The Conflicting Ideals of Hayao Miyazaki | Video Essay

this video is brought to you by mubi a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from around the globe get a whole month free at movie.com quality culture this is our very belated 100k special voted for by our subs so to make it special we both wrote and narrated this one thanks so much for watching and special thanks to our patrons for supporting the channel japanese director hayao miyazaki is universally considered a master of his craft for decades now that goes without saying what's equally interesting at least to us is the complicated identity rooted in the heart of these stories miyazaki's work is set apart by remarkable mostly hand-drawn animation rich subtext and an underlying vibe that can best be described as wistful he's retired three times but keeps returning unable to resist the allure of creating beautiful things yet all the while plagued by feelings of inadequacy so he's developed a reputation as a perfectionist workaholic and grouchy old man the more you inspect his musings and beliefs the more you come to understand this is the art of a person in a decades-long feud with his own cynicism trying to challenge or perhaps merely balance his misanthropy with sentiments of hope and compassion self-described as a bundle of contradictions miyazaki and his work pretty much convey what political philosopher antonio gramsci called pessimism of the intellect optimism of the will miyazaki often directly addresses this inner conflict like in the afterword for turning point the second collection of his interviews and writings over the years so many thoughts concerning the world jostle inside my head when i speak in public or write a piece i try to narrow my topic and present it in a positive way without expressing my destructive negativity but that's just one part of me i'm a person whose negative aspects brutality resentment hatred are much stronger than other people's when i suppress my negative aspects and live my life normally i'm thought of as a good person that is not my real character i don't know what kind of person i really am there seems to be another hayao miyazaki unfamiliar to me i try not to care about this discrepancy anymore to gain a better understanding of that discrepancy we'll explore 6 common overarching threads in the 11 feature films he's directed the themes the context and the intentions and while we're focusing on miyazaki in this video he obviously wouldn't have gotten far without the teams of dedicated artists composer joe hasashi producer toshio suzuki or co-founder friendly rival isao takahata speaking of studio ghibli has produced plenty of other great films we may explore in later videos for now we're going to focus on how miyazaki sees the world as it is weaves that reality into his films and ultimately chooses to depict things as they could be we'll start with the most obvious recurring theme as anyone who's watched more than like two of miyazaki's movies knows love and respect for nature is generally his thing there's some element of appreciation for the natural world in every film regardless of the plot but the subject is regularly at the forefront along with direct or indirect criticism of humanity's environmental problem what's most important to know about his views on this is even though he often depicts man versus nature in the classical sense he rejects it as a natural dichotomy although humans are disconnected and estranged from nature sentient and non-sentient we can never truly be separate from it we're animals living on earth we're still a part of nature and have to find harmony with it or perish in the article anime landscapes as a tool for analyzing the writers note that for miyazaki the destruction of nature and the destruction of the human soul are the same in the paper they describe how he presents human relationships to the environment in three ways sometimes shifting or overlapping within a film nature dominating humans humans dominating nature or equilibrium humans as part of nature miyazaki illustrates the consequences of the two imbalance types and advocates for the third relationship crucially in these more eco-oriented films nature's never just a pretty backdrop or passive entity but like an integral character that even retaliates if threatened he's basically saying we're not as in control as we think we are and that nature has intrinsic value unrelated to what we can extract from it with these outlooks in mind he challenges our often anthropocentric view of the environment and i think he most clearly confronted it in the 1984 film nausicaa of the valley of the wind his second directing gig and first original story its success allowed him along with suzuki and takahata to open studio ghibli the following year and its messaging made miyazaki something of an environmentalist figure while still a director for haier he started the serialized manga for nausicaa in 1982 and was later convinced to adapt it to animation he didn't actually finish the seven volume manga until 1994 so the film's plot is only covered in the first two volumes its neatly tied up ending with scrapped and the resulting story is a lot more fleshed out and kind of wild please read it some of miyazaki's best work and truer to his vision than the film was anyway within the story it's easy to spot inspiration from the sci-fi novel's dune and earth-sea the farthest shore this isn't the first time miyazaki worked on a post-apocalyptic project either the late 70s series future boy conan was all about a kid navigating a landscape devastated by war the same holds true for nausicaa a thousand years ago human weapons known as god warriors devastated the earth and from the ruin arose the sea of decay a deadly forest producing poisonous plants and fungi and lethal airborne spores five minutes without a mask and i'd be dead oh and there are giant armored insects everywhere and their swarms and deaths help spread the forest but in the midst of this existential threat human factions are still waging war against each other nausicaa's people live peacefully in a valley protected from the forest miasma by the ocean winds but these dilemmas eventually collide in the valley and she has to find a way to restore peace inspired by a 12th century japanese folk tale the princess who loved insects nausea had the unique skill to peacefully communicate with the insects called the om she treats all creatures with compassion and even finds tranquil solitude within the sea of decay using insects stress miyazaki's message against anthropomorphism i.e giving human traits to non-humans to make them more relatable environmental scholar ursula heist notes that animation is great for opening up a world being worked on by non-human agents in ways that resonate with environmentalist thought all the more so if they're not simply presented as humans and another guys but inhabit modes of thought and being all their own the omar is far from human as you can get and are admittedly repulsive and that's the point miyazaki thought reptiles and mammals are too familiar to humans regardless of how you switch up the design there's still a collection of familiar parts using a visual combo of insects and arthropods makes creatures that are more unrecognizable and thus resist empathy as he put it he said because most people dislike bugs they were the perfect creature to express a contrasting ecosystem and he wasn't going to use butterflies either he purposefully wanted them to be ugly though i guess enormous butterflies would be just as terrifying bugs are also fitting for this story considering insect populations are in dramatic decline and it's not as easy to advocate for beetles or wasps as it is for adorable pandas or majestic whales but whether we like them or not insects are vital in every terrestrial ecosystem we are not your enemies we mean you no harm nausica stresses that we can't just discard or destroy what we want out of convenience most media that depicts swarming or frightening insects will then celebrate their slaughter they came from another world to destroy the earth which makes sense when big insects are always the bad guy even nausicaa's original english dub in 1986 cut 20 minutes of run time and made the omen to purely aggressors completely erasing the environmental message and the weird poster that has nothing to do with the contents of the movie also suggests violence as the answer but for nausicaa the om aren't villains just fellow creatures trying to live and even the most recent disney dub of the uncut film falters a bit when it comes to viewing other creatures as equals in the article miyazaki's animism abroad it's pointed out how the nuances in the translation subtly remove respect to nature for example mr or miss wind is changed to simply the wind and nausicaa referring to a baby omu as good child was translated to good boy phrasing that's usually reserved for an obedient pet instead the om are more meant to represent the powerful unknown when it comes to the environment miyazaki said the more we humans anthropomorphize something and make it an easy target for empathy the less interesting it becomes from the beginning we seem to have a longing for a presence or a power that is far greater than ourselves and not easily understood a presence beyond our current framework or whose origins are prehistoric this longing isn't unique to me but rather is what we all feel a memory repeated over and over from our ancestors nature exists as an incredible force as something huge far exceeding our own little good or evil ways so at the end of the film instead of heading towards the human battle to fight with her people nausicaa diverts her path to rescue the tortured baby omu and calm the raging herd what's extra fascinating is her discovery earlier in the film the true nature of the sea of decay there were hints of it in nausica's secret garden the forest plants and their spores weren't poisonous if grown with clean soil and water so the real problem with the world was polluted soil i don't understand who could have polluted the entire earth later on after falling below the sea of decay into a non-toxic area nausica realized the forest had been purifying the soil this idea of nature restoring itself was inspired by minamata bay for years methylmercury-filled wastewater from a chemical plant poisoned the water people and animals who ate the contaminated fish suffered severe illness now known as minamata disease though the human tragedy here is obvious especially since the government didn't step in for decades miyazaki was also interested in what happened to the fish there's not a lot of info on mercury's effect on fish though i did find one article that said exposure can produce varying toxic effects depending on the species miyazaki found it fascinating how the fish continue to thrive in the poisoned water especially because people stopped fishing there so he decided to explore this idea via the sea of decay telling a story of nature bouncing back after human-caused pollution its ability to adapt and heal itself after devastation is what interested him that above all nature is flexible and after all as pointed out in the article the toxic heroine in nausica of the valley of the wind toxicity is a relative concept the sea of decay is only toxic from our human perspective in reality it's a life force and habitat for plenty of other species and its spores give rise to new non-human life plus decay is also an overlooked factor in healthy ecosystems as noted in an article about nature and asian pluralism and miyazaki's work the movie affirms the essential role of microorganisms and decay in the cycle of life the sea of decay nausica is not just a toxic wasteland it's teeming with life forms including insects and microbes that are propelling a new phase of evolution decay which appears to our ordinary human eyes as death and destruction is actually a highly fertile and creative process at the microscopic level the sea of decay epitomizes these two seemingly opposing but in reality completely intertwined forces of nature what's easy to lose sight of especially with miyazaki's often gorgeous depictions of the natural world is that he's also hoping to stress nature's intrinsic value value that doesn't solely derive from our enjoyment or use but that exists in and of itself independent of humans sometimes that can come across as misanthropy but in reality it's just stressing the idea that humans aren't the center of the universe in miyazaki's words this is why i think the solution to environmental issues must be to shift our perspective from preserving nature because it's useful to preserving it because it's not useful we have to discard our old way of thinking of judging something useful or not and realize that everything is encompassed in nature including things that aren't useful the very end of nausicaa leaves us with an optimistic image a single seed growing underground gleaming in a ray of sunlight it suggests that environmental revival will be slow but not impossible especially if we adapt along with the changing world one thing i haven't mentioned yet is animism generally animism is the belief that all natural things animate and inanimate possess a spiritual essence or soul the concept is present in nausicaa but miyazaki would explore it further in 1988's