Studio Ghibli,which for decades has been dominated by the “old crowd” – Suzuki, Miyazaki, and Takahata – has made occasional attempts at cultivating younger talent in the past.  Ocean Waves was initially envisioned as an exercise for younger staff, and occasional films such as The Cat Returns or Tales from Earthsea have all been attempts to bring new directors into the forefront.  However, the studio has never really managed to find a proper spiritual successor to Miyazaki, who is the man most associated with the company worldwide.  Many Ghibli fans might even say that Miyazaki himself has been unable to recapture the magic of the early films (Nausicaa, Totoro).  With the old crowd quickly reaching retirement age, it is now plain that without proper successors, the company may be in trouble very soon, and thus the company has dedicated three out of five years to new talent.  Karigurashi no Arrietty is the first result.

While Miyazaki had a presence in the background work (and is credited as such), the director is Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who has worked as a key animator at the company since the days of Princess Mononoke.  Whereas Tales of Earthsea felt irregular among the Ghibli canon, Arrietty has a familiar tone, feel, and look.  The story has shades of Kiki’s Delivery Service: a young girl who happens to be a “little person” (as in, small enough to fit in your hand) is reaching an age where she must learn how to “borrow” items from the larger house in which they live.  Without this skill, she will not survive for long, as her parents are two of the only “little people” she knows in the world, and without them, she would be helpless.  Unfortunately, they must also avoid being spotted by humans, which has become more difficult due to the presence of Sho, a young boy awaiting surgery who has been brought alone to live in the house they occupy.  His father has passed away, and his mother, a workaholic, has no time for him.

I must admit that Sho and Arriety are not exactly the most distinctive of the Ghibli characters.  Arrietty is a somewhat milder version of Kiki, less rebellious but with a similar amount of energy and curiosity, while Sho himself is subdued and gentle, owing to a fragile childhood of sickness.  Despite his seemingly harmless exterior, which threatens to become a cliche at times, his upbringing appears to have given him a sense of cynicism about the world, which manifests in one scene where he informs Arrietty solemnly that her kind, few that they are, cannot possibly last long in this world of several billion humans.  However, the climax of the story is relatively tame, and Sho does not undergo much in the way of conflict or resulting development and thus remains more of a secondary character.  Unlike several other works in the “little people” genre, it is the humans and their world which are alien to this film, and the “little people” are who we identify with.

The film is abundant, however, with small moments that are individually a joy to observe.  A scene of rainfall, with Arrietty stepping through the grass while splotches of rain drop  on the foilage above, is a wonderful sight and sound.  In one moment, Arrietty sits, depressed, in the garden, and a small bug wanders by.  When she picks it up, it curls into a ball in fear, which she momentarily plays with, smiling, before settling it back down gently.  It’s a scene with no real purpose except to give the audience a moment to grin- the kind of small, inconsequential details that give life to many of Ghibli’s other films.  After all, Ghibli has achieved its level of fame due to the careful and beautiful execution of the little moments, the scenes of life, which make up the whole.  Yonebayashi understands this, and is able to weave these moments convincingly throughout his film.

Where the film falters, unfortunately, is with its music.  Ghibli’s films have nearly always had beautiful and primarily orchestral soundtracks.  Joe Hisaishi’s captivating melodies for Miyazaki’s films are well known, but secondary composers like Nomi Yuji (Whisper of the Heart, The Cat Returns) have also provided a fine orchestral character to the films that have given them a timeless feel.  With Arrietty, we instead find a soundtrack which, though occasionally remaining within an enjoyable Celtic quality, too frequently begins to resemble pop music, particularly with the sugary female voice which dominates the theme song.  Unfortunately, this aspect of the film makes a great effort at robbing it of any of the aforementioned feeling of timelessness and feels far too manufactured in comparison to the organic theme songs of Mononoke, Ponyo and Spirited Away.

On the whole, Arrietty is a relatively light, breezy film – it does not have the weight of the grander fantasies like Laputa or Mononoke nor should you expect it to.  What it does have is a trace of the gentle magic of Totoro, that certain Ghibli character which is difficult to express but easy to recognize.  Is it of the same caliber?  The answer is a resounding no – but this is not unexpected.  For a first work, Arrietty is proof enough that Yonebayashi has the talent and the ability to produce Ghibli features in the future which maintain the level of quality, but also that particular Ghibli character, of the company’s past productions, two things which I felt to be utterly lacking in Tales from Earthsea.  It is impossible to tell if Yonebayashi will be able to produce classics the way that Miyazaki and Takahata have done – films which will be remembered for decades.  Perhaps in the future, we will look back fondly on the Ghibli golden age, which some will even claim as having ended earlier, perhaps after Spirited Away. Nevertheless, with Yonebayashi, the company has a plan for the future.

The next step in the Ghibli road map is the new film by Goro.  I have made it clear that I did not like Tales from Earthsea, nor am I a fan of the way Goro has been fasttracked into the director’s chair without any experience presumably because of a marketing tactic by Suzuki.  Nonetheless, the story for the new film, which I have written about a few posts ago, seems well-prepared to capture the tone and feel of Whisper of the Heart – my favourite Ghibli film.  We will see if he can prove himself the way that Yonebayashi was able to do with Arrietty.

1/2

Ponyo is the most recent work of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and marks the end of my series of reviews on the works of Studio Ghibli.  Sometime soon, I may get around to doing some sort of summary post.  You may notice that there were no posts regarding Mimi o Sumaseba and Cat Returns, the reason is simply that I’ve already written reviews of those films in the past, a particularly long one for Mimi (which is a favourite of mine).  Ponyo alludes to Totoro in its tone more than the films of Miyazaki’s directly preceding it, though many of its scenes retain the grand scope of some of his larger set pieces.  Miyazaki leaves behind his love of the skies to deliver a story entrenched in the ocean and water and underwater life.  Most people describe Ponyo as Miyazaki’s take on The Little Mermaid, in that it involves a girl who lives in the ocean but wishes to be a human.  Ponyo is controlled by a strange wizard-slash-overprotective father named Fujimoto, a human who despises his own kind and doesn’t want Ponyo to join the human world.  Our primary character is Sosuke, a five-year-old boy who finds Ponyo washed ashore and takes a liking to her.

In every film he makes, Miyazaki begins with a world, a general setting and story concept.  When he made Mononoke, it was with the idea of historical setting but with mythological inspiration, where spirits of nature battle with industrializing human society.  He does not complete scripts or storyboards before beginning the project, he conjures an ending from his own perception of the momentum of the story afterwards.  When I first began the film, I could immediately see what new world Miyazaki had immersed himself in this time.  The opening sequence is a thing of beauty, a wordless trip through the undersea world, teeming with life, finally resting on Ponyo as she makes her escape to the world above the surface.  Like most of his films, there are plenty of wonderfully bizzare and imaginative ideas strewn about.  The one that many people would consider their favourite moment is the scene where Ponyo, now having her own feet, runs alongside Sosuke’s car, hopping between waves which literally come alive, with a huge smile on her face.  But that’s really a very poor description of the delight contained in that scene.  Ponyo has that same excellent standard of creativity within its imagery.  Miyazaki is not running out of ideas.

