Fall 2014 #8: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki

My sixth Studio Ghibli film! What a wonderful time it’s been, getting to enjoy this amazing collection of unique movies. Always so full of heart, with great themes and incredible depth of storylines, I can’t get enough of Miyazaki’s films. 

Now normally I would say that any film that uses “of the” twice in the title is not worth my time (looking at you Lord of the Rings movies and Planet of the Apes prequels). But imagine if M. Night Shyamalan films had the depth to actually gracefully present their pro-nature sentiments, with strong feminist characters and incredible visual imagery, and that’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Actually, scratch that weird comparison altogether, I’m sorry. So the reason for all of the “of the”s is because Nausicaä is a princess living a post-apocalyptic world, where her small settlement is called “The Valley of the Wind” because of its strong offshore winds. The story takes place one thousand years after a devastating war that wiped out human civilization as well as nature, giving birth to the Toxic Forest. Humans cannot breathe the poisoned air near the forest, but hoards of vicious, giant bugs live there and threaten the human settlements that survived the war.

Nausicaä, who is a badass with a glider, soon becomes entangled in a war between two of the settlements, Tolmekia and Pejite. The Tolmekians have captured an embryo of a Giant Warrior, one of the warriors from the war that destroyed everything, and are planning to use it to wipe out the Toxic Forest and their enemies. They are led by Princess Kushana.

Nausicaaä befriends the Pejite prince, Asbel, and the two must figure out how to stop the war and save the forest (despite it’s toxicity). It’s a real battle of human industrial expansion versus nature’s will to survive and adapt. It’s kind of reminiscent of the Avatar The Last Airbender series, even though that came 20 years after this movie came out.

And the movie certainly has powerful themes with great emotional storylines. It recalls the devastation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the environmental damage of human expansion. Not to mention the way it situates female characters as being strong while also being feminine and uncompromisingly themselves, something that feels crazy for an animated film from the 80s (couch cough The Little Mermaid). 

The English cast for the unedited 2005 version (Miyazaki was furious after an English-dubbed Warriors of the Wind from 1985 cut about 21 minutes of the film) includes Shia LaBeouf as Asbel, Uma Thurman as Princess Kushana, and even Jodi Benson (Ariel from The Little Mermaid) as Asbel’s mother.

So it’s safe to say Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is an awesome film, tying together beautiful animation with thought-provoking themes and striking fantasy elements. It currently sits at #199 on the IMDb Top 250. 

Summer 2014 #1: Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - Hayao Miyazaki

I can’t believe that I’ve managed to get my almost 250 film Watchlist down to just 196 films in a little over a year. But I think I can do better! That means it’s time for another Moviecation. This time, I won’t be doing 15 films in 15 days like I did over winter break. I’m doing 15 films over the course of the summer. So

and let’s go!

My fifth Miyazaki film! In just sixth months. I can’t believe it was only January when I saw Spirited Away, and since then I have seen My Neighbor Totoro, The Wind Rises, and Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki has totally altered the way I think about animation, since, as I’ve said before, the only animation companies I respect are Disney and Pixar. 

I think Miyazaki has transcended the American idea that animated films have to be geared towards kids. And even though the fantastical worlds created in Studio Ghibli’s films are definitely, on the surface, childlike and wonderful, these films are always much deeper. Miyazaki’s hard childhood experiences with WWII bleed into all of his films, and you can feel the animator struggling to understand those troubling times in mid-twentieth century Japan.

Howl’s Moving Castle follows a strong female protagonist like many of his other films. This one’s name is Sophie, and within two minutes of meeting her as the bland hat shop girl who works herself too hard, a witch comes and transforms her into an old woman.

The film doesn’t care to take the time to characterize Sophie in her normal world, but we do hear a little about the strange wizard named Howl, who eats women’s hearts and must be watched out for. That is, until Sophie encounters him and he protects her from some evil spirits that are following her.

Old lady Sophie is a hilarious lens for the story, because she is strong-willed and curious and learns quickly that with old age comes a bizarre amount of courage. Her witty self-banter is probably the strongest comedic source in the film, and she quickly asserts herself into Howl’s magical world in hopes of having her curse lifted.

Howl’s connection to the crown makes him a target for the king’s system of drafting military men, since he trained with a witch that seems to have all the power in Japan. A violent and unjust war permeates the entire film, and Howl’s plight to stop it leaves him less and less human with each battle. It’s very interesting to see the negative characteristics in Howl, namely his cowardice, because it humanized someone who at the beginning of the film seems so inaccessible. 

