For a while, now, I’ve been saying that Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi is my favourite Ghibli movie, but I was mistaken. Mononoke-hime is the film that started my love affair with Miyazaki’s work, helped galvanise my love for anime and indeed, became one of my favourite films of all time. It has flaws that Sen to Chihiro perhaps manages to avoid, but the tone, scale and sheer emotional power of this film allow it to stand above anything else Miyazaki has produced - and I say this having watched almost everything the man has had a major role in creating.I first saw this movie, dubbed, on the big screen, at probably its only official UK screening, which was part of Jonathan Ross’s season of personal favourites at the Barbican in 2001. It transfixed me. The spectacle, the fantastic setting, the sheer beauty of character and location…I was wowed.
The dub continues to be the only one I would ever choose to watch. For a while, I even preferred it to the original. I now know enough Japanese to know how far Neil Gaiman’s translation is from the original, how overly wordy and melodramatic, but it is still a strong piece of work, concentrating on spirit rather than precision. The cast of genuinely strong actors do well – but now I prefer the subtler, more naturalistic and more atmospheric original language track.
Our setting is a fantastical 14th-Century Japan, where the Forest Gods still thrive. But their existence is threatened by the development of industry, and of modern weapons of war. When a boar god, turned to a demon by the iron pellet embedded in its body, attacks a village, its touch places a cursed mark on the young prince Ashitaka. Departing on a journey to find where the pellet came from, he soon finds himself embroiled in a war between humans and gods, and at the centre of it, finds the girl who is neither one nor the other, the adopted human princess of the mononoke.
Again, we are confronted with the nature vs technology theme of Nausicaa and Pom Poko, but it seems so much more mature here, especially in that neither side is presented as being correct or virtuous. There is no such obvious evil as can be found in the God Brothers of the Nausicaa manga. Eboshi, head of the industrial Tataraba, is a charitable and highly respected woman, but her interests are at odds with those of the gods, who in turn only protect what they have always protected.
The beauty here is in the details. From the traditions of Ashitaka’s tribe to the daily lives of the inhabitants of Tataraba, the rules by which great gods live and the tiny artistic brushstrokes such as the way everyone must carry their own bowl, everything adds up to a totally believable fantasy setting. Just one line can hint at the history of an entire culture, with no need for further embellishment. This imagined world is so rich, so fully realized, that its supernatural elements become very easy to accept. There is a whole mythology here.
The plot might be a little lacking in focus and a little too reliant on contrivance, with Ashitaka just happening to go to the right places at the right times again and again, and the thing that most people complain about, the climax, is admittedly almost totally without rules, becoming perplexing and really rather lazy in writing terms, but is exciting enough to seem fitting and its resolution is neatly uplifting. Besides, Miyazaki isn’t great at stories: what he excels at is characters, relationships, fantastical worlds. And there are no better examples of these things than are found here: not only in his films, but anywhere.
Besides, I for one am astonished that someone who can write something as grandiose as this can write something as tiny and heartwarming as Totoro, as comically jaded and knowing as Porco Rosso, as whimsical as Sen to Chihiro and as action-packed and fun as Laputa. The man is a true legend.
(Originally written 18.8.06)
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