my neighbor totoro my neighbor totoro was sparked by a shift in miyazaki's opinion of japan he'd generally been pretty cynical about his country which was perhaps reflected in the mostly european inspired settings in his earlier work but that all changed when he discovered the writings of ethnobotanist saske nikao particularly the origins of cultivated plants in agriculture in it nakao discussed the broadleaf evergreen forest culture hypothesis the theory that in prehistoric times broadleaf evergreen forest landscapes covered much of asia and nurtured a common culture this theory left a huge impression on miyazaki and revitalized his way of thinking about japan and its nature as anime scholar and author of miyazaki world susan napier put it liberated from what he saw as a narrow japanese nationalism miyazaki felt that he could embrace the culture and beauty of his own country for the first time napier also points out this is why the dad in my neighbor totoro an archaeologist is studying japan's jomon period in his plan for the film miyazaki writes that it's about what we have forgotten what we don't notice what we are convinced we have lost and believing that we still have these things i'm proposing to make my neighbor totoro he went on to say it aims to be a happy and heartwarming film a film that lets the audience go home with pleasant glad feelings lovers will feel each other to be more precious parents will fondly recall their childhoods and children will start exploring the thickets behind shrines and climbing trees to find a totoro most people would agree he accomplished this set in rural japan it follows sisters may and satsuki after they move into a new home with their father while their mother recovers from illness in a local hospital they encounter spirits in the nearby forest including the huge creature totoro there's not much of a plot it mostly meanders around until the climactic scene where totoro helps satsuki find the lost may that said it has a really pleasant soothing atmosphere largely devoid of the stresses of modern life it's often cited as taking place in the 50s especially considering the doodles in kant's notebook which resembles shigeru sugita's manga art but miyazaki says it's actually set in a time before television it seems he wanted to emphasize it's a setting with no tech distractions it's like a memory of the post-war period when life seemed easier despite less material abundance perhaps because communities felt more close-knit there's a debate about whether any of the spirits like totoro are even real within the story including a handful of those dark fan theories where mei and or satsuki are actually dead at the end or whatever miyazaki hates these kinds of theories as for whether the spirits are real napier feels that we never really know for sure adds to the pleasure of the encounter traditionally east asian philosophy and thought has been far more comfortable than the west with the sense of the betwixt in between we'd like to share your view for a while sir if you don't mind and within this in-between lies the elements of shintoism present in the story a belief system that's deeply tied to animism and connection to the land shintoism is usually referred to as a native japanese religion though it's more of an unstructured decentralized belief system more about ritual and tradition than aligning with a rigid dogma miyazaki stresses he's not religious and purposefully tries to avoid overt religious symbolism still you can catch glimpses of religious iconography here and there like tori buddhist statues the fox god inari more significantly kami are all over the place including totoro and his friends kami are deities and spirits inhabiting the natural world both animate and inanimate organic and inorganic including phenomena like weather and natural disasters so the concept of kami is pretty aligned with what animism describes including the idea that such spirits warrant deep reverence and respect please continue to look after us totoro his small companions the soot spirits in the girl's new house and even the giant camphor tree which has a shinto rope tied around it can be thought of as kami they all suggest an otherworldly presence and a deep connection to nature and it's emphasized by miyazaki's recurring choice to place sacred areas in dark kind of eerie locations he notes that the west associates darkness with bad and light with good but says that for japanese people the gods often reside in the darkness like deep in the forest or mountains and overgrown creepy isolated areas where the silence is profound he applies this concept in the underground realm of nausicaa the ancient submerged city in lapida and the center of the city where the giant crystal resides the woods in the wind rises where lovers find one another again the healing pond and princess mononoke were the great forest spirit realms and of course the forest where we find totoro it all evokes a disorienting sense of uncertainty and awe but still offers a kind of comfort which was miyazaki's main goal with this film it's worth noting the particular state of affairs the film arose from as noted in the article the healing of nature the nature of healing in order to go one step beyond nostalgia and a longing for utopian harmony with nature my neighbor totoro should be seen with its historical context taken into account the popularity of the film symptomatically reveals the bleakness of modern human life with its estrangement from the gifts of nature thereby making us aware that the peaceful rural life presented in the film is in fact under threat of disappearance [Music] [Applause] was released in 1988 in the midst of japan's economic bubble it was an extravagant period marked by materialism and hyper commercialism but at its tipping point especially when the bubbles soon burst people started questioning their modern values according to scholar tatsuya yumiyama this led to the healing fad in the 90s now in a spiritual vacuum japanese people started longing for what they lost in their chase for modernity my neighbor totoro and media like it seemed to be a bomb for people who didn't have access to the kind of nature and simpler lifestyle depicted in it miyazaki was disgusted with the excess and materialism in the bubble period asserting the japanese were not able to transcend the demon of rapid economic development and as a result we have the corruption of the world the loss of ideals and the worship of material things but he found himself in a dilemma placing blame on himself for creating more products to consume contributing to what he calls a mass consumption civilization for a long time he's felt that the animation industry and media in general has also become subject to this framework of consumption that even art no matter its level of sincerity is forced to fit within a scheme of commercialized reality and so he condemns the quality of the animation being churned out by the industry feeling that most of it is only adding to cultural pollution and comes from a place of not understanding or acknowledging real human beings you may have seen the meme where he says anime was a mistake and while he didn't technically say this he might as well have take this quote from 1979 the animator himself feels a certain level of self-satisfaction and in accepting this situation has submitted to the trivialization of his creative spirit you may have become an animator because you wanted to build your own fictional world but such romantic dreams are quickly destroyed who could reproach you for mechanically running your pencil across the paper as you sit at the conveyor belt confronting the incredibly large pile of work to be done the totally inadequate production budget and time schedule the stupidity of the broadcaster or sponsor or promoter and the formidable barrier of the pre-existing specialization system there's no shortage of it's easy to be a cog once you get used to it [Music] his dreams come with a conflicting reality he thinks kids spend too much time at home raised on virtual reality and that his work only contributes to that and he's mortified when parents tell him their kids watch his movies over and over again instead he was hoping films like my neighbor totoro would encourage children to explore their surroundings so again it's a return to what we've lost emphasizing that the powers of nature and experiencing the world around us including socializing with our communities helps our minds and hearts heal in regards to the ending napier cites kaplan and wong modernity has shattered the inherited ground of experience and the intimate cultural networks of support and trust that humans hitherto relied on for a sense of security and meaningful life totoro offers a possibility of the recovery of these intimate cultural networks through both fantasy and its vision of collective human decency landscapes and communities like this are disappearing and miyazaki understands that large-scale problems like deforestation pollution and climate change often feel too complicated to even think about let alone make an effort to combat it in the face of that sense of powerlessness he feels people should focus their attention on local efforts his reason being if we're mainly confining ourselves to big picture general statements about things there's simply too much beyond our control so he's more for an on the ground approach where details and specifics can be worked with realistically my neighbor totoro has inspired various conservation efforts across japan and even abroad and we're going to talk about the film a bit more later on its laid-back healing tone helped reinvigorate people's sense of appreciation for the natural world but miyazaki's approach to environmental stories soon changed like i mentioned japan's economic bubble collapsed in 1991 due to the deteriorating economy dubbed japan's lost decade as well as international political conflicts we'll talk more about later miyazaki felt he couldn't make another upbeat laid-back film like totoro or kiki's delivery service stating he didn't want to pretend to children that were happy he was also sick of the branding that ghibli mostly made gentle nature films and wanted to break away from that label feeling that if they only showed nature's delights and elegance they'd be a false advertiser for environmentalism somehow the post-apocalyptic film with massive bugs a growing deadly jungle and a giant monster weapon ended on a somewhat more hopeful note than 1997's princess mononoke would now more than ever miyazaki's trying to emphasize how dysfunctional traumatizing and exploitative our relationship to nature really is it follows the young prince ashitaka as he saves his village from a demon but gets fatally cursed in the process he was then exiled set off in search of a cure and ended up mediating conflict between an ironworks town and the nearby wolf gods including their adopted human san in the pursuit of expansion and mineral resources the town which employs and houses various outcasts under the leadership of lady oboshi was cutting down the forest and its spirits started retaliating the cursed bore god ashitaka killed earlier was a result of this ongoing feud miyazaki describes this film as a period drama woven from two threads a vertical thread of a struggle between humans and spirits and a horizontal thread between a girl and a boy this meeting is the key to their liberation although it's set in the muromachi period miyazaki took care to avoid common tropes and conventions associated with the time period he loves kurosawa's seven samurai but felt it cast a spell on those who make period dramas that the depiction of this social structure appealed to audiences in the post-war period but it's not very accurate to most of the actual experiences of the time this take is largely influenced by the writings of historian yoshihiko amino whose studies focused on people often neglected in conventional research like women artisans craftsmen and outcasts plus miyazaki thought the samurai thing was boring and overdone at that point he really downplayed the importance of the emperor and samurai and princess mononoke they're pretty much afterthoughts and are far from noble and sacred from the emperor himself that's nice is he supposed to be important and they get their limbs and heads severed off pretty unceremoniously instead miyazaki focused on more outcast populations of the time and of course a bunch of forest gods the story set in the muromachi period specifically because it's seen as a transitional period in japanese history in terms of the way people interacted with the environment according to napier in miyazaki's view the 14th century is a period of significant historical transition from a world that was still in close contact with both natural and supernatural forces to a world that would become increasingly oriented toward the human as he says it was in this period that people changed their value system from goods to money apparently the new views started taking hold where people felt they could control nature rather than worship or revere it even though ironworks facilities and communities like this didn't really exist to this scale and women certainly weren't working in them the industry was already a major contributor to the deterioration of ecosystems and miyazaki would give