The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

Mami Sunada's documentary on the creation of The Wind Rises, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, is a fascinating film for a wide variety of reasons.

The main one is Hayao Miyazaki himself, a gruff, prickly personality who has a love/hate relationship with making animated films.  He has devoted his life to something that he has large doubts about.  He says, "Today, all of humanity's dreams are cursed somehow.  Beautiful yet cursed dreams.  I'm not even talking about wanting to be rich or famous.  Screw that.  That's just hopeless.  What I mean is, how do we know movies are even worthwhile?  If you really think about it, is this not just some grand hobby?  Maybe there was a time when you could make films that mattered, but now?  Most of our world is rubbish.  It's difficult."

I would love to know if Miyazaki thought this way when he was younger or if there has been a darkening of his view over time.  There are artists who create to escape from themselves; to imagine a world better than the one they live in.  Miyazaki may be someone who has created pleasant fantasies to counterbalance his tendency to pessimism. The film reveals that Miyazaki's original intention was to have Jiro, the main character of The Wind Rises, die at the end, but he changed his mind.  Miyazaki affirms life, even as he questions its result.

The inside of Studio Ghibli is a lovely workspace, with large windows providing natural light and a rooftop garden that Miyazaki visits often.  It was interesting to compare the technical process to what's common in North America.  No animation disks are used, just floating pegs on tables with built in light boxes.  The Japanese all use the pegs at the top, in contrast to the North American preference for bottom pegs.  The backgrounds are still painted on paper and shot on an animation camera, though the animation drawings are brought into the computer for colouring and compositing with the backgrounds.  I was aware that voices are post-synched to picture, but the voice of Jiro was not even cast until much animation had been done. In North America, characters and animation are built on top of voices.

I knew nothing of producer Toshio Suzuki before seeing this film, but I have nothing but admiration for him now.  He is the producer that every director wants and needs.  He is level-headed and patient.  He is an ambassador for the studio with merchandisers, distributors and the press.  He works very hard, but never seems tired or on edge.  He is the calm in the middle of any storm.  While Miyazaki seems intimidating at times, Suzuki is never less than friendly.  Of the two, I suspect that spending time with Suzuki would be a lot more pleasant.

Unfortunately, the film has very little of Ghibli's other director, Isao Takahata.  We never see any part of his Princess Kaguya in production.  We do, however, meet the young producer in charge of that film, Yoshiaki Nishimura.  Takahata is apparently famous for being unable to stick to a schedule.  Initially, Ghibli intended to release Princess Kaguya simultaneously with The Wind Rises, but Takahata was unable to make the deadline.  Nishimura is the one who had to deal with trying to get the film finished.  In the DVD supplement called Ushiko Investigates! (Ushiko being the studio cat), Nishimura says, "I believe many works in this world are unnecessary.  I think there are a lot of them like that.  At one point, I thought if I had the time to be making anime like that, I'd rather devote my energy somewhere else.  A Takahata-san movie will be a masterpiece for 10 years, 20 years.  I figured it would be a work you'd want to see again and again.  Create 100 things in 10 years or create 1 thing in 10 years."  At Ghibli, while money must play a role in shaping the films, it isn't the only standard that's applied.

The same DVD extra contains a moment so brazen, I am amazed that it was included.  John Lasseter visits the studio and on camera talks about his admiration for Miyazaki's films.  The two of them seem to have a warm, personal relationship as they talk to each other and move through the studio.  When Miyazaki is alone, Sunada asks Miyazaki, "What do you like about Lasseter-san?"  Miyazaki's response is "What do I like about him?  That's not the kind of relationship we have with each other.  I need Lasseter.  He's necessary."  The same man who can create the warmth of Totoro can be cold, calculating and inconsiderate.

If you wish to know more about Studio Ghibli and if you wish to get closer to Miyazaki, this documentary is essential.  It supplements the two volumes of Miyazaki's collected writings.  There are no documentaries about North American animation studios that are like it.  Even The Sweatbox doesn't come close, as everyone at Disney is always conscious of public relations.  No one speaks as bluntly on camera as Miyazaki.  Furthermore, if you have worked in animation, watch Toshio Suzuki show how a brilliant producer operates.

