Princess Mononoke

Review by Chizumatic

Summary:
A struggle between the old and the new, between gods and men, between nature and technology, between love and hate. Ashitaka is caught in the middle, seeking only to see with eyes unclouded.

Comments:
Miyazaki Hayao is the best animator working in Japan today. He is widely admired all over the world, and this movie is a good demonstration of the reason why.

Actually, in many ways it's quite a typical. Most of Miyazaki's films are intended primarily for children, but Princess Mononoke is definitely an adult film, and many parts of it are not appropriate for younger children. Yet in other ways, it is very typical of Miyazaki: the characters are well conceived and well presented; the story is tight and unfolds without any contrivance; and it constantly amazes and absorbs the audience. The imagery is fantastic, and the animation is lush.

Mononoke Hime was the most expensive anime film ever produced up to that time, with a production cost of $20 million. It's very clear that the money was well-spent.

Prince Ashitaka is a member of a small tribe in the east. They had been chased out of their homeland hundreds of years ago by the Mikado, and their numbers have fallen. They live in a village in an area largely forgotten by the rest of Japan. Ashitaka is in line to become the tribe leader, but it is not to be.

A demon threatens the village. A giant boar-god was consumed with hatred, which transformed him. Ashitaka begs the demon to leave them alone, but his entreaties are ignored. When the demon threatens some girls from the village, Ashitaka has no choice but to fight it. He kills the demon, but not before it grasps his arm, leaving a terrible scar. The village shaman casts a divination, and the news is as bad as it can be: Ashitaka has been cursed by the demon; the marks on his arm will grow and rot his bones, killing him. The divination says he must leave the village and head west, to seek the source of the demon and to see with eyes unclouded.

Ashitaka leaves his home and his people, and follows the trail left by the the boar god, to learn how it came to be terribly wounded by a ball of iron which was found inside it after it died. This leads him to a village by a lake where there is an ironworks. The leader of the village is Lady Eboshi, and the people there are caught in a struggle with Moro, a giant wolf, not to mention with samurai who want their iron.

The tribe of wolves is now weak; there are only three left, or four depending on how you count. The fourth is San, a human girl adopted by Moro as her daughter. San thinks of herself as a wolf and proclaims that she hates humans. She especially hates Eboshi and the people at the ironworks. The people at the ironworks call her Mononoke Hime (Princess Vengeful Spirit).

The people in the iron works have been cutting down the forest, burning the wood to melt the iron sands they uncover where the forest used to be, then selling the iron to buy the rice which keeps them fed. In their struggle with the giant creatures in the forest who resist this, they have been using primitive firearms, and this has given them the upper hand. Yet the struggle is not totally one-sided, and many people from the village have been killed. The movie shows us how this struggle unfolds, viewed through the eyes of Ashitaka, an outsider.

When I first watched this film, I realized that as I was watching it that I was constantly surprised, but when I looked back on it everything that happened could only have happened the way it did. That's almost a signature characteristic of Miyazaki's films, and it is the sign of a master storyteller.

Miyazaki's technical animation is outstanding, but great animation is worthless when used to tell a poor story. In the end, story and character are the core of great art, and Miyazaki rarely disappoints. He certainly does not in Princess Mononoke. The story flows from the characters as they interact with one another, and it is because Miyazaki stays true to his characters that the story could only have been what it was. There was no other story that could have been told about those characters in that place and time.

There is a struggle here, but in my opinion all the factions save one involved in the struggle are depicted sympathetically. There are no villains here, not really. Some who have viewed this film had concluded that it is a screed about environmentalism, but I think that is simplistic and misses the real point. Miyazaki isn't preaching; he's telling a story. Because it's a very rich and complicated story, what you get out of it when you watch it depends on just how unclouded your eyes are. Those who see an environmentalist message here have clouded vision indeed.

Complaints: 
None whatever. I consider this film to be a masterpiece.

Is the ending satisfying? Absolutely. In lesser hands, there might have been an ending which was anticlimactic, or which felt contrived, or which felt preachy. Miyazaki falls into none of those traps; it's another sign of his mastery.

Recommended? This is a superb movie, though not for children. There is a great deal of explicit violence, including several graphic decapitations, so I don't think anyone under age 12 should be exposed to it. But for non-otaku who think that all anime is like Pokemon, I can think of no better antidote than to let them watch Princess Mononoke.

Trailer

Posted in: