The Fantastic Mr. Fox and the Domestication of Domesticity

The Fantastic Mr. Fox – A Review

Written and directed by Wes Anderson. Adapted into stop motion animation from the Roald Dahl novel of the same name.

Getting older is a funny thing. I’ve changed from my younger self. I can see it. But I don’t remember it happening.

And I don’t just mean that I retain water now and have a 3-digit bedtime. Or that the music I listened to in high school is on the classic rock stations between songs from my dad’s college days. Or even that caffeine after 3pm rocks me all. night. long. (sometimes even until midnight!).

I mean that regrets that set in. I look back and see wasted energy. I spent it on things that didn’t last. And there’s no way to get it back again.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) has regrets. He thinks he regrets giving up chicken stealing to become a natively dedicated dad fox. Nostalgia for his days as a wild fox have him feeling pressed in. Domesticated. But he still sees himself the way that he did when he was single and as free as any other wild animal. But he promised Mrs. Fox that he would never steal a chicken again. (Even though he still could. He feels it).

Then . . . he steals a chicken.

So, vows shattered on the floor, the dam has broken. The bender is begun. Chickens were just the temptation off the wagon. Cider is next. And he knows that it is just begun. His fox instinct to become a wiry, foxy thief return. And it feels good. The adrenaline rush has him licking his lips and smacking his chops for more of the old excitement.

He feels alive again, but you can only turn the handle on the side of the Jack-in-the-Box for so long before the jester and his jazz hands pop the weasel. The farmers are now out to get him. And he is Mr. Fox, head of a family now. So they’re out for his family now too.

As his family is digging for their lives to escape crazed farmers, out for murderous revenge, a broken and pleading Mrs. Fox asks a straight forward question. “Why?”

His response? “I am a wild animal.”

The real truth is obvious to everyone but him. He’s having a midlife crisis. His expectations have suffocated in the airless vacuum of his accomplishments. His present course didn’t go where he thought it would. He’s not where he imagined he would be by now. And he blames the world. He blames the unfair expectations placed upon him for his unexpected inability to achieve his own expectations.

It’s suffocation that real people (and not just Claymation foxes) feel. The fear that we have become domesticated. We all set expectations. We rarely say them out loud, because they would sound ridiculous. We don’t admit to them until we are ready to deal with them. Like the “Fantastic” Mr. Fox, until we admit that we expected to be more fantastic that we actually are, we destroy ourselves (and those we love) trying to convince the world that we are worth keeping around.

But then Mr. Fox comes to his senses. He has become a threat to his family.

He repents. He begins to protect his family instead. Suddenly he is imbued with the actual convicted fierceness of a wild animal. Because he is a father, his fatherly repentance surrounds his family as well. So his son repents into wild animalistic ferocity right beside him.

He destroys the accusatory rat. He destroys the family-killing farmers. All because he first destroyed his own selfishly motivated need for everyone to think he was “Fantastic.”

That was what was really destroying his friends, his community, his wife, and his son.

Then and only then is he bonded in brotherhood with the wild black wolf living in the wintery woods. It turns out that it is a much fiercer, much more intense, to fight in the defense of his family than it is to act on the whims of his own insecurities.

Then and only then do his wife and son actually begin thinking him “fantastic.” It turns out that being fantastic to those that know you is both more difficult. and more fulfilling, than trying to be fantastic for everyone that doesn’t know you.

To fight and work and fight and work at a career, knocking down obstacles, rocking the mouse wheel, day in and day out, for the benefit of your family turns out to require a fierceness that only domesticity provides. Wild dogs run. Domesticated dogs stay and fight. There is a fierceness to true domesticity. There is a fierceness in living the daily grind for the benefit of your family and church and friends; a fierceness the selfish will never know.