Niche of Time: ghibli

Showing posts with label ghibli. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2024

Into the Archive: The Boy and the Heron

The Boy and the Heron - Blu-ray + DVD

MPAA rating‏: ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
Director‏: ‎ Hayao Miyazaki
Media Format‏: ‎ Blu-ray, Subtitled
Run time‏: ‎ 2 hours and 4 minutes
Release date‏: ‎ July 9, 2024

From the legendary Studio Ghibli and Academy Award®-winning director Hayao Miyazaki comes a critically acclaimed fantasy adventure. After losing his mother during the war, young Mahito moves to his family's estate in the countryside. There, a series of mysterious events lead him to a secluded and ancient tower, home to a mischievous gray heron. When Mahito's new stepmother disappears, he follows the gray heron into the tower, and enters a fantastic world shared by the living and the dead. As he embarks on an epic journey with the heron as his guide, Mahito must uncover the secrets of this world, and the truth about himself. Featuring the voices of Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Pattinson and Florence Pugh. - Amazon

I first became aware on the 12^th (yesterday) that The Boy and the Heron had become available for purchase; it was released on the 9^th. I don’t know what made me check for it on Amazon; maybe I just thought enough time had passed. As it was, my nephew and I were going to my brother’s house for Movie Night, and Walmart was just on the way. I snatched up what was apparently the last copy in the shop (at least the only one on display; and it had been lying flat, so it wasn’t immediately evident); a bit of luck there. As we already had an agenda for the night, we didn’t immediately put it on, but reserved it for another time.

But I will no doubt watch it myself sometime today (Saturday). I have been wanting to view it, though I never made any great effort to see it in theaters. What with my health, a theater showing is not my most comfortable and convenient mode of watching these days. But then, although I have most of the Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films, I have never seen any of them theatrically (with the possible exception of Howl's Moving Castle).

I have heard that The Boy and the Heron, though critically acclaimed, was not a homerun strike with broad Western audiences, mainly because of its complex themes of visionary, mystical, and psychological conflict that circle around a theme (family loyalty, especially loyalty to the past, and what to hold on to and what to let go) and was only by courtesy a ‘fantasy adventure’, a bit of branding that was applied to try to make Miyazaki’s profoundly personal meditation explicable to the market audience.

None of which frightens me. In fact, it only makes me more eager to see what it has to say. At my age and stage of life I can use all the counsel that an experienced and insightful guide can offer, and Hayao seems like such an artist. I only hope that I’m not expecting too much. Once I've seen it, will I give it a proper review? Who can say?

On a more mundane level, this package includes both Blu-ray and DVD discs, which not only fits in well for my present set up but also is good if I ever get another Blu-ray player. And now I have to see if I can fit it in the movie shelves; I'm old-fashioned enough to want a physical copy and not just something floating out in the aether, but it does make storage an engaging effort. And I wish I had a good place to put up the poster.

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Earwig and the Witch

Earwig and the Witch (2020) is a Studio Ghibli/NHK (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) co-production, and as such was first shown on Japanese television before being released in theatres. It was based on Diana Wynne Jones’ last published book; Ghibli had previously had great success adapting her novel Howl’s Moving Castle. It is also the studio’s first CGI animated feature and was directed by Goro Miyazaki, Hiyao Miyazaki’s son; Goro also directed Ghibli’s Tales from Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill.

Poor Earwig. Released at the height of Covid-19, shown on TV first before a theatrical release, and making less than a million dollars in the total world-wide box office, it was also the first Ghibli film since Whispers of the Heart that was not tied to Disney for its distribution. Critics almost universally decried it as looking plastic and inexpressive compared to the painterly 2D animation of ‘classic’ Ghibli productions. And the consensus was that Goro Miyazaki was no patch on his old man. I believe you could look up ‘anxiety of influence’ and find his picture there. He can’t do anything like Hiyao without seeming like a copycat or anything different without seeming to betray the nostalgic Ghibli aesthetic. In consequence of such reviews, I went in with no high expectations but with the impulse to be a completist.

I was pleasantly surprised. Its quality was equal if not superior in places to the best CGI animations. The only technical point that I found distracting was that the mouths of characters did not always track with what they were saying, but that was possibly the re-dubbing from Japanese into English. Other peculiarities of character design might seem odd or unrealistic, but these are simply conventions of the animation art form rendered into an unfamiliar format. In the words of the old song, “It's a waste of time to worry over things that they have not; be thankful for/
the things they've got.”

In Diana Wynne Jones’ original book, Earwig is an orphan of unknown parentage, a strong-willed child whose crafty manipulation of those around her makes her the secret boss of all she surveys. When she is adopted against her wishes by the witch Bella Yaga and a disguised demon called the Mandrake to be essentially their new slave, her talent for adapting to her surroundings and learning magic soon puts her in charge in her new home as well. In the new overlaid backstory for the movie, Bella Yaga, the Mandrake, and Earwig’s mother had all been members of a magical rock band which had broken up most acrimoniously; it is Earwig’s eventual destiny to try to heal that rift.