Where the film might not match some of his best works is on an emotional level with regards to storytelling.  I don’t think it would be too controversial to say that Ponyo is aimed more specifically at a younger audience than some of his other works.  The storyline is very simple, moving along at a very light pace, and I personally found that it seemed to meander a bit at times.  Now, Totoro, one of my favourite Miyazaki films, was essentially free of a specific conflict or overarching plot, but managed to be utterly compelling to me, so I tried to compare them and see exactly why I liked Totoro more.  It might be because Totoro was intensely character-driven, inviting viewers to be moved by the characters and all their joys and disappointments, basking in the pleasure of their own imaginations.  Ponyo seems to embody something of a halfway point between a story like Totoro and a more traditional fairy tale.

What I ended up feeling was that the best moments in the film were both the vividly imaginative set pieces involving the sea, as well as the quieter moments of character interaction – Sosuke and his mother calling their father, Sosuke showing Ponyo little things about his life that fascinated her, Sosuke’s fear when unable to locate his mother.  The parts I was less interested in were those involving Fujimoto wanting to keep the balance of the world intact and things of that nature.

Considering the amount of care which goes into the presentation of the film, however, many people might leave the film enchanted entirely by the visuals.  After Howl, which was the peak of a period at Ghibli which saw gradually increasing use of computers, Miyazaki decided his next film would eliminate them altogether and return to fully hand-drawn artwork.  Ponyo has a very fresh, somewhat painterly look, with clear, bold lines and wonderful colours.  Although Ghibli films are the only ones for whom I’d even come close to making this statement, the visuals are almost enough of a reason to watch the film alone.

As for the sound, the voice acting is of course, excellent and believable, as Ghibli uses actual child actors for the roles of children, rather than adults pretending to be children.  The music by Joe Hisaishi is one of his strongest efforts, and probably his most musically mature composition with a great deal of classical influence.  For example, the opening scene is underscored by a lush, densely textured piece of music which echoes the impressionistic music of Ravel or Debussy, and I would really be surprised if such music hadn’t been on Hisaishi’s mind during its composition.  His orchestration has also come a long way from his first score, Nausicaa.  As for the thematic content, Hisaishi has a fairly simple phrase that he uses to represent Ponyo, and it appears throughout the score in various forms depending on context.  It’s not a really a candidate for his most compelling theme ever, but it plays its role in the film well enough.

I suppose what I found lacking in the film was a sense of emotional depth that defined many of Miyazaki’s so-called “lighter” films, whether Totoro or Kiki.  In comparison, Ponyo and Sosuke’s personalities and interactions with each other feel somewhat simplistic and more straightforward (of course, they’re supposed to be six-year-old children, not adolescents like Kiki).  That is where I think the greatest divergence is between Ponyo and the rest of the Miyazaki collection.  More than any other, I think that Miyazaki was trying to make a film that his grandchildren could understand fully and enjoy.  The level of artistry in Miyazaki’s depictions of the sea and the town, as well as the gentler character moments, are compelling enough to me as a Miyazaki fan, but for someone who is not, I think that any of his other films would be a better place to start.

1/2

Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) was a project which had been in Miyazaki’s mind since at least 1983, when he had written a manga called The Journey of Shuna.  Though the plot and characterization in that manga were different from what would become Mononoke-hime, there are some obvious similarities between them.  After completing Porco Rosso, Suzuki and Miyazaki had to decide what Miyazaki’s next project would be.  Suzuki felt that a project like Mononoke-hime would be very taxing, and taking into account Miyazaki’s age, it was something he should do now while he could still direct within his usual level of involvement (After the completion of Mononoke-hime, Miyazaki did indeed announce that he would have to decrease his directorial load in future films, and in making Spirited Away, more and more tasks that Miyazaki once did himself were delegated to younger staff).

Mononoke-hime was very different from the films which preceded it, a fact that was emphasized quite strongly by Suzuki’s marketing team.  If one were to compare with his previous works, the obvious resemblance is with Nausicaa.  Both stories lack some of the lighter, endearing qualities of Kiki or Porco Rosso, and both stories involve a theme of conflict between man and nature.  Nausicaa had to be shortened into a two hour film from Miyazaki’s original manga and thus lost a lot of its complexity, but with Mononoke, Miyazaki was free to create a story from the ground up with the animated film format in mind.  The result is a very compelling and very moving film that is certainly one of the highlights of his career.  Although my “favourite” Miyazaki film tends to be whichever one I watched most recently, time and time again, Mononoke-hime manages to crawl back up to the top of the list, and my appreciation only seems to grow with each revisit.

The simplest representation of the plot is the conflict between industrialization and nature, and Miyazaki builds several layers onto this core, creating a rich, mythological epic with an ultimately ambiguous moral message.   The story begins as Ashitaka, a young boy from the ancient, isolated Emishi tribe, must defend his peaceful village from an attacking demon.  Having been forced to kill it, he discovers the demon to be a boar god who had been cursed with rage, and finds himself now bearing that same curse.  He must leave his village and search for the source of the boar’s curse if he ever hopes to lift it.  He is eventually led to a remote settlement, sustained by its production of iron and weaponry, led by a woman named Eboshi.  He discovers that it was a gun from this town, fired by Eboshi, which harmed the boar god, driving him to the rage which led him to Ashitaka’s village.  But on the night of his visit to this town, it is attacked by the wolves of the nearby forests, and among them, a human girl who is called Mononoke-hime by the villagers.

Although the battle of the ironworks with the forest form the primary conflict, the viewer, as with Ashitaka, are neutral observers of this battle.  The beasts and gods of the forest are not entirely benevolent beings, and the humans are not portrayed as innately selfish creatures either.  Nor are the two sides free from internal conflict – the boars, wolves, and apes all quarrel within the forests, and Lady Eboshi openly disobeys and mistrusts the Emperor and his armies.  Lady Eboshi is cunning and manipulative, but her ambitions come in the hope of creating better lives for her townspeople, many of whom she takes in despite their being shunned by most of society.  We are given a window into the life of this town, we see its inhabitants working and living happily.  But we are also taken into the forests with Ashitaka, seeing the life of the forest that is being destroyed slowly by the human encroachment.  Our window into this world is San, the above mentioned “Mononoke-hime”, who is a human girl who had been left for dead in a previous battle.  Having been adopted and raised as a wolf, she dislikes humans and dislikes Ashitaka even more when he helps her escape for her life.

