The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)

 

Hayao Miyazaki at work

THE BOY AND THE HERON (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)             B                                    Japan  (124 mi)  2023  d: Hayao Miyazaki

Aging directors are a prominent theme of the day, with recently released films by Martin Scorsese at age 81, Ridley Scott at age 86, Ken Loach at age 87, to which we can add Hayao Miyazaki at age 83.  It’s an interesting phenomenon, as these old guard directors have in many ways defined their respective generations, setting the standard for others to follow.  In the world of Japanese animation, Miyazaki literally has no peers, standing out as the last of the hand-drawn animators who painstakingly construct each shot in a cinematic universe that has otherwise been taken over by computer generated imagery, like Disney (Disney's Computer Animated Movies) and Pixar (List of Pixar films), where their shift from hand-drawn animation to CGI animated films has led to their skyrocketing box office success, where FROZEN (2013) became the first Disney animated film to gross $1 billion at the box office, while for Pixar it was TOY STORY 3 (2010), which actually features Miyazaki’s Totoro as a character.  While that’s what kids in America are drawn to today, there is really no one else in the entire universe of film like Miyazaki, a living legend and beloved visionary in a category by himself, standing at the apex in the world of animation, which never gets the same credit as live-action film, yet animation is cinema, and the depth of Miyazaki’s artwork has no peers, described by Guillermo del Toro as working on the same level of artistry as Mozart and Van Gogh. Already destined for immortality, films like this simply aren’t being made anymore, though occasionally the director seamlessly blends computer-generated imagery into his own works (water, for example).  Co-founder of Studio Ghibli in 1985, now entering the seventh decade of his career, Miyazaki is a revered, one-of-a-kind artist whose brilliant aesthetic mixes perfectly composed craftsmanship with recurring themes of humanity, introducing a striking maturity for young viewers, where simplicity is combined with the profound.  Renowned for telling stories about resourceful children navigating their way through tragedy and adversity, merging the fable-like inspiration with characters placed in realistic and historically well-defined contexts, Miyazaki leaves a lasting legacy for future generations, yet because of the exacting standards he sets for himself and his studio staff, Studio Ghibli has been unable to find a worthy successor.  Making his first film since The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014), a fictionalized homage to aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the Zero fighter plane, the Japanese title of this new film references the 1937 novel How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino, initially published as a series for young people, becoming a defining coming-of-age book of the postwar generation emphasizing spiritual growth, coming at a time when society rewarded boastfulness, unlimited confidence, and self-promotion over integrity, kindness, and simplicity, turning into a morality tale that suggests viewing oneself at the center of the world is a mistake, encouraging young adults to think about what lies beyond themselves as they strike out on their own.  The book was given to a young Miyazaki by his mother, having a profound influence on his life, mixing elements of his own autobiography into the dreamlike story, which is not an adaptation of the book, instead turning this into a fantasy adventure that draws inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, yet also feels like a child’s version of Homer’s The Odyssey, with a young child entering a magical world fraught with a series of inherent dangers, yet also filled with unparalleled beauty and seemingly unfathomable mysteries before returning safely home to his family.  

Set in 1943, the penultimate year of the Pacific War, as the 12-year old protagonist, Mahito Maki, is modeled after Miyazaki’s childhood, losing his mother Hisako who is killed in a hospital fire during the hectic opening moments as air-raid sirens pierce the night in the firebombing of Tokyo, where people appear as ghostly phantoms, a blur of fear and fire compounding a feeling of helpless chaos as Mahito frantically races through a panicked crowd to try and reach her.  A year later Mahito’s father Shoichi remarries his wife’s younger sister Natsuko, and similar to Miyazaki's father, owns an air munitions factory that manufactures fighter plane components for the Japanese Imperial Army, with the family evacuating from the city in order to avoid the relentless American bombing campaign, moving to his bride’s more peaceful countryside estate, where they live with several old maids.  Suffering from inconsolable grief afterwards, the transition is particularly hard on Mahito, finding it difficult to accept his stepmother, where an incident of bullying at his school reveals a rigid class system, where most of his classmates come from unassuming farming families who resent the upper class city kid, which leads Mahito to injure himself to avoid having to return, and during his convalescence he discovers Yoshino’s book with an inscription from his mother, who never got a chance to give it to him.  Encountering a gray heron that seems to be taunting him, it lures him down a rabbit hole at an overgrown, abandoned tower that seems steeped with mystery, supposedly built by a man who amusingly “read too many books and went insane.”  Warned not to approach, as it’s dangerously dilapidated, with no upkeep whatsoever, his curiosity gets the best of him, as the heron claims his mother is still alive and only entering the tower can save her.  Hesitant at first, refusing to believe what he hears, suspecting it’s a trap, Natsuko, who is pregnant, inexplicably disappears into the tower one day, so he enters with one of the old maids to save her, but they quickly find themselves caught in an alternate universe where the heron can actually speak, discovering he is actually a small man inhabiting the heron’s body, who somewhat reluctantly ends up serving as his guide throughout this strange netherworld that seems to abide by its own rules, at times feeling more like a nightmare.  Grappling with inner conflicts and insecurities, Miyazaki emphasizes the transformative power of overcoming personal challenges, drawing a distinction between the film and Yoshino’s novel, yet both share an existential theme of finding yourself at a moral crossroads, forced to make decisions as you mature, learning certain things in life which can only be understood through experience, essentially revealing how individuals navigate and come to terms with a world characterized by strife and loss, conveying resilience in the face of conflict and grief, offering viewers a choice between emulating the chaos of Japan’s warring past or forging a different path, with an underlying theme of spiritual growth, rebirth, and personal transformation.  For some viewers the life cycles may bear similarities to Kim Ki-duk’s SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER…AND SPRING (2003), with its Buddhist themes of reincarnation, but the film’s center of gravity is more driven by humanist themes.

