You'll find your late husband is not unknown in these woods...

"No longer can be conduct ourselves as rats. We know too much."

I had to take a step forward here and state for the record that this movie, and this probably isn't news, is awesome. Everything from the aesthetic - that gnarled, deformed perspective on everyday surroundings - to the characters, all spectacularly articulate. For instance, there is no "comic-relief" character to Secret of NIMH, only Jeremy the magpie. But he is not "comic-relief" as contemporary children's schlock has come to understand it - he is amusing through virtue of his personality. He doesn't spout off one-liners. Aunty Shrew comes a close second.

I think Mrs. Brisby is the most definite example of bravery in an animated protagonist. The film at no point shirks from showing that she is afraid - dead afraid - of her surroundings (a hostile universe which makes little time for little mice and their mice families), and yet for her children she creeps forward into the Great Owl's hollow - nudges further into the rose-bush amidst a kaleidoscope of strange anomalies - volunteers to drug Dragon the cat, if only to uphold the example set by her late husband.

And visually, the film is astounding. What other example can you give me of something so common-place as an Owl being twisted into something so terrifying? His nest is like something out of Dungeons & Dragons, but not out of the ordinary, it is a matter of perspective and scale. Where a moth can cause such a racket and distress as a bat would to a human being, a spider the equivalent of a wolf. Cobwebs, and the clattering of small rodent bones to mark this great beast for its predatory nature. What a reserved, detached god it seems - taking the time to consult with this little mouse, whom he does not eat only because it isn't dark. 

There is something else to be said for the unsung stories of Johnathan and Aegis, as well. The latter being a cantakerous old one-legged geezer, we would never assume that he was the rodent equivalent of an Arthurian knight before Mrs. Brisby knew them. The way Nicodemus speaks of them reminds me of the way Obi-Wan Kenobi spoke of his relationship with and the fate of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, where the mystery itself is more engaging than the actual story.

I won't bother talking about the animation - because no amount of 3-D or CG I think can stand up against the colours, atmosphere, and magic of Secret of NIMH and come out the winner. The movie is a monument of its time.