Ashitaka is stuck in the middle of it all.  He, like the viewers, naively cries out for the two sides to end their conflicts, but it feels as hopeless to the viewer as it ends up being within the film.  Miyazaki doesn’t give us a direct answer to this question of man and nature, as his perspective is probably as ambiguous as the film itself, and he goes to great lengths never to idealize either side.  Both sides have their share of noble intentions but distressing actions, both sides elicit sympathy, and both sides include characters that the audience grows to care for.  Ashitaka is alternately friend and enemy to both the humans as well as the forest, driven only by his own strong morals which cannot be reconciled fully with either side.  He holds no firm allegiance to either side of the war, only to San, the girl caught in the middle.  What we have in the end is a film which neither preaches any message nor vilifies anyone, instead content to tell its story and leave us to think of its implications.

Miyazaki’s vision of the mythical forests filled with creatures and spirits and gods is a wonderful creation and the most riveting aspect of the film.  The forests feel alive, and the spirits which reside within, including the mysterious deer god (shishigami) who serves as its mysteriously ambiguous guardian, are inspiring products of his imagination.  The wolves which lead the film are drawn elegantly, their movements are beautiful, their violence fierce and fear-inspiring.  When San’s adopted mother, Moro, converses with a boar god in the a lake deep in the forest, the effect of two gods conversing with each other is astounding.  One of the important decisions Miyazaki has made is to not have animals speaking anthropomorphically – rather, they growl as animals would, and their speech seems to reach the viewer as an echo alongside it.  Other highlights include the beginning of the film – when the demon boar attacks Ashitaka’s village, we can almost feel the creature’s rage as it chases blindly after him.  As for the strange deer god who protects the forest, he is a fascinating creature who appears both intelligent yet simple-minded at once, welding the powers to give and take life while embodying a sense of naive purity absent from so much of their world.  There is no lack of interesting, beautiful ideas in Mononoke.

The climax of the film, which involves several different factions, each with their own way of reaching their goal, involves conflicts occuring at numerous places at once.  It is a gripping peak in the story and is compounded further by several moments of relative calm and contemplation between dramatic confrontations.  These moments have a sense of tension and looming danger, particularly helped by the use of silence, something that many filmmakers, particularly those of animated films, don’t recognize as an actual technique able to lend a distinctive atmosphere to scenes on its own.  The only downside to the extended, riveting climax is that the denouement which follows feels to abrupt, as if in a hurry to end, and the closure is not as meaningful as the entire film leading up to it.

The artwork in the film is a fantastic testament to the possibilities of animation in storytelling.  While many people are happy to relegate animation to the role of “colorful pictures used to babysit children”, Mononoke-hime reminds us the greatest use of the medium – to bring out stories that are brimming with such imagination and creativity that they couldn’t be depicted in live action without sacrifices and accomodations.  One brief example of something that I found particularly exceptional, visually, was the giant boar god who appears in the latter half of the film.  The beast manages to inspire fear, disgust, and respect all at once.  As I alluded to earlier, this was the last film which had Miyazaki directing in his distinctive and very active way – personally checking and correcting every frame – and the care that went into every shot and movement is obvious.

Mononoke-hime is also one of my favourite scores by composer Joe Hisaishi.  It is one of the most thematically powerful of his Ghibli soundtracks, and the occasionally pentatonic overtones give his music an overarching cohesiveness, lending a very distinct musical tone to the film in comparison to other Miyazaki films.  Though not as musically intricate as some of his later scores (such as Ponyo), it has become an inseparable part of the film for me, and I cannot imagine Mononoke-hime without Hisaishi’s moving theme for Ashitaka.  His song for the film, also called Mononoke-hime, is excellent as well, though the chord progression will feel a bit familiar.  I’ve never been a big fan of interjecting vocal music in the middle of a story, but the way its done in Mononoke-hime presents a very convincing case.  Listen for the whispered quality with which the singer delivers the song, as a voice emanating from within Ashitaka himself -  that is the intentional meaning behind the song, and the singer’s delivery was the result of advice given by Miyazaki personally.  I highly recommend viewing the backstage documentary for the film to learn more of such insights.

Mononoke-hime was given a semi-serious localization attempt in this continent, and was the first introduction of Miyazaki’s work to many.  The film received a mostly positive response from critics, disrupted occasionally by people who were either unable to understand the film or hypersensitive to any mention of ecological themes, however ambigous.  Mononoke-hime is really an achievement, a consistently compelling story with excellent artistry and a moral depth.  It is quite a break from the tone of the films he had made prior to it, but the quality is just as exceptional.  Compare Mononoke-hime with another of his classics, My Neighbor Totoro, and it really becomes clear just how versatile he is.

Though the Ghibli adaptation of Earthsea passed by Miyazaki’s hands (due to semi-retirement), he returned to his regular position at the studio soon enough, and the project was an adaptation of another Western novel, Howl’s Moving Castle.  Although the author of Gedo Senki wasn’t entirely pleased with the faithfulness that Goro showed to the original, I don’t know if Miyazaki’s hypothetical version would have pleased her either.  The strength of Miyazaki’s films come straight out of his boundless imagination, and I doubt he would get much satisfaction out of being chained to source material.  Although the author of Howl’s Moving Castle seems more open to free adaptation than Le Guin, I’ve heard many complaints from fans that Miyazaki changed too much of the original.  Since I’ve never read Howl’s Moving Castle, I can’t comment on the validity of that.  In this case, I’m more interested in the quality of the film itself, rather than how well it echoes the book.

Howl’s Moving Castle stars Sophie, a young and relatively plain girl living in a clearly European-based town.  One day, she finds herself crossing paths with Howl, a dashing young man who seems to take a liking to her.  However, his interest in her draws the attention of the Witch of the Wastes, who goes after Sophie and puts a curse on her, hoping that Howl will lose interest.  The curse seems to transform Sophie into an old woman, and she runs away, being unable to tell anyone else about it.  This is where she comes across Howl’s Moving Castle, and declares herself the “cleaning lady” there.  Eventually she becomes friendly with everyone in the castle, including Howl, a fire spirit named Calcifer, and a young boy named Markl who assists Howl.  The core of the story revolves around Sophie growing to care for Howl while being forced to watch him risk his life to interfere in wars in the outside world.

I must admit that after my first viewing, I didn’t like it nearly as much as all of Miyazaki’s other films, and only after the second viewing could I appreciate it fully.  I believe the primary reason for that was the character of Howl himself.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t like him very much as a character, and considering a love story between Sophie and Howl is an integral part of the film, my reaction to the film as a whole was coloured by it.  On my second viewing of the film, I think I was able to be a little more forgiving, and tried to see his character in its entirety instead of focusing on his negative traits.  Howl has his weaknesses, but he is also generally kind and has good motives in the story.  I can also see how Sophie and Howl have personalities which complement one another and perhaps balance the weaker traits of each.  I’m still not entirely convinced….but it is no longer so much of an issue that it looms over the entire film.

Countering my ambivalence towards Howl is Sophie, who may be one of my favourite Miyazaki heroines.  She is a very likable character, timid and soft-spoken, but strong-willed and courageous.  After being turned into an old woman, rather than cry at her misfortunes and wallow in self-pity, she packs her bags and makes the best of a bad situation, occasionally commenting on her new found respect for aged bodies.  When Howl returns to the castle for the first time and finds Sophie there, he asks for her identity.  She tells him that she is the new cleaning lady.  When asked who hired her, she replies with a smile, “I hired myself”.  And when was the last time an elderly woman, cursed or not, was the star of a film?  Even if keeping track of Howl’s mood swings can get a bit tiresome, Sophie remains a dependable anchor to the film.

The plot of Howl’s is a little more complex than Spirited Away, and as Miyazaki doesn’t like to linger on exposition, viewers who miss little details here and there may not completely grasp what is going on at certain points, particularly when the film reaches the climax.  This is probably compounded by Miyazaki’s directorial style, which doesn’t always follow a linear path, and features many scenes that may not directly contribute to the plot.  Furthermore, the resolution to the war which forms a backdrop to the story feels too clean and too sudden.  Overall, I would probably agree that the narrative doesn’t feel as cohesive as his previous two films, but I also feel that a lot of critical reviews which use words like “convoluted” are greatly exaggerated.

By now you know that any Ghibli film’s artwork will be phenomenal, but special mention here goes to the wonderfully animated castle, which moves clumsily through the landscapes, its component parts moving and spinning while steam rises out of its sides.  There’s also a great deal of visual variety in the film, from gorgeous landscapes to scenes of battle to colorful town and city streets.  The opening of the film has Sophie taking a trip across town to visit her sister, and the depiction of the vaguely Victorian city is very vivid and enjoyable.

As for the music, it’s another excellent Hisaishi score.  I appreciated how the main theme was incorporated more often into the score than in Spirited Away. I was a bit curious at the opening music, which resembles that of Spirited Away a little too closely, with rolled piano chords in the upper registers followed by a monophonic piano rendition of the main theme.  Perhaps Miyazaki enjoyed Hisaishi’s opening for Spirited Away so much that he asked for something similar in this film.

While I think Howl’s is a great film, I can understand a lot of the complaints that people have about it, and I also still remain a little skeptical about Howl’s character.  I don’t think it is among his best films.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is an adaptation of a foreign novel – most of Miyazaki’s films are original stories (apart from Kiki, which he heavily modified).   Nonetheless, it still contains plenty of Miyazaki’s typical charm and imagination, and apart from Howl, has a pretty uniformly great cast of characters.  At the very least, it’s worth a viewing just to marvel at all the wonderful details of the moving castle itself.
1/2

The backstory to Gedo Senki is quite interesting.  The source of the material is a fairly popular series of fantasy books called Tales from Earthsea, written by Ursula K. Le Guin.  In Miyazaki’s younger days, prior to making his most accomplished works, he had sought the rights to make a film version of Earthsea, a request rejected by the author.  Thinking of Disney animation, she decided she preferred not to have her film adapted in such a way.  Years later, after being exposed to Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, she learned that Miyazaki was not a typical animator, and changed her mind.  She emphasized that her change of heart was in the hope that Miyazaki would direct the film, but when Gedo Senki finally got off the ground, Miyazaki had announced retirement- which lasted about an year.  Nevertheless, another director was found.  This particular director had no animation experience, but his storyboards impressed some of the staff at Ghibli, including producer Toshio Suzuki, who brought him on board.

Of course, the fact that this director was the son of Miyazaki, Goro, certainly influenced the decision as well.  Not that he was supported by the elder Miyazaki, who opposed his son entering the director’s position from the very beginning.  Miyazaki has repeated in interviews that he has no intention of passing down a legacy or creating a animation dynasty.  He worked his way up through the ranks, painstakingly building the reputation he has today, and believed his son should have to do the same.  But while Suzuki and Miyazaki are old, good friends, Suzuki is also a businessman.  He knew that selling a film as the work of Miyazaki’s son would attract audiences in droves.

Ursula K. Le Guin also was not too happy about Goro taking the helm, as she had agreed to the deal based on her respect for Miyazaki’s films.  She was later convinced to continue on the promise that Miyazaki would supervise the work on the film, but this never happened either, as Miyazaki had no part in it and did not speak with his son during its production.  In fact, the less than warm relationship between them during production became something of a talking point, and Goro published blog posts about his relationship with his father – essentially describing him as a man who inspired millions through his films but sacrificed time with his own family to do so.  As for Le Guin, her response to the final product, available on her website, was not a positive one, and she says that she hopes to “put it behind her”.

With all this to consider, it’s easy to understand and forgive the tendency to approach Gedo Senki from a very biased perspective.  For example, this review of the film by a Ghibli-related blog spends a great deal of time making rather cruel characterizations of Goro which don’t seem to match the humble, soft-spoken man I’ve seen in interviews.  I have tried my best to evaluate the film objectively, and not having read the book, I am in a better position than some to do that.  However, being a huge fan of Studio Ghibli and of Miyazaki, I can’t deny that I might be predisposed to skepticism.

As the film begins, a sea crew notices two dragons appearing out of the sky, battling each other.  Apparently, this is a very strange event, and catches the attention of the King in the royal palace.  This is an intriguing way to begin the story, but most of the film does not resemble the tone set here.  Rather, a few minutes later, the King’s son murders his father and flees the palace.  Gedo Senki revolves around this boy, Arren, journeying with a wanderer named Sparrowhawk and attempting to escape a villain named Cob who wants eternal life and needs Arren to achieve it.

I don’t know how much of the story is directly taken from the original and how much is a product of Goro.  The story contained with the film never struck me as being particularly inventive or inspiring, nor did it rise too far beyond the typical sword-and-magic fantasy story.  There were moments which caught my interest without being expounded upon too much, such as the hinted mythology about dragons and their relationship to the human world.  Many reviews I’ve read say that these elements are found in the books with much greater detail, which, as with most film adaptations, is probably true.  The plot of the film doesn’t fall apart without this knowledge, but I agree with many critics when they say the ending feels a tad like a Deus Ex Machina due to lack of background development.  There’s also a whole undercurrent about people’s “true names”, but again, without being properly developed, it all just feels a bit thin for anyone not familiar with the books.

