Harry here folks at large, and I'm bringing you yet another of the ancient old man's musings over a film. This time he's taking a look see at MONONOKE HIME (aka PRINCESS MONONOKE). Now we need to get this print in front of Miyazaki-expert ROBOGEEK's visual scanners for further analysis. However, given Moriarty's studies took him to the Orient to study poisons, chants and pressure point death blows... his knowledge of this area of the world is nearly unmatched. Of course Robogeek has an embossed "MADE IN JAPAN" label upon his exhaust pipe (or so I'm told) so... he's pretty well versed too. Here's Moriarty...
Hey, Head Geek...
"Moriarty" here.
On a recent morning at the Moriarty Labs, a delicate
experiment of mine was interrupted by the sound of a
scuffle just outside the door of the main operating
theater. Two loud thumps, a muffled cry, and the door
slid open. My trusty bodyguard Junka came strolling
in, all seven and a half feet of him, not a hair out
of place. Under one arm, he was holding the bruised
and irritated FreeRide, one of our newer spies here at
AICN.
"I told him I had something for you, and I said it was
the bomb," he said, trying to gather some sense of
dignity. Junka may be loyal, but no one ever accused
him of being an intellectual or particularly hip. I
had to bite back the laughter as he dropped FreeRide
in a rumpled heap, then retreated.
As soon as he got to his feet, though, FreeRide was
back to his usual jovial self. He explained to me
that he had managed to dig a tunnel into Miramax's Los
Angeles offices. Unlike Miramax's easily-located New
York offices in the Tribeca Film Center, their Los
Angeles digs are in a totally nondescript building,
beyond any notice from the outside. The CIA is easier
to identify by sight. As a result, FreeRide was proud
just to have found the damn place, much less having
breached it. Together, we planned an exploratory
mission, a test to check how well his tunnel would
work.
Since I ended up seeing the English-language dub of
PRINCESS MONONOKE, I'd call the mission a complete
success. Now I just need to figure out where they're
keeping CIDER HOUSE RULES and REINDEER GAMES... but
that's just me thinking aloud. Today, I already feel
fortunate to have sneaked a peek at such a wonderful,
unique work of art.
Before I begin to discuss my reaction to the film, I
want to qualify something, just so no one attacks me
in the TALK BACKS for any gaps in my knowledge: I am
not an expert on Miyazaki. In fact, I've only
recently discovered his work for myself. It was the
American debut of KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE, a film I've
enjoyed both dubbed and subtitled now, that really
blew me away and convinced me I needed to know more
about this amazing filmmaker. The amazing attention
to detail, the gentle, lyrical nature of the
storytelling, the humanity of the characterization...
these were the things that made me want more.
Knowing that a full-blown theatrical release of
MONONOKE HIME was in the works, and knowing it was the
same team in charge who did such a great job with
KIKI'S, I refused to read anything in-depth, and I
have avoided seeing the Japanese import on laserdisc.
Believe me, I've had plenty of opportunities, but I
believe in the power of the big screen. I think there
is something magic about the theater as the place you
first see something. Harry didn't see RAISING ARIZONA
until this year -- THIS YEAR, FER CHRISSAKES!!! --
because he wanted to see it in the theater. As a
result of waiting, when the lights went down in that
screening room the other day, I knew next to nothing
about what I'd see. I had done only one bit of
research, having looked up the meaning of the film's
title.
PRINCESS MONONOKE, the American translation of
MONONOKE HIME, is not actually a character's name in
the film. Instead, "mononoke" refers to the spirit or
essence of a thing. A person, a chair, a rock, a
bird... all are mononoke. One particular usage of the
word refers to the avenging spirit of a thing that has
been wronged. It's this particular usage that I think
makes the most sense. There is a key character in the
film -- San, voiced by Claire Danes -- who has been
adopted as the human daughter of the Forest gods. She
rides against Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver), willing to
die to drive the humans off. She is literally the
Princess of the Vengeful Spirit. Just knowing that
much made my viewing of the film more enjoyable. I'll
be honest... I'd heard it was a complex picture, and I
was afraid I'd spend all my time just sorting it out.
Nothing could be further from the truth. From its
opening shots of morning mist on a mountain range, I
was hooked, pulled right in by the film's beauty and
the simple, almost operatic way the story unfolds. We
meet Ashitaka, a young warrior astride a great red elk
named Akule. Ashitaka, voiced with real subtlety by
Billy Crudup, stumbles across something at a guard
tower, the beginning of a mysterious disturbance.
Quickly, the situation spirals out of control, and
Ashitaka is attacked by a monster, a demon, in a
genuinely tense and thrilling sequence. When it
threatens the village of the Emishi clan, Ashitaka's
home, he is forced to kill it, revealing the beast's
true form. It is a Boar-god, driven mad by whatever
had changed it. During the battle, Ashitaka's arm is
burned by the demon, leaving a poisonous scar on his
right arm.
The Emishi have no choice according to their laws but
to cast Ashitaka out in search of a cure for his
slowly-spreading wound. They are a dying people, and
the loss of Ashitaka is one they cannot really afford.
Still, they send him on his way with his one clue, a
piece of iron found in the belly of the Boar-god.
It's this iron that transformed him, that filled him
with anger and hatred for humans. Ashitaka sets out
on what I fully expected would be a
classically-structured hero's journey. I'm so used to
seeing films that follow the Joseph Campbell model
that it took me a while to shake my programming. Once
I realized that there are no bad guys in the film, it
really cast a spell on me.