Nearly all of Miyazaki’s films confront mortality in some form or another, a suffering at the disappearance of loved ones, yet this may be his grimmest effort, a film laden with death and darkness, a metaphor for the war years, where it’s impossible to understand what happens in the aftermath of such great loss, where only Japan has endured the mass annihilation and radioactive aftereffects from the atomic bomb.  Mahito struggles to adjust to his new life, as he’s just a grieving boy who’s trying to process the inexplicable cruelty of life, leaving him angry and prone to acts of violence, as he’s someone who wants to retreat from reality, sadly wanting nothing more to do with it.  But the gray heron won’t let him do that as it continues to pester him, luring him into a fantasy realm filled with ghosts of the past, where death is a more prominent theme, like Charon’s voyage in the mythological underworld of the dead, featuring glimpses of starry skies, ghost ships, treacherous seas that no longer produce fish, ravenous pelicans, an army of human-sized, man-eating parakeets, and powerful wizards.  Much of this doesn’t make sense, feeling more abstract and funereal, finding themselves on the precipice of the apocalypse, often feeling flawed and unfair, yet he has to figure it out with the help from friends he meets along the way, including Kiriko, a swashbuckling sailor who is a younger version of an old maid at the estate, Himi, a young fire spirit who is Mahito’s biological mother as a child, while Natsuko is her younger sister who has hidden away somewhere to give birth, the Warawara, or bubble spirits that surface to be born in Mahito’s world, and Natsuko’s great-uncle, who rules over the world as a wily old wizard with great powers.  While this may not be as transcendent or aesthetically pleasing as some of the best Miyazaki films, featuring a more tormented and problematic character than in the past, the tone appears harsher, more gloomy and melancholy, especially the blood-stained, self-inflicted injury, which is a gruesome sight, yet the probing gravity of such weighty material is nothing less than inspired, as one can feel overwhelmed by the sheer range of artistic ideas on display, beautifully complimented by a moving score from Miyazaki’s longtime musical composer, Joe Hisaishi, The Boy and The Heron Piano OST | New Ghibli Film Soundtrack YouTube (19:15), adding luscious textures and a melodic connection to what we’re witnessing, all part of the beauty of the imagination.  This also feels like A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, as the autobiographical and deeply personal nature of the film seems to relate to the development of a young artistic mind, where the apocalyptic nature of the subject matter gives way to the power of making art, which is at the core of an artist’s existence, yet art and imagination are not substitutes for reality, but tools to learn how to live, and how to deal with death, becoming an emotional journey about letting go of despair and coming to grips with personal tragedy.  Like Hamlet’s perplexing question on the meaning of life, Miyazaki searches for answers in Yoshino’s novel, as Mahito discovers introspection and learns to overcome his personal resentments and embrace hope and optimism, ultimately finding healing and acceptance with his new family.  Like so many other Miyazaki films, sensing the needs of others seems to awaken the very soul of the young protagonist, where learning to make sense of a confusing world is a hurdle we all must face growing up.  Loss and grief are a part of everyone’s life, yet that is no excuse to pull away and avoid contact with the ones who care about you, as being connected to other people and the world around you may at times seem daunting, but it’s an essential part of living. 

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Kaguyahime no monogatari)

THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA (Kaguyahime no monogatari)   B             
aka:  The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter

Japan  (137 mi)  2013  d:  Isao Takahata          Disney [Japan]

Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki are the co-founders of the Japanese animation production company, Studio Ghibli, in June 1985, where eight of Studio Ghibli’s films are among the 15 highest-grossing anime films made in Japan.  Unlike Miyazaki who is an extraordinary manga artist and anime illustrator, Takahata does not draw and never worked as an animator before becoming a full-fledged director, though both worked together and had long careers in Japanese film and television animation.  The studio is known for a strict “no-edits” policy, where rumor has it a Studio Ghibli producer sent an authentic Japanese sword to Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein after contemplating edits to PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997), reportedly with the simple message “No cuts.”  Anime art styles range from wild, exaggerated stylization to subtle, more realistic approaches where the use of lines are prevalent, though more influenced by a brush than by a pen, where Miyazaki’s lush colorization filling every inch of the frame contrasts with Takahata’s more minimalist, pastel watercolor technique that leaves plenty of empty space unfilled, especially around the edges of the frame, creating more abstract imagery.  Miyazaki’s extraordinary musical composer, Joe Hisaishi, provides the gorgeous soundtrack for the film, which is based upon a 10th century Japanese folktale called The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, which is Japan’s oldest recorded story, predating the world’s first novel, Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji by at least a century.  At age 79, Takahata has been trying to make this film for more than 50 years, best known as the maker of GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988), where film critic Roger Ebert, Grave of the Fireflies Movie Review (1988) | Roger Ebert, claims it “belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made,” but also his more subtly distinctive films, known for being quiet and humane, ONLY YESTERDAY (1991), POM POKO (1994), and MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS (1999), where the director has returned from semi-retirement after a 14-year absence. 

After the announced retirement of Hayao Miyazaki on September 6, 2013 after nearly three decades at the helm, his departure leaves the future of Studio Ghibli very much in doubt, as the secret to the studio’s popular longevity has been their insistence on producing hand-drawn animated films for decades, sticking to the painstakingly slow process of drawing images frame by frame long after other studios have embraced computer-aided animation and special CGI effects.  Every one of Studio Ghibli’s successes has adhered to the hand-drawn tradition, from MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988) to Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014) released earlier this year, though POM POKO (1994) was the first to use computer graphics, while PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997) was Miyazaki’s first mix of digital drawing and coloring onto the 2D hand-drawn imagery, the latter being a more delicate artform that has been able to sustain itself because it has employed the same animators throughout their careers, as opposed to other studios that rely upon short-term piecework.  According to Tokyo-based Polygon Pictures president and CEO Shuzo John Shiota, the leaders of the hand-drawn style are becoming fewer, “In Japan not many young people are coming in (to the 2D animation scene) anymore.  The master animators are not easy to replace.”  Shiota concludes that today’s animators simply don’t have the patience and can’t draw as well as their predecessors did, where it’s inevitable that computer generated imagery is the wave of the future.  The Japanese market, however, loves their hand-drawn anime, where according to the top-earning domestic Japanese films in 2013, 2013 Japan Yearly Box Office Results - Box Office Mojo, six of the top ten are hand-drawn animation, despite a digital wave steadily encroaching on the industry.  If you watch a movie from Studio Ghibli, part of the brilliance is being able to see the spectacular, where it is not out of the ordinary to see a deer morph into a monstrous god in PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997), a boy turn into a flying dragon in SPIRITED AWAY (2001), or a fish transform into a young girl in PONYO (2008). 

Like MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS (1999), Takahata in this picture prefers to use the simplistic art style of watercolor pictures, creating a ravishingly beautiful opening in the middle of a bamboo forest where Okina (old man) is drawn to the light emanating from a particular stalk.  Investigating further, he is shocked to discover a palm-sized baby nestled inside, which he believes is a heavenly offering, bringing the baby home to his equally astounded wife Ouna (old woman), calling the child “Princess.”  While he hesitates to share his prize, believing it was his own destiny to discover this princess, they are both further amazed to discover their child grow, roll over, and walk in a matter of days, where they are both literally able to see growth spurts before their startled eyes, quickly realizing this was no ordinary baby.  As the child grows old enough to play with local kids in the fields, nicknamed “Little Bamboo,” which is an utter delight to watch as everything is discovered for the first time, the film interestingly takes on a dual perspective, one from the curiously developing point of view of the child, and another throughout from the more protective view of the adoptive parents.  This device allows the audience to comprehend the split personality that develops, as her unique childhood is expressed through joyous liberation and exploration with forest creatures and friends, while the responsibilities of parenthood is something else altogether.  Okina discovers more glowing bamboo stalks in the forest which are filled with gold, leading him to the conclusion that he was expected to provide an appropriate environment for a true princess, eventually moving from the edge of the forest into a palace in the city, along with many hired assistants to provide for her every need, including a teacher of etiquette named Lady Sagami that would transform her from a liberated young tomboy into an obedient princess whose beauty and reputation is worthy of her title, attracting the interest of rich suitors who would come from great distances to ask for her hand in marriage.  Anyone familiar with Homer’s Odysseus, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, or Puccini’s exotic final opera Turandot will recognize the line of suitors vying for the hand of a beautiful maiden, not to mention Siegfried having to overcome a curse of the gods and battle through a ring of fire to reach the imprisoned Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.   