The characters have something of a cartoony quality to them (in terms of depth) compared to some of the studio’s best work, but they satisfied their roles well enough.  I liked the character of Sparrowheart, a wise adventurer who resembles Yupa from Nausicaa, and also Tenar, a friend of his who allows the main characters to stay in her home.  Therru, a young girl who lives with Tenar, was also interesting enough – despite being saved by Arren, she dislikes him at first because of the violence he used to save her.  Arren himself is more of a mixed bag, and I never found myself truly connecting with or liking with his character.

Since I’ve already begun the comparisons, I will say that the film lacks some of the defining qualities of Studio Ghibli, and particularly Miyazaki films.  Ive often praised Ghibli films for creating those memorable moments of beauty and sheer imagination, and they are not found in Gedo Senki.  One example is a scene early on in the film, where Arren and Sparrowheart, after traveling through a fairly barren landscape, finally approach a large, bustling town.  The music swells up as though we should be impressed, but the screen merely pans back to show n larger, static, and still rather dull image of the city.  It is somewhat underwhelming, with none of the impact of, say, the first introduction to the bathhouse in Spirited Away. There’s another scene where Arren is walking through a pasture and finds Therru singing to herself. Again, the idea is good, but the execution just wasn’t convincing and felt rather stiff.

Some of the faults may not entirely be a directorial issue.  The budget for Gedo Senki appears to have been lower than other Ghibli films.   The character designs felt a little too typical, and the Ghibli attention to detail is somewhat lacking.  Compared to most anime, the animation and artwork are good, naturally, but it does not come close to the visual delights found in Spirited Away. Now, that is to be expected, if you assume a lower budget as well as its shorter production time.  But for the most part, I found it duller to my eyes than even other smaller Ghibli films such as Cat Returns.

Musically, there isn’t really anything to complain about.  In interviews, Goro stated that he would have found it difficult to work with Joe Hisaishi because of Hisaishi’s age and experience.  Goro made it seem as if Hisaishi wouldn’t show enough deference to him as director, which I suppose I would expect when a prolific composer like Hisaishi works with a first time director like Goro.  But I suppose all directors like being in charge, so Goro went for an comparatively unknown composer.  The resulting product is a typical fantasy score that isn’t exactly memorable, but serves its function (supporting the film) well.  It isn’t bad, nor does it stand out.

Overall, Gedo Senki isn’t a horrible film, it’s just in the unfortunate situation of being an average film among brilliant ones. Goro did a better job than I would expect from someone with no animation experience.  At the same time, I didn’t find it entirely compelling – it feels more typical than the other Ghibli films, and it doesn’t quite have the inspiring quality or imaginative depth of the other works from the studio.  It lacks the distinctiveness of the rest of their films.  From what I’ve read, Goro is getting ready to direct another film at Studio Ghibli, so he will have another chance to display his talents.  After working on Gedo Senki, hes probably ironed out all the little details of animation work, so we may then be able to make a better determination about his potential.  As for all the criticisms of his sudden promotion to regular Ghibli director – I agree that I would rather see long time collaborators at Studio Ghibli making up the “new generation” of directors there.  But there’s really no point in complaining about it, all we can do is wait and see what happens.  If his next film is received well by audiences, there will be probably be no doubt that he will be one of the new faces of Studio Ghibli, for better or for worse.

You’ve heard of Spirited Away.  Everyone’s heard of Spirited Away. Released in 2001, Spirited Away soon overwhelmed the Japanese box office and became the highest grossing film of all time, defeated only by Miyazaki’s future films.  I try not to be too much of a Japanophile on this blog, but I can’t help but think that a country where a film like Spirited Away can break box office records is a country I’d like to be in.  Through the work of Miyazaki fanboy John Lasseter and his promotion of the film, it gained Miyazaki greater exposure in this continent, and the result of that introduction was an even wider release of his next films.  While I am no fan of some of Lasseter’s localization decisions, anything which increases the reach of the Studio Ghibli brand name is fine by me.

Spirited Away is clearly one of Miyazaki’s masterpieces, and this is obvious enough that I don’t really need to tiptoe around it.  The sheer depth of imagination and creativity in this film leaves me (and many others) in awe every time I watch it.  When his previous film, Mononoke-hime, had finished its production, Miyazaki commented that his involvement in directing would have to decrease due to his age.  Reading that, one would have gotten the impression that Mononoke-hime would have been the peak of his career (and it certainly could have filled that role quite well).  But that wasn’t the case, and a few years later, he returned with Spirited Away. It would have been difficult to match the brilliance of Mononoke-hime, but Spirited Away managed it.

Chihiro, our main character, is a young, somewhat bratty ten year old girl who is moving into her new home – and isn’t all too happy about it.  The core story of the plot involves Chihiro, through various circumstances, finding herself trapped in a strange, unfamiliar world filled with mysterious sights and sounds.  Chihiro begins the film trembling with fright at her surroundings, and must adapt to this new world and endure until she can rescue her parents.  A simple premise, yet writing it in such a way does little to convey the sheer scope and beauty of what Miyazaki has created here.  The centerpiece of Miyazaki’s world in this film is a teeming bathouse which services gods and spirits.  I see words like “magical” used far too much in reviews of animated films that don’t deserve it, but Spirited Away presents a truly magical setting that practically jumps off the screen and engulfs you.  It is wonderful.

Chihiro is a different kind of heroine than many of Miyazaki’s other films.  Miyazaki often likes to present confident and intelligent young female characters who are role models for viewers, but his intent with Chihiro was to have a main character that would resemble the girls in his audience.  Many critics call Spirited Away a story about a girl who “grows up” due to her adventures in the fantasy world, but Miyazaki’s intent was different.  According to interviews, he wasn’t trying to create a story where a spoiled teenager experiences hardships and becomes a better person.  He wanted this scary new world to instead bring out aspects of Chihiro’s personality which had been dormant, but existed already within her and by extension, the members of the audience.  Thus, in the original ending (that Disney unfortunately failed to grasp and changed the meaning of), it is left ambiguous whether Chihiro remembered anything from the fantasy world or not, because this detail isn’t important for the message he wished to convey.

The numerous gods and spirits in the film, mergers between the mind of Miyazaki and the limitless depths of Japanese mythology, are a delight to behold.  One common favourite, which echoes Miyazaki’s common ecological theme, is a so-called “stink god” who approaches the bathhouse covered in sludge and grime.  But when Chihiro notices something stuck inside him, all of the bathhouse attendants work together to pull it.  First a dirty bicycle emerges, then piles of trash and junk come flowing out of the creature until we finally see its true identity – a river god carrying the weight of years of pollution and abuse.  This is just one of many of the wonderful ideas that grace the screen in this film.

If I had to voice a complaint, it would probably revolve around one small aspect of the story which involves Haku, a boy who works at the bathhouse and attempts to help Chihiro.  When they meet, Haku tells Chihiro that he has known her from a very small age, a detail that fades away until returning near the end when it is resolved.  I like the idea behind it, but wish it had been developed a little more substantially.

