It’s a wonderful life

The “glass half full” world of Hayao Miyazaki
VC Reporter, 4/15/2010

Ponyo
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Starring : Cate Blanchett,
Matt Damon, Tina Fey
Rated G
1 hr. 43 min.

Mainstream audiences know very well what to expect at the movies: formulaic tales of heroes and villains, moral codas rendered in black and white, familiar story arcs and archetypes from which deviation is seldom permitted. Yet now and then a visionary manages to infiltrate the structure, setting convention and formula on their ear and delighting audiences even as they thumb their noses at the sacred strictures of the medium.

The legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki might well be the poster child of the movement. With his Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki consistently finds international success with such films as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Howl’s Moving Castle and, new this month on DVD, his latest tale, Ponyo.

Ponyo, like so many of Miyazaki’s tales, pivots on the perspective of a child, yet with surprising sophistication. When a small boy is befriended by the magical fish/girl/sprite Ponyo (it’s common in the worlds of Studio Ghibli to meet characters that remain completely unidentifiable, an uncertainty that audiences don’t seem to mind in the least), the balance of nature is upset, and can only be redeemed through friendship and unconditional love. While the scenario might sound impossibly Pollyanna for the sophisticated and bloodthirsty audiences of this age, such speaks to the singular genius of the 69-year-old filmmaker, whom Time magazine named among its “100 Most Influential People.”

Miyazaki’s extraordinary success hinges on a story sense that is virtually without peer. His stories are almost universally pacifist (the notable exception being his 1997 hit, Princess Mononoke), environmentalist and feminist, and typically unspool without benefit of conventional villains or the sort of “I know right from wrong” morality that is the bread-and-butter of the cinematic pantheon. His themes center on mankind’s relationship with the natural world, and unequivocally tie us to an ancient, enduring mysticism and to awesome natural forces — as with Ponyo’s mother, an enormously powerful yet benevolent goddess of the sea.

At least as noteworthy as the gentleness of Studio Ghibli themes is the beauty of the art in these animated tales, where the splendor of nature abounds. Miyazaki’s world is one of boundless skies where majestic clouds sail like great airships, primeval forests with trees like skyscrapers, and a sense of deeply textured community where people are connected and neighbors are actually committed to one another. Everywhere is style and substance that is uniquely Japanese, a cultural perspective that is a pure delight (despite the star-centric, Americanized dubbing brokered by Disney’s acquisition of the work) — as when the young girl protagonists of Totoro enjoy a hot bath with their father, an unthinkable scenario in the Western imagination, yet imbued with such natural innocence that we don’t think twice about it as the scene plays.

Informing the art and themes of Miyazaki’s tales is an uncanny sense of nuance, and perhaps that sense is the glue that binds all the rest together. In the simplest ways, his characters are uniquely human — the way a child squats to examine a bug, the way a gangly girl piggybacks her sleepy sister, the stubborn, devoted focus of the youthful committed mind. Despite his age, Miyazaki seems to remember quite clearly what it was to be 7 years old, and through his eyes, so do we.