literal voices to the victims of that destruction and unchecked development by imagining what it would be like if nature could retaliate against our efforts to destroy it this time in a pretty horrifying way suffer perhaps the most jarring aspect of princess mononoke is the brutal violence again he was trying to steer away from the notion that nature is harmless peaceful and under our thumb based on the island of yakushima in southern japan he wanted the forest to express an ambiance of mysteriousness and the feeling that something is watching even the cute kodama the tree spirits are a little bit creepy he used silence and darkness again to create stillness in an eerie atmosphere apparently miramax the us distributor for the film owned by disney at the time wanted to add sound effects in some spots because it was too quiet for american audiences like they wanted to add a twinkling noise for butterflies or the sound of a cloud passing which you know aren't real sounds ghibli obviously said no to that and to cutting the film by half an hour haunted by the memory of what happened with nausica here the kami are a bit more personified than in previous films disgusting little creatures and they're pissed off the name princess mononoke is actually an insult directed at san mononoke and japanese folklore are elusive often vengeful spirits so the townspeople are degrading the kami and by extension san by essentially calling them monsters or angry ghosts the indifferent great forest spirit almost does feel like a ghost also called shishigami and nightwalker it's an unfathomable unsettling and strange presence whether in ectoplasmic form or not this only emphasizes miyazaki's stance against anthropocentrism and even anthropomorphism napier writes rendering the shishigami and all its simultaneous beauty and grotesqueness miyazaki takes the film squarely in an ethical direction that goes beyond the truism of humans dominating nature in this regard the film contrasts with disney films in which even enthusiasts acknowledge a cutification of nature occurs in his analysis of bambi for example disney scholar david whitley acknowledges the movie's sentimentalizing of nature noting that the choreographed interactions between animal friends or different species the wide-eyed enhancement of facial features designed to appeal to human ideals of attractiveness and the elimination of natural predators to create a world of idyllic innocence all combine to create a sentimental viewpoint that is difficult to reconcile with full respect for the integrity and otherness of the natural world the shishigami is both terrifying and beautiful just like the joyous kodama who look on in wonder and anticipation as the hunters illustrate it's an otherworldly experience that makes you feel as though you're looking at something you shouldn't be looking at something sacred outside the realm of human thought or understanding but sir we can't it's a sin to look at it in effect we get the message that humans don't dominate this space or even the world in promotional material for a short film a few years later miyazaki wrote i am much more attracted to the idea of preserving the forests not for the sake of humans but because they themselves are alive at the same time there's an overarching message of harmony and vitality and of seeing the world with eyes unclouded ashitaka was part of the yamiche people a real ethnic group that was displaced and driven to the north due to japanese imperialism their culture had pretty much disappeared by the muromachi period so it seems ashitaka represents the last remnants of their people this is why his identity and unusual clothing were often called into question but because of his elevated outsider status more outsidery than anyone else here he was more equipped to offer a third party perspective there's a demon inside of you it's inside both of you in this frame of mind he rejected viewing the situation with a hateful or vengeful heart especially since he'd be dead soon anyway what he saw from his unclouded point of view were two groups both battling in desperation for survival it's a realistic outlook on what many conflicts truly are they're rarely about good and evil and more about opposing interests or perspectives miyazaki said in an interview it would be so easy to create a scheme that depicts humans as a name with bad people cutting trees down and good people protecting the trees but that would be entirely unrelated to the essence of human beings it's more likely that those people who were hard-working and kind to their neighbors were the same ones who in an effort to improve living conditions carved up the mountains and dispersed the animals it's not enough to go around saying that we have to respect nature that we should always live a pure and proper life in nature if that's the case what should today's people who have to live in cities do aren't there lives of value too well i certainly think they are what some call eco cinema is getting more and more popular for kids but the approach is often melodramatic pitting heroic nature against evil humanity things are seldom that black and white and this approach tends to create a passive audience that doesn't have to think about anything beyond i hope the bad guys lose with princess mononoke we're instead left conflicted since the town's people's motivations are at least somewhat understandable it's posited in the article princess mononoke and beyond new nature narratives for children that the film stands out as an alternative to the dominant mode that relies on melodrama's spectacle moral polarity and narrative conclusiveness this lack of clear-cut conclusion leads to a pretty bittersweet ending after the shishigami is decapitated and its deadly ooze spreads upon the land ashitaka and san return its head but it dies anyway leaving behind a green landscape ashitaka wants sand to be with him but it seems the issue isn't quite resolved means so much to me but i can't forgive the humans for what they've done we've heard the cries of despair after ecological destruction but what now where do we go from here we have to make sacrifices if we want to preserve the environment especially because if we destroy nature will destroy ourselves in the process again there's no simple solution but the interdependence of nature and humanity still isn't fully recognized by most people unlike shinto beliefs which maintain we're at the mercy of these gods we still think we have power over nature instead of the other way around yet as the years go on we're being proved wrong time and again as illustrated in nausicaa nature has grown and evolved and adapted over millions of years human activity will cause the earth to lose biodiversity and ecosystems will have to acclimate and turn the tide but the earth will keep spinning creatures will either adapt to the instability or go extinct and give way to other species that can fish will go on swimming in minamata bay nature itself that ever-changing ever-evolving concept that is not in danger but humans are in 2008 studio ghibli released ponyo a cute story inspired by hans christian anderson's little mermaid in which a goldfish who lives with her father and dozens of sisters meets a boy escapes her home and with her father's magic inadvertently makes herself human like she wanted and unleashes a massive tsunami on the small coastal town bringing back ancient animals from the late devonian period in the process the settings based on the seaside town tomonra while much of the film is rather cutesy and largely dedicated to children exploring their surroundings a lot like totoro miyazaki said he couldn't make it too simple and innocent like he did back then he wanted to add an extra layer to the premise so one can't ignore the intensity of ponyo setting considering the real-life extreme weather and natural disasters that are becoming more of a regular almost expected occurrence the disastrous flooding feels genuinely alarming it's clear the ocean wasn't just some interesting or pretty scenery but something integral to communicate the idea of transformation and lack of control in his intent for the project miyazaki wrote that the sea below like our subconscious mind intersects with the wave toss surface above by distorting normal space and contorting normal shapes the sea is animated not as a backdrop to the story but as one of its principal characters with no straight lines it becomes a world where even the horizon swells dips and sways we witness disaster through the eyes of children their wonderment at the transformed environment and also their distress but while we accompany them the journey is mostly serene almost disturbingly so given their surroundings i was once long ago a human myself i had to leave that all behind to serve the earth meanwhile ponyo's father fujimoto has been compared to miyazaki himself humans are disgusting apparently he used to be human but chose to leave humanity behind disgusted and resentful because of their pollution and musing about their eventual demise then to the era of those abominable humans the ending is simplistic and upbeat sosuke accepts ponyo for who she is girl or fish and she willfully transforms into a human and they live happily ever after the art is stunning though despite the added thematic layer it's probably one of miyazaki's less complex films and he somewhat acknowledges its limitations quote due to the power of sutka's heart a new balance is attained and the world calms down the film ends with instability and concern for the future but that is the fate of the human race beyond the 21st century a topic that can't be settled in one film if ponyo accomplishes anything it definitely adds to the recurring apocalyptic visions of environmental disaster in miyazaki's work the flood waters destroy towns the fish are back we are the virus etc it's another argument against anthropocentrism trying to rid humans of the illusion that we're somehow in control an earthquake so strong it literally shifted the earth's axis by about 25 centimeters in 2011 a couple years after ponyo was released a magnitude 9 earthquake jostled japan's infrastructure and created a massive tsunami that absolutely devastated the northeastern coastline it also caused a level 7 nuclear accident in fukushima joining only chernobyl in that category as the plant's meltdowns and explosions led to the release of radiation in the atmosphere thousands died and many more were left homeless and it still remains the costliest natural disaster later that year in a popular japanese tv channel's annual marathon of ghibli films they removed ponyo from the lineup miyazaki has stated we try to conserve nature because it yields a nature useful to us as a species but nature is essentially savage it negates culture and civilization despite humans efforts to improve things for themselves nature contains elements flatly opposed to our efforts with that i'll quickly discuss lapida castle in the sky because this section is already way too long let's go back in time to miyazaki's third film in 1986. it centers on an orphan girl sheeta with a magic crystal who people keep trying to kidnap so they can find the lost flying island of lapida shida's original home which miyazaki named after jonathan swift's flying island in gulliver's travels she's helped by her new friend patsu and later a band of flying pirates she and patsu eventually make it to the abandoned island but military forces soon arrive led by the power-hungry muska who is one of miyazaki's only outright villains he wants to use lapida's weapons technology to conquer the world it's a device that's described to be responsible for disasters in the bible in ramayana and its power calls to mind the atomic bombings in japan as patsu and shida explored the island they discovered that the robots there are actually caretakers of the animals in the landscape when not faced with hostile threats like we saw earlier in the film mooska's character shows that nature is often an obstacle to us something to remove and exterminate out of convenience horrible things i'll have them burned he's disgusted by the overgrowth in the center of the city and plans to get rid of it these filthy roots don't belong in this chamber yet the entire city itself is built surrounding an enormous tree its true life force miyazaki presents the surprising notion that technology and modernity can co-exist with nature if only we didn't use it for destructive purposes in the article the city ascends lapida is critical ecotopia it's remarked that the very image of such a place is shocking within american environmentalism and its uncritical utopianism and dystopianism furthermore a guardian robot who saves birds nest and tends the abundant garden of the future is anathema to both poles of the argument technological utopians still consider nature to be the foil not the companion of artificial intelligence much of the discourse of climate change is still infected with the idea of the planet as object of control the idea that a robot could be a better friend to the lapidan environment is a contradiction in terms technology is what separates humans from communion with the wild what makes us more unnatural and unethical miyazaki questions the assumption that technology is imperialist by nature through the island of lapida the film showcases