Of course, much of the delight of the film comes from the brilliant artwork.  There is something visually compelling on-screen nearly every second of this film, and it is littered with the kind of details that Miyazaki is known for.  I’ve praised Ghibli for their visual depictions of movement before, particularly of children, and the same applies to Chihiro, who intentionally doesn’t physically resemble many of Miyazaki’s earlier heroines (echoing his request to have a “normal girl” as the star of this film).  There is a scene where Chihiro must climb down a rather long staircase  - with a steep fall if she makes a mistake.  Slowly, she lowers one foot, then the other, then drags her whole body and hugs the next step down.  The fragile nature of her movements, portrayed so realistically, are more than enough to communicate her fear and apprehension.

Supporting the visuals is a restrained, gentle score by, as always, Joe Hisaishi, which features a lot of soft strings and tinkling piano phrases.  After a thematically powerful score like the one he delivered for Mononoke-hime, the less melodic musical background here might come as a bit of a disappointment.  However, it works well in the film, even if it lacks an overarching cohesiveness, and there are some beautiful moments.  Among these is what I would label the main theme, a piano theme which appears in the opening of the film and in a few other moments.  It is quite delicate and enjoyable, but hearing it more tightly woven into the score with greater variety would have been rewarding.  The ending song (“Itsumo Nando Demo“) is pleasant and enjoyable, but is not quite as musically satisfying as other Ghibli songs such as “Kimi o Nosete“.  Hisaishi later reworked his main theme into a song called Inochi no Namae with the same singer as the above song, and that one is quite a highlight, and would have been a wonderful closer to the film.

One of the interesting things about Miyazaki is his love-hate relationship with anime.  Obviously, as a creator of anime, he respects the medium, but at the same time, he dislikes much of the anime (and manga) that he finds the Japanese audiences, particularly younger ones, consuming at increasing rates.  It’s hard to blame him, because for every good anime or manga out there, there are dozens of stories of shallow shoujo-esque crushes, harem fantasies and shounen violence – and since these are so large in number, they end up defining the image of anime that many people have.  Within Japan, Miyazaki’s films, as well as some long running shows like Sazae-san, generally exist in their own separate plane of “respectable anime” to the Japanese public.  But already Miyazaki’s films have converted people outside of Japan who initially dismissed anime, and animated films altogether, into those who approach it with an open mind (Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies was also important in that regard).  Upon finishing Spirited Away, I too was left in awe at how many imaginative worlds and stories Miyazaki has brought to life, and how many more might still be inside his brain somewhere.
1/2

Rounding out the list of Takahata-directed Ghibli films is Pom Poko, an ecological fable starring the tanuki of the Tokyo forests.  Humans are encroaching on their territory and the tanuki must band together and find a way to stop them.  I am actually quite surprised that this was given the full DVD treatment by Disney, as it probably poses one of the greater challenges when it comes to localization.  For one thing, there is a great deal of Japanese cultural references packed into its 2-hour length.  One of these references, which got a lot of heat from critics in the anglosphere, related to folklore involving certain parts of the tanuki male anatomy, which, as with references to menstruation in Omohide Poroporo, was a topic I imagined Disney would want to avoid.  However, I think the reason Pom Poko passed Disney’s checks while Omohide Poroporo remains in the backburner is that you can repackage Pom Poko as a Disney-style children’s film a lot more easily than you can with Omohide Poroporo, and while I haven’t watched the Disney dub, I imagine that many of these references were made less overt in their localization.

Pom Poko approaches its ecological message with a lighter tone than, say, Princess Mononoke, and has something of an episodic feel – though not to the extent of My Neighbors the Yamadas.  There is a lot of comedy, but the film doesn’t stay within the realm of safe children’s tales – for example, in one segment, the tanuki actually end up killing humans in their attempts to save their forests, and aren’t all too perturbed by that fact.  Clearly Takahata didn’t want to simply create a story about harmless, cuddly creatures who are being unfairly destroyed by humans.  The tanuki can be greedy and unlikable as well – in one scene, when discussing their wishes to kill all humans for destroying their land, one member of the clan reminds them that no humans means no hamburgers or tempura to eat.  The other tanuki agree – some humans should be left alive, for the purposes of cooking.  Regardless, they do have their endearing qualities, and I’m sure most viewers will find themselves rooting for their success.

Essentially the film consists of the tanuki hatching various schemes in an attempt to scare off or discourage humans.  For example, while watching television, they overhear a man worrying about the destruction of Shinto shrines and possible divine retribution.  Thus, the tanuki, who possess shape-shifting powers, take advantage of this and appear as mythological creatures near the shrines, which clearly has an effect on the humans who see it.  A more direct tactic is simply to frighten the humans by appearing as monsters and the like.  All of this is covered in a documentary style with a narrator throughout.  Some of these episodes are quite interesting, particularly due to the Japanese mythology which weaves through the story, but some them feel a bit overlong.  I think I would agree that a 2 hour length results in stretching the content of the story a bit thin.

On the other hand, I was rewarded at the end with a rather touching finale and coda.  The film does end on something of a bittersweet note for the tanuki, particularly since you do grow fond of them by this point (though the final send-off is a happy one).  It is also fairly ambiguous, morally.  Clearly we are meant to sympathize with the tanuki, but humans aren’t vilified for their expansionism either.  As far as the individual characters go, the film doesn’t have a specific main character, though there are several dominant personalities which drive the story.  In the end though, this isn’t a particularly character-driven film.  The voice of the narrator begins to resemble someone telling a legend or folk story, and that is the impression that the film left me with.  We’re hearing the story of the trials and tribulations of the tanuki.  If you’re searching for the kind of character development and complexity that Takahata delivered in Omohide Poroporo, you should look elsewhere.

The art style is rather interesting.  When we are in the forests, within tanuki society, they are portrayed in an anthropomorphic manner, but when scenes switch to their interactions with humans, they are drawn in a detailed and realistic manner, as a human would see them.  As it’s a Studio Ghibli production, there really isn’t anything to complain about, though I would say that it isn’t one of the most visually impressive films among their works.  Musically, again, the score functions well but didn’t impress me on any greater level.

I may be wrong, but I think Pom Poko is the most frequently criticized Ghibli film, going by the reviews I have read.  Many of these negative reviews usually focus on the vast amount of cultural idiosyncrasies in the film, while others say that it overstays its welcome.  On the first point, I don’t doubt that Pom Poko is not the best introduction to Ghibli films for folks who aren’t Japanophiles, and much of it will likely come off as very baffling and random.  As for the second point, I do feel that it tended to drag at certain moments.  However, I don’t think these points are really enough to spoil the film as a whole.  Pom Poko is a strange film, yes, and it certainly approaches its ecological themes differently than those of Miyazaki, but even if it’s not among the best of Studio Ghibli, I’d say it’s worth my recommendation.

1/2

If your only experience with Isao Takahata is his earlier films for Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies and Omohide Poroporo, My Neighbors the Yamadas(となりの山田くん), for better or for worse, will be a surprise. While those mentioned films were quiet, realistic, humanist dramas, the (at first glance) cartoonish nature of My Neighbors the Yamadas might be off-putting, despite a whiff of Takahata’s neorealist-influenced style.  Looks can be deceiving, of course, and while Yamadas is certainly a divergence from Takahata’s earlier work, it shouldn’t be dismissed without a chance.

The content of the film is fairly simple – the every day lives of the Yamada family. It is an adaptation of a comic strip, and while typical adaptations of such material involve dragging the characters into some epic storyline beyond the scope of their origins, this one takes a different, more faithful approach. This is literally a comic strip in animated form – what we get are a collection of vignettes about the Yamada family. Some are long, while some stretch only a minute or two. Some are comedic, while others simply portray a recognizable moment of familial interaction.

It’s an interesting way of constructing a film, and I could have predicted that it would not appeal to everyone. Indeed, there are many reviews of this film which state that boredom seeped in somewhere after an hour of these short stories. I do think that the extreme lack of continuity tends to wear thin for a movie as long as this. I can picture Yamadas working fairly well as sketches on television or something of that nature, and the benefit is that this approach probably would have netted a greater audience.  But having said that, I personally did enjoy it. There were certain sketches that may have been a bit too long (relative to the content contained within) but the film has a certain charm which won me over in the end.

The Yamadas are given enough personality to be distinctive as a family, but purposely not as detailed in definition as in a typical family drama or even sitcom.  They are clearly supposed to be caricatures of a modern suburban family with the audience filling in some of those blank details on their own, and while the film does contain many cultural idiosyncrasies, I found it to be quite a universal depiction.  There is a certain sense of warm familiarity that I felt while watching the clumsy Yamada family navigate through life.  While you should know that this recognition doesn’t reach that of Omohide Poroporo and its depiction of childhood in terms of emotional depth, it exists nonetheless.

One brief example is a scene where the father is returning home from work and it begins to rain.  He calls home to ask someone to bring an umbrella, but at home, the comfortable family groans at the introduction of this new chore.   Angrily, the father hangs up and goes to a convenience store to buy a new umbrella and make his way home himself.  As he steps outside and starts home, however, he finds his family waiting for him, umbrellas in hand, and they walk home together in the rain.  It’s a short and very simple moment, but it put a smile on my face.  There a lot of gently contemplative moments in the film, and one recurring aspect that I enjoyed was the way that the film would occasionally display a poem from Japanese literature between vignettes, offering a wry perspective of the events on screen, presented with a touch of dry humour.  While such moments stick out the most in my mind, I don’t want to give the wrong impression – I would classify it as a fairly light-hearted film overall, with plenty of comedic moments.  But the comedy is less cartoonish and more observational.

The Yamadas diverges from the rest of the Ghibli canon in artwork, as well.  For one thing, the entire film was digitally animated, which, to Ghibli purists, may seem like an unforgivable offense.  But this technical detail is overshadowed by the very unique look of the art itself – it really is a moving, animated comic strip.  The characters look like caricatures more than they do realistic people, but you’ll find yourself overlooking this within a few of the film’s segments.  I, for one, really appreciated the stylized look, though I think that many might find it too simplistic to sustain a film of such length.  Of course, Takahata does introduce some more colorful, fanciful moments, such as a very “adventurous” depiction of marriage near the beginning.

Although it’s a favourite pastime of mine to praise the fact that Studio Ghibli has massive commercial success in Japan while not compromising on artistry, Yamadas apparently failed at the Japanese box office.  It’s a fairly unusual film for any market, and I can imagine how Ghibli fans as well as Takahata fans may have had certain expectations going in, resulting in disappointment when they saw it.  My Neighbors the Yamadas is a good film as long as you don’t go into it expecting to be moved to tears and appreciate it for what it is.  I still don’t know if a feature length film was the best choice of medium for this project, but when all is said and done, it gets a recommendation from me.
1/2

Ocean Waves (Original title: 海がきこえる or “I can hear the sea”) is perhaps the least known of Ghibli’s works, and this partially owes to its origins – it was not a feature length film and was conceived as a small project for the younger members of Studio Ghibli.  It was aired on television in 1993, running at 72 minutes,  a length far shorter than most Ghibli films.  Its is spiritually similar to Omohide Poroporo and quite different from the majority of Studio Ghibli films.  Perhaps because of this, it is very hard to find and as far as I know, there are no official releases outside of Japan.  However, according to Wikipedia, a European company is planning to release subtitled versions of the film, so this may change in the near future.  As I am more familiar with the original Japanese title, Umi ga Kikoeru, I will refer to the film primarily by this name.

If you were a fan of Omohide Poroporo, you’ll find that this film provides a similar feeling of wistfulness, of looking back on faded memories.  In the opening scene, we see our main character, Morisaki Taku, getting ready to take a trip back to his hometown for a school reunion.  While boarding a train, he briefly catches a glimpse of someone who resembles a girl he had once known in high school, and he recounts to the viewers a story of his youth.  That story involves his best friend, Matsuno Yutaka, and the mentioned girl, Muto Rikako, who became known at school as an arrogant Tokyoite (the story takes place in seaside Kochi, and Muto has transferred there due to her parents’ divorce).  Through various events in the year, including a school trip, Muto and Morisaki form an odd relationship, more than acquaintances but not quite friends, which in turn affects the friendship between Morisaki and his best friend.

You may be wondering at this point if you should turn away from what is possibly a typical love triangle soap opera.  I can understand the weariness, because I am not a fan of most of those kind of stories, which are typically shallow and melodramatic.  Perhaps it is the Studio Ghibli touch, but Umi manages to deliver this familiar scenario in a very restrained and respectable manner.  In fact, most of the film really does not revolve around romance in a typical sense, it’s more about characterization and relationships which are developed in a more ambiguous manner than the typical high school romance.  For all it’s superficial resemblances, Umi Ga Kikoeru distinguishes itself by doing away with the angst.  Morisaki’s recollection of his school days feels genuine and sincere, and his narration of the story adds a great deal to the overall impact.  Perhaps I am just a sucker for gentle reminiscences of youth, looking back on the decisions of your less mature years with mixed feelings of nostalgia and regret.

Morisaki, the narrator, is genuinely likable and a very good window into the story.  Our perception of the events in the story are naturally shaped by his perspective, including our views of other characters.  The conversations and interaction between him and Matsuno are a very sweet portrayal of friendship.  I particularly liked the way that the film allowed us to look back briefly at how the two met and became friends.  However, this does introduce us to one of my criticisms of the film, which is that I would have liked to have seen more of Matsuno and more insight into him.  I can understand, of course, how this might be limited by our very firm attachment to Morisaki’s perspective.