This documentary is a precious record of a great director and a great studio that have earned a lasting place in animation history and in the hearts of animation fans around the world.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Isao Takahata's The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a thematically rich and artistically beautiful film.  As it may be the director's final feature and the last feature to come from Studio Ghibli,  the studio exits on a high note.  This film and Miyazaki's The Wind Rises are both landmark films that challenge accepted notions of what an animated film should be.  Only time will tell if they serve as inspiration for other artists or remain outliers.

It is impossible to talk about Princess Kaguya without discussing key story points below.

A poor bamboo cutter discovers a child within a tree.  She grows unnaturally fast.  The bamboo cutter later discovers gold and fine fabrics in a similar manner and takes it to mean that heaven wishes the girl to be brought up as a princess.  His wife is obedient to his wishes, but more sensitive to the child than he is.

The child revels in living in the woods, playing with other poor children and being surrounded by nature.  However, her father and mother move her to the capital, where she may no longer act as she likes but must conform to society's expectations for a young woman of nobility.  She respects the wishes of her parents, but as she gets increasingly immersed in the society's ways, she becomes more unhappy.  She is desired by high status suitors, including the king.  She is able, by her wits and some magic to elude marriage.  She seeks to escape back to her childhood environment, but the world has moved on and she realizes that her chance for happiness is over.  She is called back to heaven against her will, regretting missed opportunities and sad at what she must leave behind.  Her father finally realizes his mistake as he loses her.

The central question of the film is what constitutes happiness.  For the bamboo cutter, it is being able to give his child what society says are advantages.  For her suitors, it is taking a special wife to add to their status.  For the princess, it is obeying her parents.  All of them are wrong.

The bamboo cutter learns that the advantages he has showered on the princess have gone against her  nature.  The suitors are unable to keep their pledges to the princess in order to win her hand.  Two face embarrassment, one the loss of wealth, one the loss of his illusions, and two have their lives endangered, all for a woman whose face they have never seen.  The princess learns that the natural world is superior to life in the capital and that acting according to her own wishes is more satisfying than obedience to her parents, especially when the result is to reduce her to a mere ornament. 

All of these characters are burdened with regrets due to poor choices and paths not taken.  When heaven comes to reclaim the princess, a clear metaphor for death, there is much pain for the characters who can no longer avoid acknowledging their mistakes.

Social class is a great divider in this film.  When the princess and her mother spend time in the mansion kitchen and garden as an escape from the rigid behaviour expected of them, the father cannot understand why.  When the princess journeys to the countryside to see the cherry blossoms, a young child, as excited by the sight as she is, bumps into her.  Instead of them being able to share their happiness, the child is snatched away by its mother, who prostrates herself in front of the princess and begs forgiveness.  Sharing joy is forbidden across class lines.  When one of the princess's childhood friends is caught stealing a chicken, he is brutally beaten, but when one of her suitors fails to pay some artisans, he escapes without punishment.

The characters in this film don't understand where happiness lies.  Society has created divisions and rules that stifle people while claiming to exalt them.  Nature is more beautiful than anything people have created, yet people choose to leave nature behind.  People are blind to each others' needs.  Awareness comes only in retrospect, when it is too late to correct poor choices.  In short, the characters are fully human, doing what they think is best but unable to see their mistakes.

The artwork, especially for the scenes in the countryside, is exquisite.  The animation varies somewhat; early scenes with the bamboo cutter and the children seem to be the strongest overall, but Takahata's direction is capable of getting dramatic impact from minimal movement in some later scenes.  The softness of the linework and the watercolour backgrounds are refreshing after so many years of computer animation.  The hands of the artists are visible everywhere, not just in the pre-production artwork.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya, like The Wind Rises, is more dramatically sophisticated than animated films made for North America.  The willingness to embrace characters who are flawed and to acknowledge the existence of tragedy separates these films from the feelgood fantasies churned out by Hollywood.  The term "family film" really means "we won't do anything to upset your children."  By limiting itself to this genre, North American feature animation has neutered itself, spending fortunes to divert audiences from real life instead of helping to illuminate it.