harmony between modernity and nature but only if we shed the impulse towards power and warfare when cheetah and patsu recite the spell of destruction via the crystal the weapon alone was shed from lapida the city despite its technology is more than just a force for destruction but then it flies away uninhabited a utopia that doesn't yet belong to us again these two seemingly opposite lifestyles can co-exist and should technology alone won't be enough to solve our problems we still need to protect nature if we want a healthy balance and a relatively safer world from the aforementioned article it's pointed out that the notion that environmental problems can be solved through technological innovation has been remarkably persistent in this sense technological utopianism has deep roots in american environmentalism and the fetishized nature of media attention to the next electric car the compact fluorescent light bulb or atmospheric engineering to counter global warming underlines the persistence of this way of thinking lapida insists that the fault lies not in our technology but in ourselves real environmental progress requires cultural change which is generally harder to engineer than a light bulb while nausicaa gave us a somewhat hopeful ending this film questions whether we even deserve an ecotopia like lapida the central conflict stresses that cultural change will probably have to come with renunciation of warfare throughout most of these films miyazaki depicts war often human to human conflict as a major obstacle hindering our ability to care for the environment miyazaki was born in tokyo in the midst of world war ii some of his earliest memories are of bombed cities his family had to evacuate at least twice to avoid air raids meanwhile his father's company manufactured parts for fighter planes a fact miyazaki clung to with resentment and guilt for decades in college he earned a degree in political science and economics and has been an outspoken pacifist ever since clearly deeply troubled by his early experiences in family history he once said i'm fascinated by wars and i read a lot about them people therefore often ask me miyazaki-san do you like war and i respond by asking if they think aids researchers like aids so on that note let's talk about porco rosso it's probably the most adult-oriented film miyazaki's directed having described it as a cartoon movie for tired middle-aged men whose brain cells have turned to tofu originating as a manga and model graphics magazine the story got commissioned as a short in-flight entertainment film which was later expanded to full length the 1992 film follows an italian bounty hunter marco who takes down sky pirates for a living he was a fighter pilot in world war one but a sense fled the country and hides away on islands in the adriatic sea oh and he was mysteriously cursed with a pig's head right before the war ended buying some patriotic bonds to help serve our nation sorry i'm a pig unsurprisingly miyazaki's messaging is explicitly anti-fascist not only has marco fled the line of duty but he's hyper aware and outspoken about the dangers of nationalism thanks for the offer but i'd rather be a pig than a fascist his american rival curtis who challenges him to a dogfight from the movie's climactic scene is an annoying caricature but he's not the main antagonist that's made clear by the end when they both have to flee from the italian air force the real villain here is fascism and war is this looming reality always present in the background encroaching on the narrative while the film has a similar vibe to casablanca including the nightclub the unattainable lover sorry baby gotta fly shark and the protagonist cynicism and reluctance to get involved in war or politics easy kid i'm just a bounty hunter i'm not fighting a war casablanca eventually shifts its stance just like the us eventually gave up on neutrality during world war ii rick's sympathies for the allies grew and he took action meanwhile it seems porco rosso presses for not just anti-fascism but all-out anti-war pacifism marco never stops running away at one point he recalls the memory of a brutal dogfight after which thousands of pilots ascended into the sky they're shimmering planes disappearing into the horizon leaving him behind he begs his newly married best friend to trade places with him what about gina you can't leave her alone let me go instead it's a haunting scene that captures the horrific consequences of war it's inspired by roald dahl's short story they shall not grow old in which a world war ii raf pilot named finn recounts a similar story to marcos where he witnessed other planes of every description flying together and landing on a green plane heading towards a bright white light finn yearned to join them in death but fate had other plans marco's experience isn't too out of the blue given the number of pilots and planes from both sides that never returned home but even though he's explicitly anti-fascist he's arguably maybe too much of a passive bystander and his reticence seems to be explained by this tragic memory he's withdrawn from society because of the post-traumatic stress inflicted by the experience the curse is a physical manifestation of survivor's guilt and feeling he could have done more to help his friends good guys were the ones who died or made the undead life as a pig is the same thing as hell he still carries the weight of what he experienced on his shoulders and feels pressured to continue life alone due to japan's role in world war ii miyazaki also carries a form of guilt especially considering that his family's financial security derived from warfare so he's deeply angry and ashamed for both personal and national reasons he said when it comes to guilt it's a consistent theme inside me my family in japan my household and then japan and the world japan and asia this guilt coils around my memories and if i lose that guilt then somehow i have the feeling that i'll lose the most important thing about myself i even feel that the guilt is what really supports me pigs make frequent appearances in his work often associated with some kind of curse marco is no different his pig face represents how these traumatic wartime experiences alienate veterans from other people when they return home in the article when pigs fly anime auteurism and miyazaki's porco rosso is noted that a thorny issue for japanese culture is how to make sense of the legacy of fascism how could otherwise decent people have let such a system take over how could younger generations assimilate that into their cultural narratives by setting a story in italy on the verge of fascism miyazaki gets to explore some of these moral and ethical issues indirectly suggesting that one reason fascism might have been able to take over was due to quote good guys like porco becoming lost in cynical self-indulgence and refusing to take a stand against it and while it is crucial to critique the negative aspects of pressure to a social conformity if people completely turn their backs on society all they have left is marco's cynical pigdom the ending leaves a bit of mystery as to whether his curse was lifted though the empty garden implies he did get together with gina says she's no longer waiting for him there yet throughout the film we're aware of the even worse war that's to come and it creates a sense of bittersweetness while miyazaki worked on porco rosso he said ongoing political conflicts caused it to become a quote more complicated film his post-war generation had been more optimistic about the possibility of a better world since they witnessed their battered country grow from the wreckage and progressed for the better according to him there was a sense of hope for the future but in the early 90s the soviet union collapsed the yugoslav wars erupted and the japanese government contributed billions in financial aid for the gulf war as japan's economic bubble burst miyazaki said he was quote dumbfounded running around in a haze fast forward to 2003 when he won an oscar for spirited away and refused to attend the ceremony and protested the iraq war saying i had thought that thanks does having lost the war we japanese might have finally become a little more skeptical about national claims of righteousness and just causes watching bush i can only think he is possessed by the ghost of john wayne telling him that this is the way a real man should act saddam hussein's sense of righteousness is the same this sentiment directly inspired and permeated his next film 2004's howl's moving castle he said he purposefully wanted to make a film that would be poorly received in the u.s based on a 1986 fantasy novel by diana wynne jones it tells the story of a young woman named sophie who's cursed with an aging spell by a vindictive witch selfie seeks out the wizard hal to help her reverse the spell and moves into his castle with his fire demon calcifer and his young apprentice unlike the book which is more ingrained in the classic fairy tale genre miyazaki makes war a more central part of the narrative it apparently started because a prince was kidnapped but we mostly see the war from a distance it seems this is how miyazaki avoided glorifying it and making it into a grand spectacle we don't see big military battles or combat all we see are the civilians on the ground victims of indiscriminate slaughter people that have little to nothing to do with the decisions of their governments and militaries the bombings are likely similar to what miyazaki and his family experienced in world war ii the real essence of the anti-war aspect is how's burning hatred is it the enemies or one of ours what difference does it make no stupid murderers he's a character no doubt infused with miyazaki's own anger and bitterness at first he avoided the war entirely ignoring the mandatory summons to fight for the kingdom his rebellion goes against what miyazaki describes as the quote loyalty of boys which he feels is a syndrome that gives birth to tragedy as nations and extremist groups force or convince young men to fight needless wars or exercises of power exploiting their loyalty only to treat them as disposable meanwhile madame sullivan the king sorceress and house former mentor seems more concerned with pursuing conflict than helping her country's citizens she represents miyazaki's view that these issues are usually perpetrated by the callous and fickle nature of the people in power and that despite this people often blindly root for the questionable actions of the militaries and leaders later on it's like hal's fighting the concept of war itself but the anger starts to consume him just as it consumed other wizards who signed on to fight he started morphing into what he hated indicated by his cursed bird-like form and kalcifer warns him that he may not be able to turn back you shouldn't keep flying around like that soon you won't be able to turn back into a human it illustrates how war can wreck a person not just physically but psychologically how it can warp our perceptions of what the right thing even is and how even a pacifist can become blinded by mindless rage against perceived enemies no matter the reason or circumstance war has the potential to turn people into monsters a bomb was finally released exactly at the designated hour and the explosion occurred as planned miyazaki stresses that quote it would be false to say that because we're on the side of justice we can go ahead and destroy our opponents and the world will be at peace that at least i could say would be a total lie now i know that there are such things as good and evil in the world and that people do good things but people who do good things are not necessarily good people they just happen to be people who have done good things the next instant they might wind up doing something bad and if we don't take that into account in our view of humans we'll constantly make mistakes when making political decisions or decisions about ourselves miyazaki's approach to anti-war stories brings to mind the author kurt vonnegut a world war ii vet who once wrote i have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee like miyazaki usually vonnegut doesn't have villains in his stories in 1983 miyazaki said he wanted to create a version of beauty and the beast where the character is cleansed by being devoted to something and is transformed by being cleansed so that at the end the character becomes what we wish had been there all along it seems he carried this out with hal's character in the end hal recognizes his appreciation and devotion for his found family and goes on to cherish them peacefully the kidnapped prince was actually the scarecrow sophie had been helping she breaks the spell and the powers that be end the war pretty abruptly in an article on counteract it's pointed out that this futility and pointlessness is emphasized at the film's conclusion when the conflict is ended in a manner that's both flippant and arbitrary the frivolous manner in which the hostilities are brought to a conclusion raises the question as to whether this is an ending at all if this war can be concluded so quickly surely another could be started just as easily but this is perhaps the point sure enough at the very end we see bombers heading to another war off to repeat the cycle again [Music] almost as ubiquitous as environmental themes nearly all of miyazaki's films contain some kind of flight sequence regarding this he said i have a strong desire to be liberated from being tied down to reality when forced to explain it i could say that's my rationale that's why i want to fly away a moving perspective that incorporates a sense of space in the picture that creates a sense of liberation and that makes our souls want to greet the wind the clouds and the beautiful earth we see unfolding far below these are the wonderful scenes and machines i dream of someday depicting his admiration for aircraft obviously goes hand in hand with his love of flight there's all kinds of them in his films with varying designs and shapes and sizes and mechanisms it's not hard to tell he's an aviation enthusiast his most recent film 2013's the wind rises was the most plane-centric one yet airplanes are not tools for war airplanes are beautiful dreams it's very loosely biographical based on the real engineer jiro horikoshi who designed the mitsubishi zero used by japan in world war ii the movie follows his journey in the industry designing airplanes for the military as well as a romantic relationship though that part is mostly fictionalized inspired by tatsu ohori's novel the wind has risen it's a beautiful haunting film that illustrates the disconnect between innovators and the ways their creations are used at one point it depicts the 1923 great kanto earthquake that miyazaki's grandfather actually survived eerily paralleling japan's 2011 earthquake along with the rise of nationalism that came from it it's clearly a much more personal film for miyazaki and made him more emotional than all the others [Music] but it was also his most controversial and was condemned by both sides of the political spectrum according to liberals and leftists since miyazaki didn't explicitly depict the negative repercussions of jiro's creations and mostly honed in on the creative and technological brilliance he was accused of evading the atrocities of japan's war crimes and glorifying its weapons the assembly of the zeroes involved korean slave laborers and they were of course then used to kill thousands of people including via infamous kamikaze missions as japan carved out its south pacific empire the zero ran rampant people felt that by turning away from the reality of these effects miyazaki was ignoring the responsibility of the death and destruction brought about by the zero that he was focusing too much on the personal fulfillment of one man and not enough on the global consequences of that man's actions many critics and fans alike called the film distasteful out of touch and even morally repugnant even susan napier alludes to its faults in this film miyazaki creates a new kind of fantasy a history that stops just before the darker side of technological development appears yet this fantasy is historically grounded and as such is no longer quite so arm's length that the zeros were magnificent technological achievements that brought death to tens of thousands is more than an inconvenient truth in our kingdom of dreams now it's the land of the dead meanwhile a pacifistic essay he penned for a special issue of ghibli's magazine drew criticism from japanese right-wing nationalists he objected to the prime minister's plan to amend the constitution to allow for more militarism and reiterated that japan hasn't apologized enough for the war crimes committed in world war ii for this miyazaki was called the traitor and his film was deemed anti-japanese propaganda so on one hand he was criticized for being anti-military anti-japanese and on the other not critical enough of japan's role in the war regardless this evasion of war and the narrative is a little bizarre for him he once said he wants to avoid drawing aircraft in a way that quote further feeds an infatuation with power yet as someone who hates war he celebrates the beauty of its technology his longtime producer suzuki encouraged him to make this film precisely because of those contradicting ideals miyazaki seems to be attempting to reconcile some of those contradictions within himself jiro felt he had no options in a world where invention and technology inevitably fell in the hands of those who'd abuse it but at the same time german engineer hugo junkers one of jiro's heroes died under house arrest trying to keep his technology out of nazi hands jiro on the other hand continued to contribute to war efforts by designing planes and even though it was only mildly addressed the reality of that dampens our perception of the film and of jiro's character at least it does for me miyazaki would probably even agree but i guess the guy just really likes planes [Music] the company's even named after an italian warplane despite their immediate effect on his family early on in his life and their plane parts factory being a major source of his lifelong guilt he's liked playing since he was a kid saying i expressed my own desire for power by drawing airplanes with sleek and pointed noses and battleships with huge guns and i found myself thrilled by the bravery of sailors who even as their burning ships sank continued to fire their guns until the bitter end by the men who plunged into the hail of fire and flack spewed forth by an enemy formation's guns it was only much later that i realized that in reality these men had desperately wanted to live and had been forced to die in vain the wind rises was initially a manga series in hobby magazine model graphics in the early 2000s napier notes that quote in page after page carefully and intricately rendered images of war machines are front and center occupying most of the manga in general rather than combat sequences these manga seem to privilege military technology for its own sake as complicated works of art that almost take on a life of their own interestingly the engineers including jiro are drawn as pigs which might call back to miyazaki's use of pigs as symbolic for curses humanity has always dreamt of light but the dream is cursed miyazaki wanted to portray the beauty of a craft and the dedication of a creator but ultimately acknowledges it as a cursed dream beautiful things distorted and exploited by a corrupt world he admits the mournful truth that these aircraft are ultimately instruments of war in an interview with a historian he said he wanted to quote take back the zero fighter from the hands of the military technology nuts and military fantasy novels wanted to depict it as the doom design really was it's the sad reality that a lot of major tech development is in some way related to war or the military-industrial complex as remarked in a verge article the wind rises illustrates quote the tragic near impossibility of combining dreams and reality but along with this the wind rises is also the story of a man more dedicated to his work than his family a dilemma familiar to miyazaki since he was a largely absent husband and father in the film jiro loves his wife but not as much as he loves airplanes in parallel to jiro's disappointment in the use of his creation miyazaki has also said that he has quote no pride or sense of accomplishment in his work in its own way filmmaking was miyazaki's cursed dream but perhaps even more significantly the film allowed him to explore the moral contradictions of his father like i mentioned miyazaki harbored a lot of guilt because of his family's role in the war he also seemed to be deeply impacted by an instance when his family was evacuating in a small truck and had to leave behind a woman and child who were asking for help quote the voice is saying please let us on got farther away and it gradually took root in my head the way a traumatic event does the fact that it had been raised comfortably in a family getting rich through munitions at a time when most people were suffering materially and that in the very midst of people dying our family was able to escape in a truck where there was almost no gasoline to be had and that we ended up abandoning people who are begging us to let them on this is a memory that became a firm part of my four-year-old self miyazaki rebelled against his father for much of his life clinging to resentment that he says built up in him like sludge they rarely saw eye to eye and he didn't understand how his father could have contributed to such a senseless war in the documentary the kingdom of dreams and madness he got a letter from a stranger extending gratitude towards his father who treated them with a memorable moment of kindness during the war when they had nowhere to go miyazaki laughed about the moral inconsistency fascinated by the fact that a man selling parts for bombers could turn around and be kind hearted all the same thing so much of his work seems to stress that duality of personhood trying to reconcile how compassion and cruelty can simultaneously live within us producer suzuki points out that most people especially those with families to feed wouldn't have gone against japan's increasingly militaristic state at the time at a later point in his life after his father died miyazaki felt he would approach a conversation with him differently if he had a chance to speak with his parents again that he'd be better able to understand and sympathize with their perspective acknowledging that the quote lower strata of society was mostly operating under a sense of realism that perhaps just couldn't be boiled down to militarism or nationalism and that his father was doing all he could to protect his family in 1995 he said if i have one regret it's that i never discuss things seriously with my old man from the time i was young i always looked at him as a negative example but it seems after all that i am like him i've inherited my old man's anarchistic feelings and his lack of concern about embracing contradictions [Music] miyazaki likens filmmaking or perhaps storytelling in general to setting up a christmas tree you can put up a bunch of pretty glowing ornaments i.e art and cinematography but the ornamental aspects are only part of a totality you need a strong solid trunk a theme or larger purpose with lots of branches to support the decor but a film with just a message would be like a big fat dried up log propped up right all the components are necessary to create something worthwhile and memorable i imagine his characters are the branches of the tree and the needles the details of their experiences and motivations i think this perspective is partially what helped him create a variety of female characters throughout his career often unconventional ones that defy stereotypes pigeonholing or one dimensionality it seems he was ahead of his time in this regard in a general sense but especially in japanese anime where over sexualization of female characters even under age ones is extremely common miyazaki doesn't cater to fan service and typically doesn't even depict overt romance in 2001 he said i felt this country only offered such things as crushes and romance to ten-year-old girls and looking at my young friends i felt this was not what they held dear in their hearts not what they wanted and so i wondered if i could make a movie in which they could be heroines rather than molding them into a one-note stock strong female character what gives them agency is simply that they're active rather than passive driving the plot forward through their own choices and development with both strong moments and vulnerable moments both commendable and questionable qualities and being flawed and fallible in other words they're realistic in miyazaki's words you need characters that are life-affirming and have clear hopes and goals he may have been at least partially inspired to create these life-affirming heroines by 1958's the tale of the white serpent the first color anime feature film which ignited miyazaki's desire to pursue animation as a career but it seems his relationship with his mother was also a factor producer suzuki has bluntly declared that miyazaki was a mama's boy out of four sons he was especially close to his mother who was bedridden for much of his childhood sharp and strong-willed she's said to have influenced many of the characters in his work including the recurring references to tuberculosis because you're a girl a female that's man's work but your female captain in particular according to napier dola from castle in the sky is widely considered to be an affectionate homage to miyazaki's mother dola's meddlesomeness and flamboyance clearly accord with the miyazaki children's memory of her miyazaki's younger brother shiro wonders whether at some level lapida was an awkward but ardent farewell present to their recently deceased mother at the end of the movie we see dola and her strapping sons perching on their fleet of flying machines offering the children a family to return to if they ever need one i think miyazaki's respect for his mother definitely influenced his ability to create these characters who feel so very real while varying widely in age and demeanor nausicaa seemed to be the major starting point a kind and loving person but not as harmless and delicate as these kinds of nurturing characters tend to be for example she was still susceptible to rage since she you know killed a bunch of people and this wasn't presented as an empowering moment but something she expressed remorse for and while it would have been easy