Oh man, we so needed a PG-13 before we actually got it. I almost let my kids watch this movie with me. It is 100% the perfect candidate for PG-13. Like, it's pretty scary. Sure, my wife scoffed when I told her it was scary, but that's only mostly because she often doesn't respect me. This movie is violent and full of very scary bugs. There's this monster that just melts away organ by organ. Oh, the '80s! How did you do these things on a regular basis?
DIRECTOR: Hayao Miyazaki Oh man, there are certain movies that just get me. Most of the time, I don't see it coming. I thought I had seen my favorite Miyazaki movies. I had not. Nausicaä is such a me-movie that I kind of want to recommend it to everyone. But it also is such a me-movie that I'm not sure that everyone will really enjoy it. Now, I can't say that it is a perfect movie. I know that Miyazaki really has a thing for making environmentalism a thing and I thought it was a bit heavy-handed at times, but I'm starting to wake up to the environmentalism thing. (Holy crap, I'm becoming the very hippie I've feared all along!) But the movie is just so bananas. I know that lots of people really like Miyazaki, so I have no right to claim him as my own. That being said, there are a startling amount of things that we like in common and this one seemed like a young guy just fanboying about science fiction. I know that I'm going to get flak for not liking Starship Troopers. (I get it. Paul Verhoven made the movie ironic. Doesn't make me like it.) I am terrified of bugs to some degree, so a good man v. big bugs movie will actually scare me. But I haven't really seen a good one. A lot of them are exploitative and lazy, relying very heavily on the premise that people with guns versus bugs will draw a crowd. The potential is always there for other movies, but the execution always leaves me underwhelmed. But Nausicaä is different. Nausicaä (and I'm ashamed to write this sentence) goes so deep into world building and takes itself so seriously when it really doesn't have to that it commands respect. I'm never sure whether I want a movie like this to take itself super-seriously or with a grain of salt, but I'm going to lean with super-seriously this time. Part of why I like that attitude when it comes to this movie is that Miyazaki is a man of detail. The world is fully fleshed out, as are the characters and the plot. If anything, the movie leans a little bit into the problem that I have with many anime films in terms of getting just a bit too complicated at times. But the movie never relies too heavily on tech talk or nonsense babble. Rather, it is confusing that just requires the viewer to invest rather than ignore it. I don't see that with other anime. I'm still bummed that I don't get Akira. But Nausicaä takes it right to the level it needs to go. There is a very complex plot and lots of sci-fi tropes, but most of the information that is dropped is understandable and builds to the overall film. Similarly, the characters are relatable. As weird as the movie gets, and I keep mentally comparing it to Dune, the characters still seem like people that I could get to know. Sure, they harvest bugs that are endangering them at every turn, but I like that about them. That makes them fascinating. I think I only like sci-fi that has people I can relate to, but things like Dune don't often offer that to me. This has the rich landscape of something like Dune or Game of Thrones, but the humanity that tends to get ignored in stories like this. I mean, the story is actually pretty great and my brain filled in all of the relationship and political affiliation stuff that I had to know. This is 1984. Not the Orwell thing, but the actual year. 1984 anime was probably a thing unto itself. I kind of expected this movie to end with a dolly shot over a kid sleeping and someone saying "DIC" like "DEEK" because it just had that look and sound to it. I don't know if there was a style thing or something going on at the time. I kind of mentioned this in my last review about The Red Turtle. 1984 anime doesn't look as clean as stuff I'm used to seeing. I don't know if Miyazaki was dealing with a budget, but there are some very odd shortcuts here. All that being said, the movie looks absolutely stunning. There's some actually amazing camera work that I wouldn't associate with cost-cutting animation. (Also, why do swords in anime make that sound? It's cool, but who decided that was a thing?) I think what makes the look of the movie amazing, besides the fact that it has a cool cool setting is the fact that a lot of Nausicaä is the protagonist on a glider. First of all, that glider is amazing and I want one. I would never use it because I'm fundamentally a coward about things like that, but I also want to be the kind of person who could just hop on a glider and take to the skies. The film really looks at landscape pieces from the perspective of someone who would view it at an extremely fast rate and from cool perspectives. Nausicaä herself is this amazing and cool action hero, so having her jump on this rad glider only makes her movie all the cooler. The movie also