1997's Princess Mononoke was among the first films to bring Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli to the attention of viewers in the West, chiefly the US, where it was bought up by Disney and issued in a (fairly flat) English-language dub. A young prince, one of the last of his tribe, is doomed to die a slow death after a clash with a forest demon; his people subsequently send him out into the world to determine the demon's origins. Turns out it was riled up by a female despot - a skilfully drawn composite of all the real world's tyrants - who's dead set on keeping her people enslaved and mining the forest for its natural resources. It's down to the prince and a rebel leader known as The Wolf Princess to ensure justice prevails. Truth be told, Princess Mononoke is a little po-faced about pursuing this particular line, with not much of the magic and wonder that lit up the later Spirited Away, and some very literal-seeming business about "the hatred growing inside of you". In the absence of Ghibli's usual narrative rapture, you find yourself admiring Miyazaki's facility with landscapes anew. There are precious few animators, one would suggest, capable of dreaming up such very wild wildlife - disgruntled wild boars covered in a thick fur of squirming fire-eels, pocket-sized white bugs with heads that rotate like eggtimers - yet Miyazaki also has a way of putting serenity up on screen like no other filmmaker, simply by refusing to clutter his soundtrack with the whistles and bells that now come as standard in American animation. We're often left here with no greater stimuli than the rustling of leaves, the chirruping of crickets and the flow of running water: tiny but vital signifiers of the natural order warmongers and industrialists alike come to despoil.
(March 2007)
Princess Mononoke opens in selected cinemas from October 17.
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