to go with the trope of a sweet nature-loving woman pitted against a power-hungry aggressive man the main antagonist was also a woman kushana who was maimed in an insect attack views the om as the enemy and wants to fight to reclaim the earth but she's not a one note villain she seems reasonable in some instances and genuinely wants to talk things over in this sense she feels like a precursor to lady oboshi from princess mononoke fighting against nature for what they believe is the greater good for humanity's sake and because creatures like the om are easy to vilify in sci-fi kushana would be the hero in most stories like this through these kinds of characters miyazaki strengthens the notion that if you want to write interesting and fleshed out female characters sometimes the best place to start is disregarding that label entirely like the character just happens to be a woman and it's not a big deal that's not to say it should never matter that identity is usually going to inform their experience and perception of the world in some capacity like sophie from howl's moving castle who's a particularly interesting exploration of the stigma of aging using a curse for direct contrasting between the social freedom allowed by age versus the constraints of youth in the article animating grandma elizabeth parsons writes that in miyazaki's balancing act old women can be powerful and weak positive and negative nurturing and selfish maligned and loved in short they cannot be simply categorized or stereotyped and they cannot be dismissed as fantasy male factors embodied by evil witches that's right i'm the scariest of them all sophie was cursed with old age and sure it came with its aches and pains but on some level she was actually liberated by it if anything the doubts and uncertainty of youth was her real curse she was plagued with insecurity because women are socialized to value physical appearance above all their other traits i've never once been beautiful in my entire life if self-assuredness took hold or she expressed herself openly it diminished her curse but habitual self-deprecation and low self-esteem let the spell take hold again sophie you're beautiful only with her old appearance did she feel confident enough to speak her mind and do what was necessary to take care of herself miyazaki stresses it would be a lie to say that turning young again would mean living happily ever after i didn't want to say that i didn't want to make it seem like turning old was such a bad thing sophie's transformed from a shy mousy little girl into a blunt honest woman it's not a motif you see often and especially with an old woman taking up the whole screen it's a big theatrical risk but it's a delusion that being young means you're happy in the book hal tells her she likes being in disguise and though she gets upset it's pretty true the curse became a way to shelter herself from judgment of her true form as an old lady she could hide away peacefully unbothered by people's standards of attractiveness and instead focusing on what was actually important to her she took pride in her new role in the castle which was admittedly traditional but that's not inherently a bad thing it's a common and perhaps the oldest way in history to express love to those around you which many can attest to if you have a mom or grandma who always asks if you're hungry and insist on feeding you regardless of the answer howell and mark will even follow suit in this expression of love and division of responsibilities taking over the cooking and laundry wanting to share in this role of caring for the household in short these everyday tasks are shown to be just as valuable as the magic howl uses to transform their space only sophie did it without magic parsons writes sophie's real rather than fantasy powers or those typically associated with the grandma she also calls herself she transforms her world in two key ways through loving nurture and through housework on the surface this logic is open to critique as a limited depiction of what women can do and moreover what older and no longer sexually desirable women are reduced to as representative of typical cultural patterns that said by refiguring these conventional grandma behaviors as powerful magical heroic and successful the film transcends the problems associated with feminist bids to show women as empowered only if they succeed at traditionally masculine tasks in the meantime her character transcends ideals of beauty and even welcomes the witch of the waste into her home another old woman who used to suppress her age with magic due to insecurity but was forced to come to terms with it funnily enough howell is the main one who had to overcome his excessive vanity i see no point in living if i can't be beautiful it seems like he does based on his naturally black hair at the end so by then he and sophie feel free and comfortable enough with themselves to live openly and unabashedly in love with the true versions of each other the beast no longer transformed overt romance is relatively rare in miyazaki's films but in hal's moving castle though sophie has an elderly appearance for most of the movie two men fell in love with her because of her heart rather than her outward appearance she saves them both and manages to end the war in the process the realization that her kind nature would always be more valuable than her looks is what transformed her confidence in spirit with some help from her found family like i said miyazaki doesn't typically prioritize romance in his narratives but when he does he again wants to portray it as a part of life that should be life affirming and sincere he once said i've become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature a romance must ensue rather i want to portray a slightly different relationship one where the two mutually inspire each other to live if i'm able to then perhaps they'll be closer to portraying a true expression of love on that note san and ashitaka from princess mononoke portray a caring relationship on complicated terms for much of the movie she appears to represent miyazaki's feelings of misanthropy like fujimoto and ponyo never i hate all of you humans and along with the side of gentle and nurturing lover of nature like nausicaa she's often angry and murderous it would have been easy to make her an unquestionable hero champion of nature but instead just like her adversary lady oboshi she sees the world with eyes clouded by hatred look everyone this is what hayford looks like this is what it does when it catches hold of you raised by wolves she's only ever interacted with other humans in the context of violent conflict meanwhile lady oboshi operates with more hubris than evil like kushana she believes she's justified in her campaign against nature her affinity for outcasts appears to have solidified an us versus them mentality and in her mind the angry spirits wreaking havoc on her people are the same as the emperor samurai attacking and attempting to subjugate them on the one hand she employs and gives shelter to former sex workers ex-crooks and ostracized lepers on the other she's killing forrest gods so she can expand her operation at the expense of the environment she clearly feels she's doing the right thing and doesn't seem cruel just for cruelty's sake that brain is pig i'm the one he should have put a curse on not you neil gaiman the english author who wrote the english screenplay for princess mononoke said that in a meeting with miramax they were trying to press the issue of whether lady oboshi was a good or bad guy whether the shishigami was good or bad he responded miyazaki built a film in which there are no bad guys there are only consequences the black and white binary system of good and evil which dominates so many narratives especially in children's media and especially disney sets a generally poor precedent for our perception of other people who are almost never simply good or bad lady oboshi represents the larger concept of modernity and by extension the idea that modernity and tech advancement isn't inherently evil it's just a means of humans trying to make life better for themselves that can sometimes get out of hand as napier writes it illustrates the kind of moral compromises that being a leader or simply being human can force upon us both oboshi and san seem to operate under the notion that only their own people matter and are worth living and based on much of miyazaki's work he feels this is the crux of most human conflict to touch on a film we haven't discussed yet in kiki's delivery service miyazaki places a witch in the modern age for a 1989 coming-of-age tale which is pretty apt timing considering the 90s was rife with witch stories in pam grossman's waking the witch she writes that the teen witch is an avatar of the miseries insecurities and strange proclivities that so many of us keep nodded within as we navigate our young lives miyazaki seems to echo that sentiment as he wanted a film centered on young girls navigating the uncertainty of youth an expression of solidarity to young viewers who find themselves torn between dependence and independence it also portrays the discord between tradition versus modernity and how the former gradually gives way to the latter as young people start to make it in the world on their own i wish i had something pretty to wear my dress is so ugly it tells the story of 13 year old kiki who leaves her home and family behind to spend a year alone as part of her witch's training since she can fly she quickly finds work as a delivery girl but burnout and self-doubt great on her conscience so she loses her magical abilities and has to overcome her insecurity and loss of passion the entrepreneurial lifestyle is tough in general but being 13 and working in a new unfamiliar town that's sure to make you lose a bit of your spark not only that but she has to see other young people having fun free to do as they please while she has responsibilities to tend to she made a delivery to my house on my birthday you mean she's working at her age kiki's magic is tied to her inner spirit so it comes as little surprise that she loses her abilities when she has to fly out of obligation rather than her own fulfillment it purposefully parallels her new friend ursula's lifestyle kiki develops a network of relationships within the town mostly different kinds of women and girls in different phases of life her guidance from older women includes her mom and grandmother the pregnant baker who houses and employs her her first customer the fashion designer the older women she helps out and of course ursula the artist that same spirit is what makes me paint but we each need to find our own inspiration when kiki loses her magic she takes a break with her at her cabin in the forest ursula describes how her artistic creativity and kiki's magic seem to operate in a similar way and that when she loses her own creative juices it just means it's time to take a step back take long walks look at the scenery doze off at noon don't even think about flying their friendship illustrates how important it is for young people especially those on the verge of independence to have role models to guide them miyazaki said that ursula understands kiki's anguish in an affirming way i think these aspects are much more valuable to kiki than whether her business will succeed and she's helped by those around her even when she isn't aware of it what's important for kiki is not that her business succeeds though of course that's no doubt important but it's how she herself can become acquainted with many different people kiki takes ursula's advice and tries not to dwell on her temporary shortcomings by the end when her friend tombow needs help and kiki reclaims her power miyazaki wanted to stress that she's not just gonna live happily ever after for all time she'll still face setbacks but she'll be capable of bouncing back from them the fact she still can't speak to her cat gigi anymore is another sign of her growing independence and self-reliance even still her newfound community will always be there to affirm her path and help her along the way in the end she'll be okay [Music] miyazaki's films have a tendency to take their time which makes them thoroughly stand out as far as animation goes you'll find some action sequences here and there even though those are often subtle and measured not requiring a thousand cuts to play up intensity but for the most part the scenes are understated leaving room to breathe and contemplate this is probably a big reason of what people mean when they say ghibli films are comforting or cozy some would say the slowed down momentum is just a filmmaking strategy rather than a theme but i think it speaks to something larger than practical pacing or appealing cinematography it conveys a vital message about life [Music] miyazaki feels children know best about living in the present that for them the present doesn't just exist for the sake of the future so they're the best example of observing the wonder of ordinary life he first started exploring the concept in the 1972 film pandago panda [Music] directed by his long time colleague isa takahata it's about a girl with a found family a papa and baby panda in it miyazaki hoped to depict a vision of japan as it could have been and by extension how children could experience it he said at the time it was thought that children liked flashy noisy films but we thought that fun and excitement are best found in the small moments of everyday life we see this again in ponyo she marvels at running water the function of a light bulb the comfort of a fuzzy towel a hot cup of milk and honey and a bowl of lovingly prepared ramen to miyazaki seeing the world through the eyes of small children lets us observe things anew again so what we take for granted can instead be regarded with wonder or at least gratitude appreciating mundane simple pleasures is often a staple of slice of life type media which is particularly popular in japan it underlines the poetic nature of day to day kiki learned this lesson of slowing down from ursula when life becomes too grating and filled with noise remember to return to the simple joys that bring you peace miyazaki depicts rainy days naps sunsets bicycle rides meals with people you love or even things like caring for the household with all the love and charm they deserve especially all the food he may not necessarily be illustrating life exactly as it is but he does show it as it feels i don't know if food actually ever looks this good but it definitely tastes this good animated works typically seem to be a vessel for dialogue or action that drives the plot forward or for purposes of action or comedy it's understandable given that every movement a character makes unlike live action has to be meticulously planned and painfully deliberate especially with time-consuming hand-drawn animation sasuke squeezing through a fence now go folding clothes or the way to hero puts her shoes on moments that roger ebert affectionately calls gratuitous motion these are pointless and time consuming in the grand scheme of the plot but help paint a realer picture of the world than of these characters we discussed this in an old video but it's a significant choice to have a largely silent scene with little to no action often to convey emotional processing miyazaki described these moments as ma or emptiness denoted by the pauses between claps of his hands he inserts this intentional emptiness to allow for breathing room and to take a moment to build tension and impact so the film can grow into a wider dimension there's moments like lupine lounging on his car nausica meditating in the toxic forest or kiki waiting for customers in the bakery extended moments of nothingness with very few cuts children are seldom afforded these kinds of moments and media made for them miyazaki feels if you have a constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb the people who make the movies are scared of silence so they want to paper and plaster it over they're worried that the audience will get bored what my friends and i have been trying to do since the 1970s is to try and quiet things down a little bit don't just bombard them with noise and distraction and to follow the path of children's emotions and feelings as we make a film if you stay true to joy and astonishment and empathy you don't have to have violence and you don't have to have action they'll follow you instead of giving us anything to distract us from our own thoughts we're forced to consider them as we wait with the characters like in perhaps the most famous scene out of studio ghibli where may and satsuki wait in the rain for their father's bus to arrive may had already met totoro but her older sister was skeptical as they stand in the dark near a shrine totoro casually appears next to them and sasuke offers them an umbrella they wait together in silence until totoro is delighted by the sound of rain popping and then his bus arrives followed by their father's bus soon after on the surface nothing huge really happens though on a character level it's satsuki's bewildering introduction to totoro and the end of her skepticism and despite its uneventful nature it's miyazaki's most recognizable scene there's yet another uneventful yet hugely impactful scene in 2001 spirited away spirited away is another film that heavily features kami and miyazaki likes to think of it as a descendant of japanese folk tales in it we follow the young sullen chihiro while moving to a new city she and her parents stumble upon what looks like an abandoned amusement park after her parents are cursed she's stuck working in a bath house that caters to spirits miyazaki lends to the ideal of simple pleasures and appreciating what we have by weaving anti-consumerism into the film's message first after eating piles of food at a seemingly empty restaurant her parents were transformed into pigs second chihiro had to help clean the stink spirit who turned out to be a polluted river spirit its corruption reflects what mass consumption and materialism does to nature and was directly inspired by miyazaki's experience cleaning up a local river and finally after spending time in the bathhouse the spirit no face became consumed with greed and excess growing in size and impatience jihiro had treated him with kindness from the outset so he repeatedly tried to win her affection with favors and gold no i only need one i don't want any but thanks what would you like just name it he couldn't understand why she didn't operate the same way as everyone else in the bath house why she didn't always want more than what she needed take the gold take it are you going to eat me take it she hadn't conformed to the overindulgence and desperation for money and not understanding this difference in her priorities not being able to appeal to a shallow ideal as easily as he could have with everyone else drove no face crazy where is your home don't you have any friends or family no i'm lonely in response she fed him the dumpling given to her by the river spirit and he promptly started regurgitating everything he'd consume in his insatiable spree cleansing himself of the bathhouse's influence he followed her out to the train platform where miyazaki once again slows everything down to a silent scene which a hero contemplates how much he's had to grow over the past few days it's just a few characters sitting in a train watching the world pass by outside the window this train ride where not much happens on the surface is the emotional climax of the film which a hero processes her feelings and experiences a level of introspection it seems she never attained before miyazaki said today's children feel shielded protected and distanced from reality to the point where they only have a vague sense of what it means to be alive where the only solution is to inflate their otherwise weak sense of self to hero's skinny limbs and her deliberately miffed and apathetic expressions are a symbol of this but as reality sets in and as she directly confronts danger from which she cannot easily extricate herself she demonstrates an adaptability and toughness that even she had not been aware of she realizes that she has a life force in her that makes her capable of bold decisions and action everything led up to this point of maturation of sitting still and legitimately thinking about her place in the world realizing she was capable of more than she thought it's a stark contrast to the chihuahua we saw early in the film so absent-minded and unsure of herself like kiki's delivery service spirited away is a coming-of-age narrative where a young girl gains a sense of independence and it all led up to this quiet contemplative moment on a train we sit with her there in that moment and because there's nothing to make noise or distract us we're thinking along with her this kind of meditative pacing to achieve a certain emotional tone is a masterful feat not just animation but filmmaking in general it's the same kind of atmosphere you tried to create in the ghibli museum where cameras aren't allowed so guests can really pay attention and fully take everything in and i'm sure the theme park opening later this year will be pretty similar especially considering there won't be rides instead like the characters in his films people are encouraged to live in the present in every avenue miyazaki prioritizes exploring and genuinely experiencing the world around you as it is before the opportunity is lost [Music] along with the silence and leisurely pacing there's often a permeating sense of melancholy in miyazaki's work which i don't think can really be boiled down to simple nostalgia though that's definitely a factor interestingly he believes nostalgia isn't something you acquire when you grow up but a fundamental part of our existence even from the time we're children some kind of deep-seated yearning in the pit of our souls that never really goes away the innate feeling of being incomplete in some way and there are certain moments however small that have the capacity to stay with us for a lifetime moments of emotional potency that pictures or art will never fully be able to capture the way our memories do he explained when people speak of a beautiful sunset do they hurriedly rifle through a book of photographs of sunsets or go in search of a sunset no you speak about it by drawing on the many sunsets stored inside you feelings deeply etched in the folds of your consciousness of the sunset you saw while carried on your mother's back so long ago that the memory is nearly a dream or the sunset washed landscape you saw when for the first time in your life you weren't enchanted by the scene around you or the sunsets you witness that were wrapped in loneliness anguish or warmth i sometimes think that there's something piled up in the human mind something that's in our memory that we can't recall but haven't forgotten or something buried even deeper like the stones that make up a foundation it might include things like our dna something at the extremities something that we don't understand very well at all something connected to something else that is completely mysterious it seems he has been trying to recapture the intensity of those feelings and memories his entire career the tagline for totoro was we're returning to use something you've forgotten though it's worth noting he said he didn't make it out of personal nostalgia and that again he was trying to encourage kids to play outside and use their bodies minds and imaginations still the film's atmosphere gives off a sort of yearning for a simpler more rural lifestyle of a different time a phenomenon that's been dubbed eco-nostalgia by some scholars the desire to return to a period when we were more in tune with nature and life didn't feel so complicated plus there's the idea often backed by research that spending time in nature has positive health benefits the fresh air chirping birds pretty views and all that good stuff in this way my neighbor totoro can be thought of as a yashike a sub-genre of slice of life that portrays characters living in calming peaceful and healing environments the scenery and characters in my neighbor totoro seem to have been influenced by miyazaki's own childhood including the girl's ailing mother like her miyazaki's mother was bedridden with tuberculosis for several years and like satsuki miyazaki had to pick up the slack around the house producer suzuki once insisted that such a good kid like satsuki couldn't exist and miyazaki angrily told him she did exist that was me so although miyazaki denies it it seems there's some merit to the idea that the film was influenced by personal nostalgia through the romanticization of the natural landscape and because of his dislike of extensive urbanization you can tell he misses this type of lifestyle many would dismiss his complaints as the rants of an old man of the back in my day variety but there's at least some truth to what he says about how industrialization and the culture of instant gratification has altered our values and quality of life [Music] the setting in my neighbor totoro instead provides a healing space both enchanting and soothing it's a break from the fast pace of modernization that most of us have grown so accustomed to and even if you've never lived in a place like this its appeal and tranquil energy comes across profoundly so this sort of yearning isn't limited to people with actual nostalgic memories of time like this as described in the article longing for the absolute satoyama these are eco-nostalgic concepts glorifying a lost past which many urban japanese people might only have experienced in their early childhood perhaps when visiting relatives in the countryside but not as daily life historian boyam employs the term pop nostalgia to name images of nostalgia popularized by those who have no or very limited experience of the past situation for which they long such an imagined nostalgia for rural japan can be found in my neighbor totoro which especially appeals to the urban audience and nurtures their feelings of loss be they imaginary or real basically they're suggesting the aesthetic visuals in the film are a hyper real version of things that it's not depicting this kind of lifestyle as it really is but a romanticized and sentimental vision of a life that can actually be quite difficult and it's true things are rarely as vibrant and beautiful and simple as they are in ghibli films but it still evokes the peaceful feelings we experience in the moments when things do feel bright and joyful napier writes although the exceptional beauty of his imagery creates an other world of immense appeal it's