Lady Eboshi's Iron Town is Ashitaka's eventual
destination. It's her business, her iron mine, which
is destroying the forest. It's Lady Eboshi who is
literally at war with the Forest gods. It was Lady
Eboshi who shot the mighty Board-god and drove him
insane. Moreover, Lady Eboshi makes no apologies for
her actions. She knows full well what effect her
actions are having on the forest, but she believes
Iron Town is worth it. The thing Miyazaki does so
well is offer up a case that, in one way, Eboshi is
right. The women who work her bellows are all women
who were rescued from brothels. Now they're free,
working incredibly hard but living real lives. Some
of them are married. There's a future for them. In
addition, Eboshi has made a home at Iron Town for
lepers who had been cast aside by everyone else. Not
only does she care for them, but she has even made a
plan that may offer them a cure. It's the same
possible cure she offers Ashitaka: if the head of the
Spirit of the Forest is cut off, his blood will cure
all sicknesses.
Ashitaka finds himself unsure what to do. On his way
through the forest initially, he has a brief encounter
with a mysterious girl who is accompanied by three
large Wolf-gods. This is San, the Princess Mononoke,
and she has no use for any human. She is driven by
nothing but revenge. She is willing to even die if it
means she has a shot at stopping Lady Eboshi. In one
rousing sequence, San finds her way into Iron Town at
night, and only Ashitaka is able to strike an uneasy
peace. As a result of his efforts, he is shot, left
with a wound that should destroy him.
Instead, San finds herself helping him. She takes him
to a special place, the island where the Spirit of the
Forest lives, a place where at least his gunshot wound
will heal. As they wait for his appearance, we are
treated to one of the most memorable scenes I've
witnessed in any film this year. Tiny tree-spirits,
the Kodama, begin to appear. They're tiny glowing
beings with strange, surreal faces. Thousands of
these odd little beings appear and run up into the
trees. We see the surface of that great canopy of
green, like a rolling ocean dotted with dozens upon
dozens upon dozens of tiny luminescent dots, bobbing
up and down in the wind. As they all watch, the
Spirit of the Forest appears in one of his two forms,
the Night Walker. This is something I have never seen
before. This is something that words almost can't do
justice to. This is pure, powerful cinema, poetry,
like a prayer to nature offered up by Miyazaki. This
is him reminding us of how mysterious and beautiful
and confusing and wonderful nature can be. When
Miyazaki sets the stakes this high, you would think it
would be easy to be against the Lady Eboshi... but
it's not.
If anything, the Forest gods are portrayed as
frightening, beings of great anger and emotion.
There's a haunting nocturnal argument with the
Ape-gods, there's a tribe of Boar-gods out for some
sort of revenge, and there's the Wolf-gods, led by the
mother Moro (a wonderful vocal performance by Gillian
Anderson), who raised San as their own after she was
abandoned at Moro's feet by human parents. As a
result, San doesn't think of herself as human, and
when Ashitaka manages to connect to that human part of
her, she doesn't respond by swooning like some moronic
Disney heroine. She declares war on that part of
herself, too. She is not interested in finding some
bridge between her worlds. She has chosen a side, and
she isn't interested in changing.
Ashitaka, on the other hand, can't choose a side. He
is drawn to San's spirit, to her beauty both inside
and out, and to that wildness. He is impressed by the
life Eboshi is creating for her people. He knows how
his own clan is dying and sees how hard Eboshi fights
for her way of life. She's always under attack from
someone; if not the Forest gods, then samurai.
Ashitaka isn't even on his own side completely. The
demon stain on his right hand and arm has grown
tremendously, and it seems to have an unholy will.
Whenever he uses it in anger, it is unstoppable,
horribly accurate, beheading opponents and severing
arms. He also has no control over when the arm begins
to lash out.
When Miyazaki brings all these story threads together
into an astonishing sustained finale, it is really
awesome to behold. I cared about the fates of these
characters more than I have about most of the human
casts these years. Stuff like THE MUMMY, LAKE PLACID,
and DEEP BLUE SEA can be campy fun if you're in the
right mood, but there's no real connection you ever
feel to anyone or anything. It doesn't matter in the
end. Miyazaki has created a film where it matters;
there is no one person you're rooting for. Instead,
you are left to watch as things spin out of control.
Innocents are hurt. We do not get everything we want.
And in some ways, things are left unresolved. There
is an ongoing struggle between man and nature that is
the order of things. There is a balance that can be
reached that isn't the same thing as victory or peace.
It is a fight worth waging, Miyazaki seems to say,
but worth waging right.
I was deeply moved by the film, and expect that it can
be sold to an arthouse crowd. It just can't be
marketed to children in any way. This is a film that
should play to the same people who seek out pictures
like STILL LIFE or THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN or even
AKIRA, which did quite well playing the Nuart/Angelika
circuit. This is a film that deserves to be seen by
anyone who takes cinema seriously as an art. Miyazaki
is not Japan's Disney, no matter how hard American
journalists try to position him that way. He is
fiercely original, and he is using animation to weave
powerful new myths that should be allowed to resonate
for audiences in every country.
I have to go now, speaking of animation, and work with
Harry on our report about one of our greatest spy
achievements, accomplished during a recent visit by
the Big Red One to Los Angeles. Keep your eyes,
peeled, kiddies... it's worth the wait. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
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