Poor Man’s Ferngully: Both movies have environmentalism at their core. However, I found Ferngully to be more fun and satisfying.
★★★☆☆
As you may remember, I did not look kindly upon The Wind Rises, but Josh is nothing if not persistent. Princess Mononoke is an animated film centered around Ashitaka, a prince from a small village. In the opening scenes or the film, a giant boar demon attacks the village. Ashitaka is able to fight it off, but becomes infected from an attack by the demon. The medicine woman of the village discovers that the demon is actually a god from far to the west of the village who was corrupted by an iron ball that was lodged in his body. Ashitaka must now choose whether to die slowly at home or venture into the world and see if he can discover cure in the land where the demon boar came from. If he had chosen the former, it would have been very short movie.
Ashitaka ventures into the world and stumbles onto a conflict between humans and gods. There are several parties involved: Lady Eboshi leads the people of Irontown who have been killing gods so they can destroy the forest and mine the valuable iron out from under the mountain. San is a young woman who was raised by the wolf gods and now fights the humans trying to kill the gods and forest. There are also many gods who live in the forest. They are not a unified group and many different animal spirits and gods exist. In general, they want to continue to live in the forest and will fight the humans for the right to live. The final group is Jigo, a monk and mercenary set to kill the Great Forest Spirit by the emperor. The Great Forest Spirit is an interesting character. He is the life of the forest, but he is not the leader. He is representative of the life force of the forest. The think I found really fascinating about this character is the similarities to reality. Like the environment, it doesn’t care for it’s own “survival”; it just exists. It can be violent or beautiful. It can give life and it can take it. The earth is a fantastic place full of terrifying destruction or awe-inspiring beauty and there is not always justice in how the two are distributed. Miyazaki’s Great Forest Spirit embodies this.
I watched the English dubbed version of this movie. As with The Wind Rises, they pulled some high-powered voice talent for Princess Mononoke. Ashitaka is voiced by Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver voices Lady Eboshi, Billy Bob Thornton voices Jigo, and Claire Danes voices San. Jada Pinkett Smith also voices one of Lady Eboshi’s more important villagers. And, Neil Gaiman assisted in the english translation of the film. Overall, the film isn’t terrible. As compared to the other Miyazaki films I’ve been forced to watch at least this one has a more linear plot with structure. My biggest problem with the other Miyazaki films that I’ve watched is that I’m never sure what I’m watching. There usually isn’t a struggle or a clear timeline, things just happen and then the story ends. In The Wind Rises, an engineer builds planes… and that’s about it. In Kiki’s Delivery Service, Kiki’s biggest struggle is that she almost doesn’t find a free bed before sunset (almost). In Spirited Away, uh, lots of stuff happens, very little of it to do with the main character’s parents (which I think was the main struggle? Honestly, I’m not sure). On the plus side for Princess Mononoke, there was a major struggle (Ashitaka trying to cure his infection) and the plot stays focused for most of the movie.
As always, Miyazaki can really paint a picture. His landscapes are really dazzling. Up until the last 5 minutes of the movie, I was actually enjoying the film quite a bit. I thought the Great Forest Spirit was a fascinately well done bit of metaphor. Ashitaka was a good vessel for the viewer to put themselves into the scene. The plot well-paced and straightforward, with clear goals. The characters, especially the villains, were nuanced enough that the viewer could relate to their point of view. Unfortunately, the ending really killed it for me. It felt very unsatisfying. There are no real consequences for anyone. None of our heroes really get rewarded or even make sacrifices. The final message is pretty heavy handed in telling the audience what was already abundantly clear: live in harmony with the environment. Plus, it was so rushed that it lacked all the nuance that the rest of the film held. In full TVtropes style, highlight the next paragraph if you really want to see what I think about the ending:
Ok, so at the end of the film, Jigo and Lady Eboshi murder the Great Forest Spirit and the resulting spirit energy or something spreads across the forest killing everything, including a bunch of humans that the audience has never met, so I feel like there was no payoff or sacrifice in their deaths. Ashitaka and San are able to stop the rolling tide of death from hurting anyone we care about. Once the crisis is ended, they immediately decide not to be together, despite their romantic attraction. This is all done very quickly and with very little emotion, not how I would expect the decision to go. Jigo learns nothing and decides to leave to make money somewhere else. Lady Eboshi finally learns a lesson and decides to try to live in harmony, which is good, but throughout the movie she’s wreaked so much havoc on the forest that it feels very forced when she suddenly has a change of heart. Everything I just described happens in about 6 minutes.
In the end, this is definitely my favorite Miyazaki so far. The ending sucked, but the other 115 minutes were actually pretty fun. Maybe I’m too much of a grouch to get this film, check it out yourself and make a decision.
Princess Mononoke doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. I guess I’d check out your local library.
Next week, Josh is watching Spartacus. This is an epic film that’s really, really great. It’s directed by Stanley Kubrick, but it’s really directed by its lead actor and executive producer: Kirk Douglas. It’s a pretty awesome film set during the Roman Empire, fans of The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and Gladiator had better check this one out.
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