There’s even a naming ceremony where a venerated royal priest gives her the formal name of Princess Kaguya, for the scattering light that radiates from within her, where they hold a celebratory party that goes on for days but turns into a disaster, where she hears rumors that she’s not a real princess at all, that her family purchased her title.  In a fit of disgust, she bolts from the castle racing as fast as she can, where she’s seen as a blur in black and white charcoal drawings where her whizzing form is the only touch of color in an otherwise empty landscape.  The abstract spaciousness of the unfinished drawings project her restless state of mind as she anxiously returns to her former home in the forest, hoping to find the simpler and happier times of her childhood, but all her friends have moved away, leaving her stuck in a visually empty netherworld that resembles a desert of snow, only to awaken in her bed with the party still raging and no one has missed her at all.  Unfortunately the suitor story grows unnecessarily repetitive, as it duplicates itself, each initially given an impossible task, where the Princess believes she’s gotten rid of them all, but they eventually return years later reporting miraculous successes, which prove to be hoaxes.  Nonetheless, the attention even draws the interest of the Emperor, but when he attempts to possess her, she uncannily discovers the power to disappear.  While it all remains cloaked in beauty and innocence, nonetheless the parents controlling interests vie with her own unyielding spirit, which is essentially the centerpiece of the film, but then more mysteries unravel, where we discover she is a child of destiny, a daughter of the moon, and that it’s only a matter of time before she must return.  This narrative wrinkle thrown in at the end feels like it comes from another story, as it’s a supernatural element at odds with the discovery of her own innate humanness.  Takahata never finds a way to successfully blend this unfathomable revelation into the film without resorting to naked manipulation, where the extended tearful anguish from being ripped from her earthly family at the end feels forced and excessively traumatizing (one should question the tagline suitable for all ages).  Had the Princess liberated herself from what was expected of her by her parents (and society) as well as her ultimate fate, perhaps this would have been perceived as overly modern, where perhaps it might have lost some essential Japanese component, where it is her duty to follow her destiny.  After all, this was originally conceived in the 10th century, when women had no conceivable place in society except to follow behind and obey the dictates of men.  But seen today, there’s something cruelly uncomfortable about the magical celebratory nature of the finale, where the Princess is so close to achieving the unthinkable, imagining a different life for herself, but instead ends up doing what’s traditionally expected of her, seemingly with no free will whatsoever.  Despite the joyful feel of the transporting music, the horror is she is a fading light, a distant memory, a shell of the person she might have become.   

A Summer at Grandpa's (Dong Dong De Jia Qi)

A SUMMER AT GRANDPA’S (Dong Dong De Jia Qi)      A-          
Taiwan  (93 mi)  1984  d:  Hou Hsiao-hsien

Time passes amidst the laughter,
What’s left are the memories. 

—opening valedictorian oration

The film is inspired by screenwriter Chu Tien-wen's childhood memories.  It is the first installment of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's coming-of-age trilogy that features three different coming-of-age stories by three prominent Taiwanese screenwriters, including A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Tong nien wang shi) (1985) inspired by Hou Hsiao-hsien himself, and Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng chen) (1986) inspired by Wu Nien-jen.  A sweet, gentle, and unconventional film, in the sense that a story is never really told, instead reality unfolds using a detached calm where we observe what happens with little or no commentary.  In this manner, the filmmaker deflects all powers of purpose and meaning to the viewer.  Told using natural sounds and a series of personal event vignettes, the film centers around the lives of two children, 11-year old Tung-Tung (Wang Chi-kwang) and his 4-year old sister Ting-Ting (Sun Cheeng-Lee).  When their mother is hospitalized with gall bladder complications, the father, played by fellow Taiwanese film director Edward Yang, stays by her side while their uncle takes the two kids to spend the summer with their grandfather, a stern, elderly doctor in a small, rural town.  The film seems to have had a profound influence on two other Asian films in particular, including Hayao Miyazaki’s animated masterwork MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), which has a similar storyline of children the same age, an absent mother recovering in a hospital, a community search for a child temporarily going lost or missing, but also a similar color palette where the gentle, pastoral look of the countryside bears a strange resemblance.  In that film, the children’s imagination constitutes the developing storyline, while here the world is seen through the eyes and experiences of two young children.  The other is Edward Yang’s YI YI (2000), which also has a missing mother sequence while reprising the role of Ting-Ting as a teenage girl who develops a special affection and close-knit relationship with her grandmother, becoming a profoundly insightful family drama that beautifully balances the carefree innocence of youth with their initial exposure to the difficult and sometimes threatening realities of adult life.  Interestingly the end credits theme music for the film was composed by Edward Yang. 

