Princess Mononokedir. Hayao Miyazaki
宮崎 駿 Miyazaki Hayao
In ancient times, the land lay covered in forests, where, from ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods. Back then, man and beast lived in harmony, but as time went by, most of the great forests were destroyed. Those that remained were guarded by gigantic beasts who owed their allegiances to the Great Forest Spirit. For those were the days of gods and of demons... Princess Mononoke (Spirit/Monster Princess) was the second Ghibli movie I ever saw (after the Fox video release of
My Neighbor Totoro), and PROBABLY the first Miyazaki movie I can really remember hearing about anywhere but Real Stuf catalogues or the anime discussion chatrooms I foodled my way through on AOL, Prodigy, and MSN when I was a teenager. This was the one that got the idea that there was a 'Japanese Walt Disney' going in the public discourse...partially due to the Weinstein Brothers' bizarre half-steps towards introducing East Asian cinema to the world (but also hamfistedly mangling it, or relegating it to tiny releases unless Quentin Tarantino could convince them to just put it out there, like Zhang Yimou's
Hero).
There was less-than-no-way I was going to get to see it in theaters, and I made the mistake of asking my dull friend who DID see it about it. He sniffed, "Yeah, it was pretty stupid. There's a part where the main dude uses his super-arm to decapitate a dude with a bowshot. That could never happen in reality." I should mention this is the guy who gave me his Dragon Ball Z RPG book and snickered about how it has an entire side-panel about how Krillin could DEFINITELY kill Superman.
So, I didn't really see it 'til it came on...geez, was it the Disney Channel in late 2001? It was around the time I graduated high school, anyway. I'd been watching anime for nearly ten years at that point (longer if you count stuff like
Star Blazers,
Captain Harlock, and
Robotech), from when we were calling it 'Japanimation' and luxuriating in stuff like
Project A-Ko and buying VHS tapes of
Bubblegum Crisis for $35 an episode, and I'd seen some pretty great stuff...but I'd never seen anything QUITE like
Princess Mononoke.
I didn't really think much of it at the time, but I recognized the incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail, the quaint and mysterious and exotic medieval Japanese setting (sometime around the 15th Century), and the evocative and foreign spiritual and supernatural elements. I kind of found the hero and heroine boring and uninteresting, though.
As time has gone on, though, I've repeatedly come back to
Princess Mononoke and found more to like about it. It's a story about the conflict between the old ways of religion and mysticism versus modernity and self-actualization: a powerful woman makes her own way in the world, protecting and empowering the helpless and disadvantaged...but in doing so unbalances nature and offends the gods (though this, notably, is due to her violent and rapacious overreach, as opposed to her progressive bonafides). The ripples of this action reach out from her stronghold and draw in opposition: a young man cursed by a byproduct of her sins, a group of government agents snooping around trying to steal these prodigies for the glory of the emperor in Kyoto, and a mysterious wolf-girl bent on revenge. It's a dense tapestry, full of wonder at the secrets of the natural world, the industry of woman and man, and a powerful faith that the love of the young can overcome the politics, marvels, and weapons that shadow the world entire.
I like other Ghibli films better, but I think
Princess Mononoke is a pretty good fit for folks on this site, full of action, fantasy and romance. It's playing at Fathom event centers in the US starting with a dubbed showing on the 22nd (and another on the 25th) and a subtitled showing on the 23rd.
https://www.fathomevents.com/events/studio-ghibli-fest-2018-princess-mononokehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OiMOHRDs14Next month...woof. Fucking WOOF.
