My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

directed by Hayao Miyazaki
viewed: 09/08/2012 at the Bridge Theater, SF, CA

The opportunity to see Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful My Neighbor Totoro on the big screen, that was what this was all about.  The Bridge Theater in San Francisco was (and still is through this week) running a series of Studio Ghibli films, and schedules permitted only Saturday for us, and luckily Totoro was the film of the day.  It showed in both the English dub and alternately in original Japanese with subtitles.  Our timing had the dubbed version showing.

If you’ve never seen, My Neighbor Totoro, you should.  It’s a beautiful, low-key, wonder of a film, one of Miyazaki’s signature creations.  I would even posit that the image of Totoro, standing in the rain at the bus stop next to the young girl Satsuki, with the leaf on his head, accepting her umbrella, is as classic and iconic a moment as Gene Kelley, “Singin’ in the Rain” in Stanley Donen’s thus named film.  There is a magic to the film, plain and simple, a transcendent beauty as inspired and powerful as any in cinema.

It’s a film that I’ve seen many times, in whole and in parts, and Clara has seen it many times as well.  Though never on the big screen.  The crowd in the theater were largely families with young ones, obviously those “in the know” because as much as I read and follow up on what’s happening locally in the cinema, this event came a bit out of nowhere, with little promotion or notability.

Totoro is a simple story, about two young girls who move to the Japanese countryside with their father while their mother convalesces at a nearby hospital from an unnamed illness. What they find in the country is nature itself, the people who work the land, and the spirits of traditional Japanese belief still living within the world in all corners.  They first encounter dust mite spirits, and then eventually are led down (or up) a rabbit hole of sorts to the King Totoro, the spirit of a massive camphor tree at the top of a tall hill nearby.  These spirits befriend the girls, giving literal flight to their dreams, encouraging them to plant more trees, and helping Satsuki find Mei when she gets lost.  It’s a spiritual encounter with nature and tradition, a grounding to culture and the natural world that embodies ethics and kindness as well.

It’s such a quiet and simple film that when I first saw it, I certainly considered that it might be slow or quiet for some.  Watching it again this time, the themes of spiritual embodiment, along with ecology, magic and traditional Japanese culture, things all deeply embedded in his later film Spirited Away (2001) are all deeply imparted here as well.  There is a great beauty beyond the charm here.  It could be critiqued for its yearning to a simpler, more pastoral time (the story is set in an indeterminate past, sometime in the 20th century), which is perhaps more wistful.  But there is magic to it.  There is a transcendence within this little story, these brief moments of fantasy and the beyond.  Most lovely.

The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

director Hiromasa Yonebayashi
viewed: 02/18/2012 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, SF, CA

It’s a sad fact that one day, we will live in a world without Hayao Miyazaki actively making movies.  We may already be living in a world where Miyazaki is no longer directing films.  There has been speculation, based on his own words, that Ponyo (2008) may prove to be the last feature film for which he will have a directorial credit.  We have been so lucky to live in world in which a master film-maker created at the top of his craft such films as My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Spirited Away (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and so many others.

What we have in The Secret World of Arrietty is perhaps the next best thing to a film directed by Miyazaki.  It’s a film written by Miyazaki and to some extent “planned” by him.  I’m not sure if this includes storyboards or to what extent his hand remained in, but Arrietty does bear more of his mark than other films from Studio Ghibli.  It is directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi who worked as an animator on a number of Miyazaki’s films, and I’d be hard pressed (or merely speculating) to suppose where the word started and stopped.  The most important thing is that while Arrietty may not be entirely a Miyazaki film, it bears a great deal of the charm and beauty of his work.  It’s a fine film.

Based on the novel, The Borrowers by Mary Norton, the story is about a little family of little people who live in a house in the Japanese countryside.  They “borrow” what they need from the bigger humans, hiding their existence entirely from them.  But when Sean, a boy with a heart condition, is brought to the house to convalesce, he discovers the teenage borrower Arrietty and tries to make friends with her.  Ultimately, when the family realizes that they have been discovered, they have to leave and rebuild their home somewhere else, but the friendship between Sean and Arrietty brings about hopeful changes for both.

It’s a sweet film.  Like Ponyo, it’s rated G (a rare enough thing these days in children’s film), with a strict limit to drama, danger, and violence.  While there is no out-and-out magic at play here (a common Miyazaki theme), this family of little people are in  a sense the magic of the world, a hidden, endangered, beautiful element sadly threatened increasingly by change.  The family aren’t sure if they are or not the last of their species.

Arrietty is yet another of Miyazaki’s strong young female protagonists, spirited and innocent, breaking into the world in new ways.

Both Felix and Clara liked it a lot, though Felix, typically was less enthusiastic after a while.  I thought it was quite enjoyable myself.

We are lucky to live in a world in which Hayao Miyazaki is still creating cinema, and we can hope that he will continue to do so.

Ponyo

(2008) dir. Hayao Miyazaki
viewed: 08/16/09 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, SF, CA

Ponyo is the latest film from the great, wonderful, amazing Hayao Miyazaki.  It’s the softest and gentlest of his films since My Neighbor Totoro (1988), the most G-rated and little kid-friendly.  His range in his audience is not necessarily huge, but this film is on the extreme end of accessibilty and identification with small children, and at the same time, open and wonderful to all as is true with all of his wonderful films.  And Ponyo, while it’s not quite Totoro, or Spirited Away (2001), is a wonderful film itself, featuring many characteristics about Miyazaki’s world that amaze and enchant.

Ponyo is a revision of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, but in this case, the heroine is not a mermaid, but a goldfish with a human face and magical powers.  And her father is some alchemist technician who struggles to keep the sea in balance, her mother is the ocean itself, embodied by the image of a human godess.  Ponyo falls in love with a five year old boy, Sosuke, for whom she wants to transform herself into a human.  The story is less about a purely romanticized love, but a love that seems to transcend everything, ultimately symbolizing a binding of humanity and nature, a nature simply alive with anthropomorphication, living waves, living bubbles, fish of all kinds.  It ties in with other themes of Miyazaki, the spirit world of traditional Japanese beliefs in which spirits inhabit everything, and thusly, everything is more or less alive, especially if not specifically, the natural world.

Miyazaki creates images that no one else could.  Ponyo is constantly metamorphizing via her magic, growing chicken-like arms and legs, occasionally like some blob thing more than fish, but ultimately, one of the film’s most stunning images is her running across the giant waves, racing after Sosuke and his mother in their car.  She has a joie de vivre, a spark of love and life and energy that is vibrant and magical, a really lovely, fun character.  The strangeness of the sea and of some of the images that Miyazaki dreams up, he spawn-like little sisters, her father’s watering can system, the weird ships and strange simple technologies he loves to dream up.

And the film has a sweetness for the elderly, something that occurs frequently in his films, mostly notably in his last film, Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), with the young girl becoming old and the ability to hang onto or lose one’s youth.  In Ponyo, it is the children and the senior’s center, more a vague Greek chorus than important figure.

Ponyo is lovely.  We are very lucky to have Hayao Miyazaki’s films, that he continues to make such amazing, creative, unique work.  There is charm, joy, love, and a deep appreciation for the magic and metamorphosis in animation, the ability to instill the anthropomorphism that is in essence his sensibility of nature and traditional Japanese values that agree with that belief.  And to create characters and instances, images, and actions that are simple, yet true, true cinema.