If there is a weakness to the film, it is an inadequate explication (even if it only sufficiently implied) of the mechanics of the connections. Did Bella Yaga know who Earwig was before they adopted her, or was it just a chance? Why did Earwig’s mother think it necessary to abandon her in an orphanage in the first place? And so on, and so forth.

One can see, if one wishes, common tropes shared with Harry Potter or Coraline, and think that they are ‘copied’ therefrom, even though these motifs are almost as old (or older) than literature itself. Earwig must be judged on how well and how interestingly they are used and blended.

The film credits roll with still drawings of the aftermath of the story. Here we can get a glimpse of what Earwig might have looked like if it were more traditionally animated. Would it have been better, or better received, if it had been done so, I cannot say. I can only say that, if it is not a masterpiece or an ‘instant classic’, it is a hugely engaging entertainment, and one I am glad to have taken a chance on.

Saturday, June 11, 2022

From STUDIO GHIBLI (and also michael dudok de wit)

“The Red Turtle is a 2016 animated fantasy drama film co-written and directed by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit and produced by Toshio Suzuki from Japan. The film is a co-production between Studio Ghibli and several French companies, including Wild Bunch, and tells the story of a man who becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island and meets a giant red female turtle. The film has no dialogue. The film was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Film for the 89th Academy Awards.” – Wikipedia.

It is also one of the two feature-length films from Ghibli that I haven’t seen yet (the other is “Earwig and the Witch”, a CGI-animated style film based on the book by Diana Wynne Jones). Although it has just come in and I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, the buzz on "The Red Turtle" is generally positive (hopefully I find it more engaging than "Ocean Waves"). It appears to me to have vague connections to the Japanese tale of “Urashima Taro” and his adventures far from the world of men after rescuing a turtle in distress. When the mood is right, I shall have a viewing, perhaps this evening.

Update: As of June 29th I have watched the film, and found it beautiful, engaging, and even visionary. It turns out to be much more akin to the "Animal Bride" archtype, where a creature like a selkie or a swan-maiden has their animal skin stolen, is stuck as a human, and then is forced to marry her captor, leaving as soon as she recovers her skin. Here, however, it appears it is the turtle who will not let the man leave and takes on human form to be with him. I was worried that the lack of dialogue would make the film slow or even pretentious; instead, it adds to the dreamlike and universal quality of the story.

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Ocean Waves: Ghibli Giblets

I wish I had done a little more research on this film before I decided to send off for the DVD, but I was thinking, “It’s a Studio Ghibli film. I want all the Ghibli films! It must be good!” Sure, it was about Japanese teen life, but so were “From Up on Poppy Hill” and “Whisper of the Heart”, and I had enjoyed them well enough. Look, right there on the box, "From the Creators of Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro"!

I got my copy a few weeks ago and, first of all, was surprised to find that it was exclusively in Japanese but had an option of English subtitles. Fair enough. I gave it a go and got through the first fifteen minutes. I have to say I was not engaged but thought perhaps that my mood was not right. I set it aside.

Today I gave it another shot. Again, I found myself feeling restless at the fifteen-minute mark. Puzzled, I turned it off and decided to do a little research at last, the research, perhaps, that I should have done before my purchase.

What I found on Wikipedia: “Ocean Waves, known in Japan as I Can Hear the Sea, is a 1993 Japanese anime … It was animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten and the Nippon Television Network … Ocean Waves was an attempt by Studio Ghibli to allow their younger staff members to make a film reasonably cheaply. However, it ended up going both over budget and over schedule. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by GKIDS on April 18, 2017, with only the Japanese audio with English subtitles… Production of Ocean Waves was controlled by Studio Ghibli, but much of the animation was produced with the assistance of J.C.Staff, Madhouse Studios, and Oh! Production, who had worked with Ghibli on past projects. This film is the first Ghibli anime directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. Tomomi Mochizuki, who was 34 years old at the time, was brought in to direct. The film was an attempt to make anime solely by the young staff members, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Their motto was to produce "quickly, cheaply and with quality", but ultimately it went over budget and over schedule.”

Which of course says nothing about the quality of the movie. While it may be fine for what it is (a teen drama, for sure), it seems to lack any of the whimsy or visionary quality I see in other Ghibli films, even those set in similar surroundings and not in expressly ‘mythic’ venues. At some time or other I shall probably dutifully set myself down to watch the whole thing, so I can give a fairer assessment, but at the moment I feel no real compunction to lead me on.

The only other Ghibli movies I lack are “The Red Turtle” and “Earwig and the Witch”. Before and if I order them, I shall definitely look into them more, although even knowing something about a movie beforehand does not guarantee whether one will like it or not. But it couldn’t hurt.