This trilogy is particularly influenced by Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, especially the incessant use of trains rumbling by, which reflect the passage of time, but also the fixed camera placement, omitting the use of close ups, where scenes are frequently shot from a single point of view, where any action is often seen in the farthest regions of the shot.  Interior shots have a painterly composition with a ground level camera, where characteristic locations are empty rooms or kitchens, where the visual style is quietly contemplative, capturing the mood with meticulous detail of banal and ordinary events.  While Taiwan was a colony of Japan for over 50 years, it’s interesting how pervasive their aesthetic has become imprinted into the Taiwanese consciousness, where this director would eventually develop a love affair with long shots, but he was also one of the first Taiwanese directors to use indigenous dialect in his films.  Born as a member of the Hakka ethnic minority in southern Guangdong province in mainland China, but raised in rural Taiwan, as his parents emigrated to Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1949 while escaping the bloodshed of the Chinese civil war, Hou entered the National Taiwan College of the Arts after serving in the military, graduating in 1972 where he worked as a salesman for a year until he landed a job as a screenwriter and assistant director in the commercial Taiwanese film industry.  Working his way up, his earliest films are examples of low-budget products from that industry, which had extremely rigid and often ineffective guidelines for churning out technically proficient commercial movies at the time, often starring pop stars in lightweight comedies.  Once Hou became a director, he began dismantling many of these practices one by one, finding them cumbersome and overly limiting, developing the groundwork on his 80’s pictures for a new aesthetic that makes him such a significant director in the world today.  The films he produced in the 90’s are among the most original, aesthetically impactful films of the last 50 years, where French director Olivier Assayas flew to Taiwan and filmed a living documentary portrait, HHH – A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (1997). Today, like everyone else it seems, this director has had difficulty obtaining funding for new films, where he hasn’t made a film in 7 years, the longest period of absence throughout his entire career.   

Tung-Tung arrives from the city, bringing his mechanized remote control car, while the local kids are playing with turtles, where the contrast between city and country is immediately apparent.   We witness rural methods of catching birds, climbing trees, or boys swimming naked in a river, where they have a rude habit of constantly excluding Ting-Ting, who reluctantly clings to her toy electric fan, eventually throwing the boys’ clothes into the river.  The film shows how the children try to insulate themselves from the outside world but can never quite escape it, being compelled to include adult events in their life of which they have little comprehension.  There’s such an effortless, natural feel to this film, where the film’s strengths are catching fleeting moments, finding the rhythms of everyday life, where summer represents all the time in the world for young kids, constantly seeing groups of children at play, teasing one another, witnessing something odd or terrifying, sometimes discovering something unexpectedly, other times just laying around the floor, bored with nothing to do, all told without pretense, seen through the vantage point of the children, where we hear the continuous sound of trains mixed with children’s voices.  Tung-Tung writes beautiful letters to his parents that show a delicate sensitivity but also a lack of understanding of what the adults around him are up to.  While most of the film is bathed in sunshine, the film has a hard edge without a hint of sentimentality.  The kids witness a robbery and mugging in progress and stare silently from afar, completely non-judgmental, while also enjoying the firecrackers going off on the street filled with food vendors with their stacks of food, while the offscreen explosions of sound continue through many of the next scenes.  The grandfather (Koo Chuen) shows a social concern, leading a discussion among neighbors of what’s in the best interest for a wandering, mentally ill girl who has gotten pregnant, but he is also harshly judgmental, forbidding the children's uncle Chang-ming to marry his girlfriend Pi-yun, even angrily attacking his son's moped when he learns he has gotten his girlfriend pregnant.  Clearly the absence of Ting-Ting and Tung-Tung's mother is deeply traumatic for both, but the film gets at this sorrow and confusion without ever simply stating it.  Also there is a gorgeously affecting relationship that develops between Ting-Ting and the mentally ill woman which is all done without a word of dialogue.  This typifies what the filmmaker is attempting to do, using no embellished musical themes, relying instead on recording the natural rhythms of life, as recalled in childhood remembrances of things past.