Vertigo Films continues to be careful in the distribution of Studio Ghibli titles. After the release on DVD and Blu-ray of those two costume jewels that are ‘Memories of Yesterday’ and ‘I can listen to the sea’, the distributor relaunches ‘Princess Mononoke’ in cinemas. Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece returns to theaters to celebrate its 25th anniversarya revival that follows the line of other factory film reunions with audiences on the big screen after what the distributor did with ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ and ‘Spirited Away’.
‘Princess Mononoke’ is the great feat of Hayao Miyazaki, the film that aspired from the beginning to become his pinnacle as a director. The director was born from having directed what his elegy meant to his ideals of the past, the melancholy ‘Porco Rosso’. The feeling of facing the end of a vital moment prompted Miyazaki to turn his next project into a real goodbye.something that was strengthened during the full production of the film, Yoshifumi Kondô, director of ‘Whispers of the Heart’ and considered the natural successor of both Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, has died at the age of 47, victim of an aneurysmwhich is believed to have been caused by the stress level reached.
That death hit Miyazaki, who has already started planning his retirement. It’s more, ‘Princess Mononoke’ took him to the limit of his energies, being that epic feat with which Miyazaki aspired to consecrate himself as one of the most important directors of both Japanese animated cinema and cinema in general. Although what would have been another of his masterpieces, ‘Spirited Away’, arrived years later, it is essential to evaluate ‘Princess Mononoke’ as that definitive title within the director’s filmography, since Miyazaki has never made a feature film with such an epic spirittypical of period cinema, linking its proposal to the cinema of greats such as Akira Kurosawa.
In the face of war and horror, of harmony and hope
Set in the troubled Muromachi period of feudal Japan, which began in 1336 and ended in 1573, “Princess Mononoke” tells the epic of a cursed prince, a member of an Emishi tribewho decides to seek the origin of his curse, caused by the boar god turned demon, which takes him to the Iron City, where he will meet his governor, Lady Eboshi, who supports a war with the forest surrounding the village and its spirits, including the wolf goddess Moro, who adopted San, a young woman they call Princess Mononokedue to its hybrid nature, being human but dweller in the bush.
Miyazaki exposes a historical moment of civil wars and internal struggles between heads of regions and peoples, to which is added the conflict of progress and how it devours nature without control. The director, who has always defended environmentalism, exposes this issue head-on, proving that all sides are right, as it is an epic story with no good or bad points.. Ashitaka and San form an opposing tandem leader, which serves to manifest the internal conflicts of the human being himself, an animal whose rationality has given him the destiny to progress, but for this reason he must not destroy everything he touches.
The director shows a conciliatory message, avoiding falling into the conventionalism typical of epic and historical cinema. It’s more, Even when it comes to delineating the fate of the main villain, Miyazaki is magnanimous, stating that “Princess Mononoke” is the natural evolution of what was Studio Ghibli’s cornerstone, “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”.in which he has already exposed the problems of man to find the balance between progress and care for the environment, in a post-apocalyptic world devoured by the struggles between kingdoms and pollution.
The Miyazaki Epic, an exceptional and unique feature film
In the case of “Princess Mononoke”, Miyazaki changes the future for the past and the setting is medieval Japan, wrapped in a world of ancient gods, mythological beings, forests whose heartbreaking cries of despair can be heard amid the murmuring of trees, warring cities and curses. If in ‘Nausicaä’ the human being challenges the fatality of destiny, in ‘Princess Mononoke’ it is the confrontation of man against the gods, a parable that also shows the pacifist character of the director, who lived in his own flesh the last years of World War II and the subsequent postwar period. However, as mentioned earlier, in this battle, the director focuses on harmony as the only way to hope.
An example of excellence is instead the ‘Nausicaä del Valle del Viento’, which was the one that laid the foundations for what would later be Ghibli; which makes it The ‘Princess Mononoke’ is one of the best exponents of the director’s greatest virtuosity. Not only for being in front of a story worthy of being a legend, but for the attention to every detail in her animation and other technical sections. Joe Hisaishi, composer of Miyazaki’s entire filmography within Ghibli, signs one of the best soundtracks that the factory has, with a unique spirit, capable of bringing the audience into that medieval war. A masterful photograph, the work of Atsushi Okui; without forgetting that he had the first swords of the studio animation, having figures such as Masashi Andô, Kitarô Kôsaka, the late Yoshifumi Kondô and Hitomi Tateno; as well as an innumerable staff of art direction, color supervision and animation, showing all the excellence of one of the most virtuous films in both Miyazaki’s and Studio Ghibli’s filmography.
It is impossible to deny the same degree of virtuosity in ‘Spirited Away’, but ‘Princess Mononoke’ is that other great definitive work of the filmmaker, the one that has ended up consecrating him as one of the great Japanese directors of recent years and the best exponent in the innovation of animation as a means of making the seventh art. Beyond the anecdote In Japan, the film managed to unseat “Titanic” as the highest-grossing film in history (title lost to the aforementioned Miyazaki film which won the Golden Bear in Berlin and the Oscar); its re-release in theaters allows the public to rediscover a unique work, whose 25 years have only increased its legacy and fame, as the only masterpiece it is. A real treat for the palate, a unique undertaking.
Note: 10
The best: The validity of his message, his utmost visual care, which continues to be a masterpiece and an essential title.
Worse: Do not take this opportunity to enjoy it in its natural habitat, a cinema.
Source: E Cartelera
