Hayao Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli

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Cancer
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Hayao Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli

Post by Cancer »

Miyazaki was mentioned elsewhere on the forum, and I thought his films deserve a thread of their own. Even though some Ghibli films are bad, I included also the studio in general because of e.g. the less-known Isao Takahata. (Grave of the Fireflies and Princess Kaguya are both incredible, though harder to watch than Miyazaki.)

It's impossible for me to decide which of Miyazaki's four best movies - Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle - I prefer. They are not only some of the best films I know of, but some of the best art overall. This is a thoroughly unoriginal opinion of course, but some things just force one to abandon the will to be edgy.

How do you interpret these movies, or ones I haven't mentioned? How do they look from an esotericist's perspective? Do you think they are overesteemed and if so, why?
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Smaragd
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli

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Cancer wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 12:41 pm How do you interpret these movies, or ones I haven't mentioned? How do they look from an esotericist's perspective? Do you think they are overesteemed and if so, why?
As a child, happening to see Totoro one morning from the TV, instead of the usual childrens TV-shows, it really sparked out something intimately familiar and magical inside. I don't remember if it even had Finnish overdubs, but at least the visual language and storytelling reached me and spoke to me. I guess the young, yet ancient, animist in me was greeted and its existence acknowledged and validated. It created this connection so well that answering your question I'm thinking can we ask more from a movie?

While Spirited Away and Totoro managed to do this incredibly well, some of the later Ghibli works seem to have deteriorated in to following dead patterns to merely strike an emotional chord in onanistic fashion. I'm referring to When Marnie Was There and Tales from Earthsea , both of which had very interesting content in them, but overall felt a bit hollow in their structures reminiscent of Hollywood patterns of drama.

It's funny how little I tend to ask from old literature and myths compared to contemporary art and narratives. Guess it comes to the idea of specificity. Old simple mythological tales can be really non-specific and valuable in many frontiers, while simple structured. Then the long winded contemporary narratives tend to have very specific things worked in to, in a sort of forced and non-magical way. Built surprises are given too much value and emphasis costing much from he whole. If my memory serves me well, When Marnie Was There came down to some specific psychological explanations that sort of killed things, although narratively trying to keep the magic intact by not diluting things with psychological reasoning. It just didn't work for me. And Tales from Earthsea seemed like it forced some mythological symbolism in to the narrative very straightforward as if to validate itself in the eyes of people who have studied things a bit, or have some conscious or unconscious senses ready to receive some glimpses. Basic and valid ideas of shadow etc. is being teached to the little folk, there are tears even, but also the feeling of hollowness.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Cancer
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli

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Smaragd wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:48 amAs a child, happening to see Totoro one morning from the TV, instead of the usual childrens TV-shows, it really sparked out something intimately familiar and magical inside. I don't remember if it even had Finnish overdubs, but at least the visual language and storytelling reached me and spoke to me. I guess the young, yet ancient, animist in me was greeted and its existence acknowledged and validated. It created this connection so well that answering your question I'm thinking can we ask more from a movie?
I remember seeing Spirited Away at some kind of pre-premiere show for the Finnish dub when I was ten or nine. After that I've only watched it in Japanese, so the dub would probably trigger some intense nostalgia. Totoro I can't remember seeing for the first time, only re-watching. If you are especially interested in the animist themes (and can stomach comparatively, though not excessively, dense academic writing), there is a great essay by Phillip E. Wegner that touches on those, and Miyazaki's relationship to Shinto. Specifically, it is an interpretation of Totoro as a depiction of an alternate history - one in which modernization in Japan involved less exploitation of nature, in which Japan never became imperialist and, as a result, never entered World War II. Really interesting stuff about e.g. changes in people's conceptual frameworks brought about by monotheism, and also ties Totoro together with Grave of the Fireflies, which premiered jointly and was intended as the dystopian half of a diptych. (It's a tradition in utopian stories to present our actual world as a horrifying dystopian possibility; in Totoro, Satsuki and Mei are taken care of by friendly animistic spirits, and there is no sign of war or destitution, whereas in Grave of the Fireflies, siblings of similar age and in the same historical period starve to death in an ultra-nationalist, militarist Japan, with the surrounding nature appearing totally alien and uncaring.)
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Re: Hayao Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli

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Cancer wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:51 amthere is a great essay by Phillip E. Wegner that touches on those, and Miyazaki's relationship to Shinto.
Thanks for this recommendation! Very interesting read.

Not long ago i revisited some of my favorite Ghibli films to determine if my daughter would soon be old enough to watch, and enjoy them. I never saw these films as a child myself but was already in my twenties when i discovered them. Spirited Away might be one of my all time favorite animations. Everything about it is absolutely brilliant. This time i also very much enjoyed Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which i don't remember it making much of a impression when i first saw it almost a decade ago.
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