I am deeply grateful for Studio Ghibli's existence.  While the level of craft in their films doesn't always conform to what North American audiences expect, the intelligence in them surpasses anything animated that Hollywood offers.  Ghibli's films, in particular The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, set a standard that Hollywood will most likely ignore.  But if feature animation has a future beyond amusing parents while babysitting their children, it doesn't have to look any further than what Miyazaki and Takahata have accomplished.

My Neighbors, The Yamadas and Pom Poko

While I am very familiar with the Studio Ghibli films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, I have to admit that I haven't paid as much attention to Ghibli's other directors.  In the last week, I watched My Neighbors, The Yamadas and Pom Poko, both directed by Isao Takahata.  Both films, though very different, were excellent.  I wish that I'd watched them sooner.

My Neighbors, The Yamadas is basically a sitcom and based on a Japanese comic.  However, there are sitcoms and sitcoms.  Lucille Ball getting her fingers stuck in a bowling ball when Desi Arnaz is bringing home an important business contact for dinner is one kind.  The characters in I Love Lucy are well defined, but shallow.  The pleasure comes from seeing how the characters react in a given situation.  There's real craft to this kind of show, but it's not really about character.

The other kind of sitcom is one where the situations reveal more about the characters' inner workings.  Shows like M*A*S*H or Frasier are not only funny, but also dig deep to reveal their characters' humanity.  For all her talent, Lucille Ball doesn't fit into this kind of show.

On the surface, My Neighbors, The Yamadas is a series of vignettes built around a five person family: mother, father, son, daughter and grandmother.  That's not very promising material; we've seen this kind of thing hundreds of times.  However, while the character designs are far more cartoony than the typical Ghibli production, implying a shallowness to the content, the characterizations are at least as good as anything Ghibli has produced.  The film is quiet and unspectacular, but the characters are so beautifully developed that they have depth that few recent animated characters have.  What is so appealing to me is that these depths aren't revealed through overwrought drama, but through thoroughly mundane daily events.

I've always admired Bakshi's Heavy Traffic for it's combination of cartoony design and emotional depth.  My Neighbors, The Yamadas resembles Bakshi in this way and it stands in stark contrast to the current crop of cgi films that fill the screen with detail while presenting characters who are not nearly as rich.

Pom Poko is radically different film than The Yamadas in terms of design and story, but like it in having so much going on beneath the surface.  The story concerns the expansion of human suburbs destroying the forest home of the tanuki, a species that Disney has labelled racoons in their dub and subtitles, but apparently is a form of badger.  The tanuki have a rich folklore in Japan and are supposed to be shape shifters.

On the surface, this is another ecological fable, something Ghibli has dealt with on several occasions.  However, the various ways the tanuki attempt to deal with the human expansion says more about the plight of aboriginal people than it does about wildlife.  I don't know enough about the Ainu, Japan's aboriginal people, to know how this film relates to their experiences, but Pom Poko could have been written about the natives of North America.  One tanuki contingent wants to violently resist and kill the human interlopers.  There is real death in this film, unusual for a film that seems to be family-friendly.  Another contingent ends up assimilating, using their shape-shifting abilities to live as humans.  The remainder of the tanuki attempt to maintain their way of life under greatly reduced circumstances.

How unusual for a animated film to deal with issues of terrorism, assimilation and the attempt of colonised people to maintain their culture.  Name a North American animated feature that even comes close.

Pom Poko is also unusually frank by North American standards about biology.  The male tanuki are drawn with visible testicles and have no reservation about using them in their transformations as well as singing with pride about them.  Given Disney's skittishness about Song of the South, it's amazing to me that Disney released this DVD.  I can only guess it was due to a contractual obligation rather than a willingness to stand behind the content.  The film is as subversive a family entertainment as I've ever seen though I'm not aware of any flak aimed at Disney as a result.

After watching these films, I will be doing my best to see the rest of Takahata's work.  These two films have placed him high on my list of the most important animation directors.