Like the other Miyazaki films I’ve seen, feminist and anti-war themes ground the film, while the imaginative world it inhabits lifts it off of the screen and into a sort of escapist adventure. Between the witches and wizards, the spells, and Howl’s literal moving castle, the film has enough heart to rival even the best Pixar films. Not to mention a great love story.

And as always, Studio Ghibli’s ties with Disney made for some amazing English voice actors. Howl is voiced by Christian Bale, Josh Hutcherson plays his young assistant, and the amazing Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep) gets to be the antagonist turned comedic side character, the Witch of the Waste. 

There she is in her “normal” state. Here she is the next scene.

Also the fire she is referring to is a tiny fire voiced by Billy Crystal.

I loved the film overall. It has drama, heart, and comedy. Roger Ebert, one of the only critics to not love it, called it one of Miyazaki’s weakest films. I think I’d be hard-pressed to pick a “weak” Miyazaki film, but out of the five I’ve seen, I can see where this one seems to be missing in that last bit of extra spark that his films usually emit. Maybe it’s the nonchalance with which Sophie falls in love with the deluded, cowardly Howl, I’m not sure. Not that the film isn’t great, because it is. It’s beautiful in so many ways, and definitely worth viewing.

Howl’s Moving Castle lost the Best Animated Film at the 2005 Oscars to “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” But it ranks as #152 on the IMDb Top 250, only behind #36 Spirited Away and #130 My Neighbor Totoro. 

Day 1: January 3rd, 2014: Spirited Away (2001) - Hayao Miyazaki

So I spent the past four months in the land of wine and cheese, Paris, and unfortunately I did not make the time I would have liked to to continue this blog. On January 2nd I got back, and after a long early-evening I succumbed to jet-lag by falling asleep at 8pm. Now that the effects have mostly worn off (I still wake up at 7am but whatever), I have come up with a fun proposal for how to spend my arctic-temperature-filled winter break. I have made up a list of 15 movies that I consider to be classics and necessary viewing for anyone interested in film. I am going to watch one film every day from January 3rd until January 17th, and I will give myself 24 hours to blog about it. Most of these films are films I’m slightly ashamed to admit I haven’t seen, so I’m not going to make excuses for myself. Now without further ado, let’s start with Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar winning 2001 film Spirited Away.

I basically had no idea what Spirited Away was about, and now that I’ve seen it, I understand why it’s nearly impossible to explain. It’s very unlike American animated cinema, with fantasy worlds being drawn out very clearly, with explanations as to why everything exists the way it does. Another film which came out in the same Oscar year, Disney’s 2002 film Treasure Planet, is Treasure Island but set in a galactic universe. There are humans and there are aliens, they live in an integrated society and for an American audience with a cultural history of Star Wars, that raises no questions. But Spirited Away draws on Asian culture that I haven’t been as exposed to (unless you count Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was done by animation companies in South Korea and draws on anime tropes). Spirits exist in this world but we don’t know what they do or what their purpose is, we just catch them at this snapshot in time. Lucky for us, Pixar’s John Lasseter is friends with Miyazaki, and Disney approached him to supervise the English language translation and distribution of Miyazaki’s films. That means that the main character Chihiro:

is Daveigh Chase, AKA Lilo:

and her work friend Lin:

is Hercules’ (and the stage version of Beauty and the Beasts’) Susan Egan:

and Chihiro’s friend Haku:

is Hairspray, 30 Rock, and X-Men’s James Marsden:

In the most basic terms, the story is about a young girl Chihiro who finds herself trapped in the spirit world after her father takes a wrong turn on their way to their new house. She meets a boy named Haku, who protects her and tells her that she must get a job at a spirit bathhouse to keep herself safe (since the spirits don’t like humans). The bathhouse is under the control of the witch Yubaba.

Definitely what makes the story most interesting is that no character is inherently good or evil, but each one has his or her own individual set of morals and values. Even though the spirits despise humans, they grow to like Chihiro as her work ethic solidifies her place in the bathhouse. And as they come to accept her, the audience sees Chihiro coming into her own as a young girl who could hardly let go of her mom’s hand in the beginning of the film.

Miyazaki wanted to tell a story about a 10 year old girl who would serve as a role model for other young girls, and Chihiro definitely grows to be both courageous and clever beyond her years. I spent my whole childhood thinking that Disney and Pixar owned the children’s animated film market because no other company put as much heart into their films as those two did, but now I know of another company whose films are basically this:

And I’ll try not to hold a grudge for the fact that Spirited Away beat my favorite animated film of all time, Lilo & Stitch, at the 2002 Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature.