Girls just like unicorns, I guess

I never thought I was... or would be... the kind of girl who liked unicorns. But one day, I looked at my life and I realized, I am. I always have been. Ever since I was little... I've loved unicorns.

And how could I have been so blind to it?? It was always unicorns this, unicorns that. Lisa Frank puzzles in hallucinatory rainbow colors... The Last Unicorn book and film (Peter S. Beagle, 1968 and 1982 respectively)... this book by the brilliant Bruce Coville, a kid's anthology ("Treasury") of unicorn stories... the list goes on, probably.

The cover depicted above on the right is one of my favorite adult, scholarly books ever. It's basically a unicorn bible. And it's wonderful. I wish I could remember who the devil I loaned it to. A man, I think. A big man. I only have a vague image in my mind. Blast.

All the scans that follow come from the book on the right.

I've always wanted to dissect the beginning of The Last Unicorn film and compare it to the tapestry they based it on, namely "Tapestry No. 2" in the Hunt for the Unicorn series. Let's start with something that appears in a completely different tapestry (No. 6). The squirrel in the hazelnut tree.

  Here he is in the film... cutely nibbling on an acorn or something...

 And here he is in the tapestry.

Oh, and there's one more huge, major difference. It's the real reason I first became interested in examining this whole thing a bit closer.

In the real-life tapestry, the unicorn is about to get killed. In next few tapestries that follow it, the story becomes downright gruesome, and sad. I'm glad they took the hunters out for the movie version. See the still image from the film below.

You only get one tantalizingly short, blurry-ass glimpse of the whole scene at once, but the entire opening sequence is a series of detail shots... the woven texture disappears, and the animals briefly flicker to life...

 

With the lions roaring...

And the unicorn, at first supine, blessing the water with her horn (Shepard says it's a ritualistic purification of the water -- in fact a unicorn's horn renders any poison harmless) and rising...

 

 Other parallels include the partridges

 And the stag

 One of my favorite moments, the unicorn's reflection in the water. You see this happening over and over again in the movie, and it's heavily symbolic of quite a lot that occurs later

Now that I think on it, though, the fact that you only see it piecemeal makes the whole thing suggest a tapestry even more accurately. A lot of very large tapestries were hung in hallways, small spaces... in positions, then, where you couldn't easily back up and see it all, only seeing it one part of a time as you move along.

There are lots of nice millefleurs effects, too. Like the animals, the flowers also come to life... and then resume being part of a tapestry, frozen and inert in the weave.

 

Then there are some other things that the animators added to their version of the tapestry, which have much less to do with the unicorn tapestries that I know of, but will continue to keep an eye out for.

I'm glad they did add these things though, because this fairy-tale castle is spectacular, as is the scene below, where the unicorn is running through the trees... her movement is gorgeous. Always delicate, always graceful.

These are the title credits, and even though I tried to capture the moments without the voice actors' names (Alan Arkin, Mia Farrow, Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee)... well, this is the part where Angela Lansbury's name comes up. And it is so pretty there.

Glorious!

Sigh. One of my oldest favorite books in the world, and a perfect film adaptation (well, it should be, the same fellow wrote the book and the screenplay!) to go along with it. My family has owned the same VHS copy of this movie since I was born (and it shows... it's so ratty and falling-apart, and the audio has gone very shrill). 

I think my first art project for the new year is going to be a gigantic lino-cut print, or series of prints, referencing this very image -- that is, the film-version tapestry, in all of its magnificence. Not only would it look fucking awesome -- my heart races just to imagine it -- but who knows what other things I'd pick up, subtleties about the composition and details that I missed? What happens when a tapestry is turned into an animation, and then an engraving? What a weird, elliptical evolution it would be.