The Serious Wonder of Hayao Miyazaki

Last weekend, I finally got around to watching The Cat Returns, which is an animated movie from the now-famous Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. It's the story of a teenage girl who rescues a cat from the road, only to realize that the cat is the royal prince of the Kingdom of Cats. As a reward, the King of Cats captures the girl and takes her to the Kingdom, where she must escape becoming the prince's bride. As far as animated movies go, it's a little weird, and very, very awesome.

"A little weird and very awesome" is applicable to pretty much all of Miyazaki's productions. His movies are whimsical, strange, and beautifully animated. They're also deadly serious. While most contemporary American animated movies (Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, etc.) play tongue-in-cheek games with the conventions of fairy tales, creating films that they claim appeal to children and adults alike, Miyazaki takes fairy tales very seriously. His films are almost always about war and environmental destruction and the very real danger that comes from forgetting who you are. His movies inhabit worlds whose borders can blur at any second with eerie and dangerous magics. Aerial wars can break out between zeppelins and dragons. Birds can become staircases. Shadows can coalesce into henchmen. Even balls of dust and soot can come alive.

Dust sprites from Spirited Away.

I think that by taking fantasy seriously, by favoring whimsy and wild imagination over generic humor and contemporary references, Miyazaki is able to create movies that are truly fascinating to children and adults alike. My favorite is My Neighbor Totoro, which features a cat bus and trolls unlike anything you've ever seen.

OMG catbus!!

I'm also a big fan of Howl's Moving Castle (which is very unlike the original--and also excellent--children's fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones) and Ponyo, the Studio's most recent production.

 
Ponyo is, in theory, based on the fairy tale of the little mermaid, but Miyazaki's film is as different from Disney's The Little Mermaid as the Brothers Grimm stories are from Shrek. As a mermaid, little Ponyo is cute but creepy (she looks like a goldfish, occasionally sprouts bird-like feet, and really enjoys ham), and the film features massive flooding and prehistorical sea creatures.

Ponyo in her bucket.

I'm always surprised by the genuine delight that I still feel whenever I see a Miyazaki film. I'm fascinated with the little threads that flow through his movies--the stone ghosts, the dust sprites, the menacing shadow men, the omnipresent and insect-like war zeppelins--and how with every film he makes for children, he doesn't just play in the worlds of myth and fairy tales, he actively contributes to them. It's his startling originality--his ability to create creatures that are delightful and terrifying, beautiful and bizarre--that makes me rent his movies again and again.