteous to them. Refusing to conform with “the way things are,” the farmer and Babe, each with “an unprejudiced heart,” shine with spiritual life.

Thus viewed plainly, the story relates less to childhood than to midlife crisis--when we face the fact that we shall die and, like Babe, ask, “What are any of us here for?” The film resolves midlife crisis by renewing our passion to practice our gifts in unity with all creatures and creation. “Babe” exalts love of life over fear of death.

To draw us through this renewal, “Babe’s” comic elements modulate and understate the film’s presentation of the serious, adult side of life. The comic elements operate in the foreground, while the serious elements work in the background. The flawless balance of foreground and background is the film’s great stylistic accomplishment. Similarly, combining prejudice and mortality in the metaphor of the food chain is a great, though undervalued thematic accomplishment. It puts prejudice in our laps with immediacy; for we are at the top of the chain. “Babe” doesn’t let us feel sympathy for the animals’ mortal condition without also feeling the tug of our own eating habits, of our own attachment to “the way things are.”

These accomplishments are eclipsed because the film’s special effects are so brilliant. Yet, the stylistic balance and thematic complexity make “Babe” the great movie it is rather than the talking-animal sentimental comedy for which it can be mistaken.

“Babe’s” master accomplishment is a narrative structure that tells the story in much the same way a symphony builds chords into recurring motifs. “Babe’s” motifs acquire more substance and evocative power as they double back on themselves and lace through one another. This kind of art differs from most movies because it doesn’t depend on suspense, surprise and other linear plot devices. Like songs and symphonies, “Babe” wears well. Most adults I know have seen it more than once, and their only problem in going yet again is persuading their kids to go along.

After all, only adults can emotionally internalize motifs like the death of the mother. We look at our kids sitting beside us in the theater and remember ourselves as children going to the movies with our own parents. The pathos doubles, and we allow ourselves to feel our heart’s yearning for a condition much better than “the way things are.” Experiencing this yearning “changes life in our valley forever,” as the narrator had promised in the film’s first scene. That is as much as we can ask of art and reason enough for accepting “Babe” as a great film for both child and adult.