plays with what is expected out of setting, especially in the flying sequences. There are these absolutely bananas airships that just seem massive. They get wrecked pretty fast, which takes a little bit of their sails out (kind of a pun intended). But they are absolutely beautiful when they interact with their landscapes. Usually, this means them erupting from these gorgeously rendered clouds, but it also means that the ships blow up against stuff and that looks pretty awesome. I wonder if Miyazaki knew that these shots were going to cost some serious coin to animate, so the moment to moment animation wasn't seen as a priority. It is all fine, but it looks a little like the Saturday morning cartoons I used to inhale as a child. Regardless, the look of the movie is more than fine. It does really work. And it is really exciting. I loved the action sequences and that says a lot considering that it was an animated film. I find the emotional connections stronger in animation for some reason. The risk put to a character is usually pretty slim when I know that a stuntman isn't doing it for real. I don't know why it is that way. You can read my Fast and the Furious reviews to confirm my thoughts on all of this kind of stuff. But the action sequences are cool and they involve flying. What else can I ask for? Can I say that I love this Miyazaki binge? I really want to watch my copy of The Last Jedi, but I have a billion more Ghibli movies to inhale. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind might be one of my favorites now, but I have a lot more to watch and rewatch. One of them just showed up at the library with my name on it, so look forward to that. This one rocked and I feel like I can just keep going.
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My kids handled it really well. It's PG and a well deserved PG. There's very innocent nudity in this movie and I think what little nudity there is from a distance. There was a weird awkward moment with my six-year-old. The couple on the island have a baby. They met on the island. My daughter asked, "How did they get married if no one else is there?" I told her that it was a very good question and that was that. You know what they say about good parenting? The best parents dodge tough questions for other days, right? That's a thing. PG.
DIRECTOR: Michael Dudok de Wit It's a Ghibli movie that isn't even Japanese! It had a red production logo card with Totoro on it! I didn't even know that Ghibli imported film. Regardless, it is one of those movies that is totally deserving of the Ghibli name. It's so funny thinking about what makes a movie look Japanese in terms of art. The Red Turtle has a Tintin style to it. Is it a national animation school that teaches cultural style? Regardless, I like French comics and animation. I won't fight having a gorgeously animated movie that has that French design to it. People told me that this is one of those movies that was going to make me cry. It's just because I'm broken inside that I didn't cry, but it is one of those movies. Go into it knowing that it was a real possibility. This is also a movie that falls within a very specific subgenre. I saw All is Lost a few years ago. That was borderline the same movie for a good portion of the movie. It's so funny that the survival at sea movie is the silent film. It makes a lot of sense. There's no one to talk to. I think that I would be talking a lot simply out of boredom, but then again, I write an essay a day just to talk to someone. There would just be miles of shoreline reviewing movies that I never got to review being washed away by the shore. I'm sure I'd be writing, "Pun intended" to the heavens and hating myself every second. But it is a good time to be experimental as a filmmaker. De Wit is smart to have this be the film without dialogue. If you are going that far to have most of the movie silent, it is a far stronger choice to go the whole way. I mean, there is the abandonment of reality. If I had a kid on an island with nothing to do, I would try teaching him everything, even if it didn't lead to anything. I suppose that happened to some extent. The man does try drawing animals and people and the rest of the world. It has to be implied that the boy learned all about the world outside of the island. But the silence also leads to the director having to pull double duty to define their relationship. Everything about the man, his wife, and the boy has to be told through action. That's probably what works, too. The movie has this mystery about it that both ties into the external conflict and the internal relationships between the characters. The relationship between the man and the woman is built out of violence. As you can tell, especially if you've seen this movie, I'm being really intentionally cryptic. The violence makes a ton of sense within the context of the film and it is odd that a relationship works out of that violence. It is supernatural, I can at least say. But that relationship is so touching. I suppose (and I really don't want to cheapen the film) that the movie plays up the whole nature of the hypothetical situation of "if you were stuck on an island" or "if you were the last man in the world." That's the movie. The man and the woman were natural enemies based on their situation. The woman didn't want the man to leave the island. The man wanted to leave the island. Because the woman is somehow supernatural, we don't know if this is out of selfishness or the universe telling him that he was destined to be there. The movie is simultaneously tragic and joyful. It's weird. (I hate dancing around spoilers, but I also really like the idea of keeping this one cryptic.) It is easy, also, to embrace the fact that they were going to be lovers. After all, the rules change when you are on an island. I've thought about the theological merits of being stuck on an island and that's why I don't travel very often. Regardless, the internal relationships allow us to skip what brings them together. The thing that does really puzzle me about their relationship is the thing that The Shape of Water wanted me to confront. This movie really avoids it. There is simply an understanding that they are somehow equals. Is it because she looks human? Is that what makes it cool? I don't know, but the woman in this movie acts more human than the creature in The Shape of Water. She seems to be a being outside of the universe. (I'm really teetering on spoilers here.) But as great as the relationship is with the woman, I am more interested in the relationship with the son. First of all, as a dad, I can't imagine how to raise a child on an island. I know that for generations, people raised children to adulthood without incident. But I also know that mortality rates were infamously bad. Watching this kid run around this island, I just kept thinking that it was a death trap. This also reminds me of the most terrifying thing in the movie for me. The kids, even Henry, had no problem with the scene with the high walls. I must have a bit of claustrophobia in me because this was also the scariest element of The Descent for me. When he fell, I swear my blood pressure spiked through the roof. It is a genius way to establish what the child is, but I just needed it to be okay. But the kid seems more human than supernatural. The story, at a certain point of the movie, becomes about the little kid. I like it no better or worse, but I appreciate the shift in the film. It becomes an interesting study of how someone can grow up free of civilization. I know that we've gotten that story with The Jungle Book or Tarzan, but this somehow feels more more natural. There are no adventures. There are joyful moments and there are tragedies. These moments are bigger than my life, but they are just as grounded as my life. There's no giant action sequences. These are real people dealing with their very specific environment. That environment, and I hate how cliche this sounds, is a character in a way. By the end of the movie, I have become intimate with that island. At one point, a character swims out pretty far and looks back at the island and it is way bigger than I thought it would be. I suppose that the man probably explored that island earlier on in his time there and then just got comfortable with the same locations time and again. It's cool because these moments get a sense of history. The movie takes place over the course of the adult man's entire adult life. These locations stay pretty static for the most part (with the exception of one major event) and they gain memories. It is odd to think of the man building rafts at the beginning of the movie. I shared the man's frustration as raft after raft were destroyed. I was also wildly impressed with how big those rafts got at some points. But by the end of the movie, those rafts faded into memory, simply being a thing along the line with painting a room in a house that has been occupied for fifty years. I remember painting my son's room at the old house. But that room moved beyond the pride I had of painting that room. It gained so many memories and it is odd that it now exists without me seeing it. We recently moved into a new house and it's odd to think that this house will one day completely lose its novelty. The movie is absolutely beautiful. Ghibli consistently releases movies that impress and astound. I really like that this is under the Ghibli banner. I think of movies like The Breadwinner that sometimes don't get the attention that they deserve. I feel like the Ghibli production company gives a movie value and attention when it wouldn't necessarily do that sometimes. I hate to say it, but it also might have my secret favorite runtime: 1 hour and 20 mintues. I know. It makes me a bad person. But it is also the perfect length to tell this story, especially considering that there is no dialogue. I don't know. I don't know if I would ever own this movie, but I really like it. Will I say that the kids loved it? They definitely liked it, but that was them being the most mature versions of themselves. It's no Lego Batman, but I'm proud of them for giving this one a chance. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
May 2024
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