not an other world for its own sake but a critical tool that finds the present world insufficient it's been suggested this is why mein satsuki needed totoro in the first place to transcend a painful reality their sick mother and inhabit a world where everything's calm their acorns grow and the dread is kept at bay for just a while things that don't make sense including the unfairness of the world can be accepted and taken in as part of the healing process it seems this repeated attempt to capture this distant feeling has been a bittersweet venture for miyazaki and hanging on to hand-drawn animation appears to be another bid to cling to a fragment of the past to not lose another piece of himself to modernization but he recognizes the futility of viewing the past with rose-colored glasses quote it's hard to strip the past of whatever sentimentalism and glamorization we've added to it a memory that may have been the size of a single postage stamp at one point all of a sudden grows into a five feet by four feet tableau for all the joy and beauty depicted in his films and our corresponding feelings when watching them their creator can't seem to grasp those very feelings for himself it seems he's somehow trying to prove his worth through art and always striving for something just out of reach longing for something that can only exist now as a memory and this sense of loss has only intensified as he's gotten older in the afterward of turning point in 2008 he wrote when you reach old age a door creaks open that door opened for me a few years ago what i see through the door is not a straight road but a hazy grey world as if heaven and earth had merged when i turn around i see a familiar alleyway but i can't return there the only thing i can do is to walk toward the grey world here and there i see the shadowy figures of my seniors who are walking slightly ahead of me but it's not as if we build a sense of solidarity and i must walk alone so as far as his characters go i still think the one that most mirrors miyazaki is marco who first came to him as the image of a single pig flying alone this is the vision he imagined when regarding himself a cursed man coping with impermanence and piled up disillusionment he repeatedly speaks of missing out on other possibilities of life that by existing here now means losing out on the possibility of becoming countless other selves and the world of animation represents the longing of those lost selves and attempts to experience those lost possibilities though he feels we're trapped within these limitations and the morbid realities of the world animation has offered him a modicum of hope a chance to free ourselves from our complexes and tangled relationships so we can live strong in a freer more open world miyazaki's art is impactful because although it evokes feelings of gratitude and joy it's not as though he ignores the reality of suffering within its narratives there's the gloomy knowledge that people have had these problems for hundreds of years and we'll have to go on living repeating the same mistakes there are angry ghosts all around us dead from wars sickness starvation and nobody cares in truth he feels humanity is hopeless and irredeemable and has no faith humans can control our egos enough for the change required this is partly why he's developed a reputation as grumpy and pessimistic so you say you're under a curse well so what so the whole damn world but he ultimately uses his art to try to battle against his natural pessimism it's a life strategy embedded in him from the very beginning from the moment he finished watching the tale of the white serpent quote it made me realize that behind a facade of cynical pronouncements in actuality i was really in love with the pure earnest world of the film even if it were only another cheap melodrama i was no longer able to deny the fact that there was another me a me that yearned desperately to affirm the world rather than negate it it seems he pursues this sort of affirmation most with ambivalent characters and scenarios we've already touched on this a bit but it's an aspect worth underscoring as i think is the most vital element in nearly every miyazaki film it seems to be the central tenet of his world view and showcases his confrontation of cynicism most clearly in western cinema things are often clear-cut there's a bad person doing bad things and a good person the protagonist who we root for to stop them miyazaki paints a view of the world that's truer to life one with bad circumstances bad choices bad reasoning and very few genuinely bad people more often than not if there's even an antagonist at all we can consider things from their point of view our perspective of them changes drastically by the end or they even become a dear friend he has a hard time depicting a purely evil person because as he works on his projects for years the characters become more real to him so he imagines what their own lives and motivations might have been [Music] good this pattern is even evident in his first feature film he directed the castle of cagliostro back in 79 though the antagonist is pretty classically villainous the main character lupin was also originally kind of a jerk in the manga and anime series he's the grandson of maurice leblanc's gentleman thief and master of disguise arsene lupin and followed in his footsteps in occupation lupin is clever conniving and channels james bond and his brand of violent adventures and promiscuity napier writes he was also the kind of overtly sexist man who might be booed off the screen these days a man ruled largely by lust for money women and the thrill of the chase miyazaki and takahata directed some of the series episodes but he had other plans for the film he wanted lupin to be more likeable and sympathetic in a fan club newsletter he argued lupin wouldn't be motivated for superficial reasons but that in his soul swirls a rage towards the machinery of society that suffocates humanity and he tries to bury the falseness of his heart through spurring himself to action he's fighting to give his life meaning and is yearning for someone who can lead him to that fight despite fans protests he fulfilled that plan transforming lupine into a character who'd grown up from his life of greed and debauchery into a somewhat more honorable and reflective man showing that anyone can change another character that often gets overlooked is jigo from princess mononoke who at first seemed something like an ally but later became a major antagonist miyazaki considers him the most common type of person in the world an approachable person who fits their role well and who typically operates on the basis of what's beneficial to them though he may feel conflicted about what he's doing and fully recognizes the questionable aspects he'll shrug it off and continue feeling he doesn't have much choice though his actions are frustrating and his reasoning is cowardly miyazaki said if we disowned this kind of person we would have to disown almost all human beings i give up can't win against fools this is often the reality of what it means to be alive it's not so much good or bad as just trying to survive and miyazaki insists we must survive stressed over and over again in the recurring sentiment we must continue to live you must live even if to die in vain he's not dead son he's here right now trying to tell us something that it's time for both of us to live while visiting a leprosy sanatorium in the 90s when patients were still forced into isolation he learned something that became vital to his perspective on life writing in the middle of no matter what kind of misery there's joy and laughter in human life which tends towards ambiguity i've never seen a place which shows this with such clarity world is cursed but still you find reasons to keep living this is why this scene in particular speaks to miyazaki's acknowledgment of life's difficulties yet the insistence on embracing it and living it fully a kind of optimistic nihilism rather than giving up letting go and allowing the misery and apathy to win out you must remember the resilience of human beings throughout all the hard times in history know that an imperfect ending is all we may get but the fact we got the story at all is also a gift in his proposal for princess mononoke he wrote the battle between rampaging forest gods and humanity cannot end well there can be no happy ending yet even amid the hatred and slaughter there are things worthy of life it is possible for wonderful encounters to occur and for beautiful things to exist i would depict hatred but only to show that there's something more valuable i'll depict a curse to show the joy of liberation from it i would depict the boy's understanding of the girl and the process by which the girl opens her heart to the boy in the end the girl will likely say to the boy i love you ashitaka but i cannot forgive humanity smiling the boy will probably say that's all right let's live together in peace it's clear miyazaki sprinkles himself his own bundle of contradictions and all of our contradictions into nearly every character he creates he seeks to amplify the good parts and still wants to acknowledge the not so good because it's real living with that balance is something we all have to do and still there are things worth striving for worth living for the contradictions the pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will apply not just to him but to us all and it's a major reason why he's managed to perfect the art of connecting and impacting us on a wholehearted and profound level this last quote was about kiki's delivery service but i think it applies to all of his work quote basically i think i just want children to know that the world is deep and filled with variety that there are infinite possibilities in the world they live in and that they are a part of this world perhaps it's enough just to say that the world is rich and precious and that they hold it in their hands i honestly made this film just wanting to tell them don't worry you can make it all right there's yet another miyazaki directed film set to come out next year titled how do you live based on the 1937 novel of the same name if the title's any indication it'll have a similar sentiment to his other work according to a longtime ghibli colleague the 2016 tv documentary called never ending man would have been better translated to the man who was never finished even at the age of 81 he can't help but throw himself into his craft producer suzuki said miyazaki's creating the film for his grandson as a way of saying grandpa is moving on to the next world soon but he's leaving behind this film for you it's fitting considering the last sentiment he expressed in turning point was that children are the spirit of hope for a better future though maybe the film will be his farewell to everyone it's bittersweet but moving that a cynical grumpy old man has dedicated his life to inspire young generations to have more hope and optimism for the world than he ever did and we hope his masterpieces will continue to inspire and uplift people for generations to come [Music] hey y'all thanks so much for watching can't believe we made it to 100k that's freaking crazy bananas if you like our videos consider supporting the channel for just two dollars on patreon it's only like the cost of a candy bar month and of course supporting and appreciating great films is pretty important to us so we want to thank mubi for sponsoring this video mubi is a curated streaming service a place to watch beautiful interesting incredible cinema every day mubi premieres a new film from iconic directors to emerging auteurs there is always something new to discover with mubi each and every film is hand selected it's like your own personal film festival streaming anytime anywhere mubi was honestly the perfect sponsor for this video because i think it's kind of easy to get trapped in like a limited idea of what movies are supposed to be like you're always going to find filmmakers on there who are really thinking outside the conventions of the craft and making art that's really memorable and thought-provoking i really enjoy the international films on movie shows a different perspective on how to make films in a film language that's very unique and just different from what we're used to and you can even sort by country so you can like look at specific places and see how maybe they approach filmmaking i feel like it really expands your horizons like i recently checked out this 70s hungarian animated film called bubble bath which was super cool and surreal but i'm also enjoying the subdued pacing in japanese films like i wish if you want to try out mubi's unique catalog you can try it free for 30 days at movie.com qualityculture that's mubi.com qualityculture for a whole month of great cinema for free but again we're always just so thankful to you guys for watching and showing us love all the time yes it means so much to us and i've given you my voice so please love this video we gave it everything we got but yeah hope you all have a great day month rest of your year we'll catch you guys next time peace bye

Channel: Quality Culture

Views: 894,693

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Id: UG6XzB_J3IA

Length: 100min 54sec (6054 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022