My other criticism is a little more vague, and concerns Muto.  As a character, she is very much an accomplishment – I don’t think anyone can deny she is a realistically flawed, complex character, nor that her actions are understandable given her background.  Still, looking back at the sum of these scenes and her characterization, my disposition towards her as a person is still somewhat uncertain.  In other words, I just don’t know if in the end, I actually liked her character.

Regardless, I just think the film ought to be praised merely for its honest portrayal of the ambiguous nature of relationships  (in general) during adolescent years.  I like the lack of bold confessions or rivalries.  I like the fact that Morisaki doesn’t really contemplate or understand Muto and his thoughts about her until the end, when he is older.  And even if I have my reservations about Muto, I felt like I could understand her and the reasons for her sometimes unlikeable behavior.  There are so many subtleties in the film that reveal how childish typical anime in this genre really are.

The art is pleasant, the character designs are realistic and appealing, and the animation, while more static than Ghibli’s usual, is well-done nontheless.  The music score does have something of a low-budget feel, but the piano-heavy pieces as well as some of the more synthesizer-led ones manage to have a certain charm, and I don’t think that it was a hindrance in the end.  Hats off to the voice actors, who all deliver nuanced performances, but especially to Toshihiko Seki who gives real depth to Matsuno.

Despite being a relatively short film, Umi easily manages to craft a superior story to most of the longer, episodic anime with similar stories, and as a result feels more heartfelt.  If you’re a fan of slice-of-life anime (of the Honey and Clover, not K-On, variety) then I highly recommend what is certainly a standout.  Umi’s strengths lie in its little details, the realism of its dialogues and restraint in its portrayal of the period between childhood and adulthood.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but that part of the story is really what stood out in my mind rather than the directly romantic angle.  It will perhaps always be one of Ghibli’s more underrated works, and that’s a shame, because the younger staff at Ghibli did manage to produce something pretty special.

Porco Rosso was originally intended to be a short movie for Japan airlines, based on Miyazaki’s own manga, Hikōtei Jidai, but it grew into a project for a feature-length film, and was released in 1992.  If I were to wager what Miyazaki’s favourite film out of his career was, I would assume it was Porco Rosso. It contains a great deal of elements that characterize his work: strong, confident female characters, planes and flight, European-influenced (well, in this case, just European) settings, and also something of a self-portrait in the cynical, pessimistic, pig-faced main character (Miyazaki often draws himself in self-portrait as a pig). It is admittedly the oddball film among Miyazaki’s complete works, but I mean that in the best possible way.  While the film is light-hearted for much of its relatively short length, there are some very warm character moments as well as a strong pacifistic message.  According to Miyazaki, the film had originally been intended as a simple, enjoyable story for tired businessmen on airline flights, but due to the influence that news of the civil war in Yugoslavia had on him, the final film ended up more serious than he had envisioned.

Diverging from most of Miyazaki’s work, the setting of Porco Rosso is well-defined and historical – Italy before World War 2.  Porco is a seaplane pilot who works as a bounty hunter in the Mediterranean Sea.  He sits in his hideout, taking refuge from the rest of the world, occasionally taking a break to chase air pirates and rescue hostages.    Porco is also a pig, but there is no evil witch which cast a spell on him as the typical children’s flick would go.  No, the story goes that Porco, who was once named Marco, after watching his friends perish in the first war, left his country before the rise of fascism, overcome with survivor’s guilt and so disillusioned with humanity and himself that he became a pig.  His old comrades in the Italian army want him to renounce his desertion of them and rejoin.  ”I’d rather be a pig than a fascist,” replies Porco.  And that’s that.  It’s a wonderful use of caricature that wouldn’t work outside of animation – and the film doesn’t overanalyze or linger on this aspect of his character.  It is what it is.

The story begins with a group of angry pirates hiring an American ace pilot to take down Porco once and for all.   Porco is taken down once because of engine troubles, and makes a getaway for Milan to get his plane fixed.  There, he meets Fio, a young, bold, female mechanic.  At first, Porco brushes her off for being inexperienced (and a girl) but grudgingly accepts her after seeing her plans for his plane.  She forces him to accept her as a partner and they return to the seas to confront the American pilot.  The other significant character is Gina, the widow of one of Porco’s old friends from his army days who harbors feelings for the old pig.

On the surface, the film is filled with the kind of heroic escapades and adventurous scenes of flight and battle that might remind you of something like Herge’s Tintin comics.  There is also a very comedic and light approach to many parts of the story.  There are villains, but they are fluffy, chivalrous villains with hearts of gold, posing no real mortal threat to our characters, and are played for laughs more than danger.  Fans of aerial adventures will certainly love the dogfights and plane chases that pop up throughout.  As entertaining as this aspect of the film is, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly inventive, as this kind of humorous tone has accompanied many of these sort of “swashbuckling” adventure tales.

Underneath the surface, though, as typical of Miyazaki, lie some deeper ideas which, though only subtly hinted at for most of the film, are probably the most memorable aspect of it.  Ask anyone to name their favourite scene, and I believe that most will point to a quiet night before the final showdown, where Porco recounts to Fio a story from his war days, piloting a plane and watching his comrades fall one by one.  Clinging to life, he briefly awoke above the clouds, where a strange procession of pilots, friends and enemies, rose together around him, ascending together towards heaven in their final flight.  It is an image apparently inspired by a story by Roald Dahl, and it is haunting and beautiful.

The animation is, as expected, vibrant and beautiful, and Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack blends into the film well with an appropriate amount of European influence.  There is a great nostalgic jazz-influenced theme which appears in various sequences, but its overall usage in the score is perhaps a tad too low.  Overall, the score fills its job well, but isn’t a standout of Hisaishi’s Ghibli career.

Some sentimentality regarding the film affects my rating, I confess.  As I’ve mentioned, the film isn’t always complex or deep with its story, but that light-hearted approach Miyazaki takes here partly gives the film its charm, particularly amongst the heavier tone of some of Miyazaki’s other works.  I recall reading someone characterize it in another review as “Miyazaki having fun”, and I think that’s a great way to put it.  But it would be wrong to forget that the movie has real heart underneath it all, a subtle sadness and nostalgia.  I admit that in the hands of another director, Porco may not have worked so well, because it teeters right at the edge of being conventional with a lot of its action or comedic sequences, but it’s really Miyazaki’s wry, cynical touch and occasional sensitivity which makes it all work above that level.  Porco Rosso is an ode to life and adventure told in a gentle, good-natured fashion with likable, memorable characters.  And heck, Porco himself, one of Miyazaki’s greatest characters, is enough to warrant a recommendation.