“Spirited Away” beat out the likes of “Lilo & Stich” and “Ice Age” to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, only the second recipient of the prize at the time. The sole Oscar winner in Studio Ghibli’s filmography is “Spirited Away,” which was also named the best animated feature of the 21st century by IndieWire earlier this year. Watching these two Ghibli films back to back helps to illustrate Miyazaki’s growth as a storyteller and his eagerness to push his own boundaries over a 13-year period. With its environmentalist core and action-ready female lead, “Princess Mononoke” acts as a stirring continuation of the themes and characters Miyazaki first started playing with in “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.” “Mononoke” takes the pacing of “Nausicaä” and elevates it with more brutality and visceral, immersive set pieces. Set in the late Muromachi period of Japan, Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” follows the young prince Ashitaka as he befriends a young woman raised by wolves and finds himself caught in the struggle between the spirits of the forest and the humans who seek to destroy them and deplete the forest of its natural resources. “Totoro” endures because it’s the most impactful example of Miyazaki’s ability to weave an emotional maturity through his most boundless and childlike fantasies. The filmmaker has so much fun with the adventures of the film’s first half (the film boasts two Studio Ghibli icons thanks to Totoro and Catbus) that he blindsides the viewer when the painful gravity of the sisters’ reality settles in during the third act. Is Totoro real or imagined? It’s in the blend of reality and fiction where Miyzaki paints with his most human storytelling strokes. The story centers around two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, who cope with their mother’s illness by going on a series of adventures with the eponymous creature. Miyazaki’s second film released under the Studio Ghibli banner was 1988’s “My Neighbor Totoro,” and it remains one of the director’s most powerful love letters to childhood imagination. The robots are an ideal Miyazaki mashup - a machine at one with nature - and make “Castle in the Sky” a foundation for a desired harmony between man and machine that’s explored in a majority of Miyazaki’s works. The Laputian robots are some of these technical marvels and embody the spirit of Miyazaki’s cinematic obsessions in how they can be utilized for great destruction and even greater beauty (they are gardeners who sustain a tree of life at the center of the kingdom). The pendant makes the girl the target of pirates and foreign agents who seek to find the castle and steal its technological advancements. The first title released under the Ghibli banner, Miyazaki’s 1986 adventure follows a young orphan girl whose crystal pendant turns out to be the key to unlocking the location of a legendary floating castle. Throw in Nausicaä’s pet Teto, one of Ghibli’s definitive animal sidekicks, and “Nausicaä” is the prototypical Ghibli movie that should be the start of any Ghibli movie marathon.Ī full-size sculpture of a Laputian robot stands tall in the rooftop garden at the Studio Ghibli museum in Japan, which should help put into perspective how essential “Castle in the Sky” is to the animation studio. The terror and majesty with which Miyazaki animates these insects brings to mind the sand worms of “Dune,” and the clarity he showed in “Cagliostro” with crafting breakneck action beats becomes more confident here. Sumi Shimamoto voices the eponymous character, a princess in a post-apocalyptic future who battles a rival kingdom that is killing off an entire species of mutated giant insects. “Nausicaä” is quintessential Miyazaki in its environmentalism themes. Prior to the founding of Studio Ghibli in June 1985, Hayao Miyazaki directed two feature films: “The Castle of Cagliostro” (now streaming on Netflix) and “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.” The latter opened in Japan a year prior to Ghibli’s launch, although it has been claimed by the studio as one of its own in the decades since and has even been included in the official “Studio Ghibli Collection” DVD set. “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” (1984) While all 21 of the Studio Ghibli films available to stream on HBO Max are worth a look, newbies to the Ghibli universe should start with the seven following titles to get their crash course in all things Ghibli. streaming debut of Studio Ghibli’s filmography makes all of its films more accessible than ever before, which means there should be an influx of new Studio Ghibli fans emerging over the next months. ‘The Idol’ Debut Was No ‘Succession’ Finale, but Was It a Success?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |