Best Animated Movies Ever No 1
MY NEIGHBOR
TOTORO, GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, and the Sad Nostalgia of Youth ( GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES)
April
16, 1988, was a banner day for animation, and film as a whole. After launching
Studio Ghibli with 1986's Castle in the Sky, co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and
Isao Takahata each began work on their own new films. Both movies would feature
children as the central characters, and tackle themes of loneliness, the
hardships of growing up, and the melancholy of childhood. Both films were set
in realistic, nostalgic versions of Japan, but with magical and fantastical
elements used for different effects. My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the
Fireflies were released 30 years ago today as a double bill, and they remain
their respective creator's high water mark.
The
irony of the two films coming out when they did is that they were the first big
"Here, look what we can do" movies by Studio Ghibli, and they're the
most similar movies Miyazaki and Takahata would ever make. But neither
represent the direction either director and the studio would go on a
microcosmic level. Yes, Totoro features cuddly, magical creatures and children
having adventures, but it was the most wistful movie he'd ever
make. Fireflies, conversely, is about the land and history of Japan, which
are certainly passions of Takahata's cinema, but he'd never be so tragic again.
If someone saw this double feature thinking they knew exactly what a Studio
Ghibli was, they'd be wrong any way they sliced it.
My
Neighbor Totoro is the story of two young girls--one a toddler, the other,
importantly, on her way to adolescence--who move with their father to a small
house in the country. Their mother, we learn later in the movie, is in a nearby
hospital with a long-term illness. The elder daughter, Satsuki, often has to
take care of her sister, Mei, and together they explore the nearby woods. Mei
comes across a nature spirit called Totoro, which resembles a giant, furry
bunny-cat, and as much as she tries, she can't convince her sister or father of
Totoro's existence. However, one evening, while waiting for the bus in the
rain, and Mei asleep on Satsuki's back, Totoro appears next to them and they
all take a trip in a bus that is also a cat. Totoro, and his smaller spirit
acolytes, help the girls plant trees and generally enjoy their time in their
new home.
Totoro
and the other spirits and sprites in the movie represent both childhood
imagination and a child's tendency to interact with the natural world more
intimately than adults. It's important that Mei finds Totoro right away but it
takes Satsuki a little while before she sees him. She is right at the age when
she probably should still be out having fun and playing, but she's forced to
grow up faster due to new circumstances. She makes wrong choices and eventually
has to be the one to find her sister when she gets lost.
Though
Totoro became the mascot for Studio Ghibli going forward, and there are some
wonderful and fantastical sequences in the movie that spark the imagination, My
Neighbor Totoro is firmly set in a realistic version of Japan. The movie is set
in 1958, when Miyazaki himself was 17, and much care was taken to replicate how
that part of the country looked at that time. The movie doesn’t have a
traditional plot structure and instead spends its relatively brief running time
in the day-to-day lives of the two girls. They engage with the fantasy of
Totoro in the same manner and withthe same level of acceptance as school,
chores, and dealing with their mother's illness.. Things don't always go well,
but there isn't an antagonist, nor is Totoro a benevolent mentor figure. He's
there to help Satsuki and Mei, but he's ethereal and impermanent.
Set
in 1945, at the very end of World War II, Grave of the Fireflies depicts a very
different Japan, one torn apart by the ravages of war, and one which Takahata
encountered when he was nine-years-old. It's nostalgic about childhood and its
innocence, and the reality of the world, but without the benefit of a friendly
nature spirit, and without the notion that everything might be okay. It focuses
on a teenage boy named Seita and his much younger sister, Setsuko. The film
opens with Seita dying of starvation in a train station, clutching a candy tin
that belonged to his sister, who also died. We then flashback to several months
earlier, when Seita tried to give his sister a childhood of fun amid air raids,
food rations, and transience. It's incredibly important to him that Setsuko not
feel the horrors of the war, while not making light of it.
Takahata's
work was much more up front about Japan and the plight of its people and its
history. The symbolism of the title comes from when the characters move in to
an abandoned bomb shelter and release fireflies into the cave for light.
Setsuko loves them, but is horrified the next day when she discovers all of
them have died. "Why do fireflies have to die so soon?" she asks, and
they bury the insects outside the next morning. This is Takahata's melancholic
assertion that innocence can't last forever, while also making clear that, in
any war, the innocents are the ones who suffer worst. At the end of the movie,
the spirits of Seita and Setsuko are surrounded by fireflies as they float over
a modern-day Japan, with all of its prosperity. Cities and populations can
survive horrible adversity, you just might lose a few fireflies along the way.
In
both cases, the films were deeply personal to the specific upbringings of their
creators. Even if Fireflies was based on someone else's short story, both of
the films offer a nostalgia for childhood while acknowledging that era is hard
and doesn't last forever. Both men were looking back to a youth that wasn't
misspent so much as taken away too soon, in a country that had overcome so much
following a defeat in a war. Both movies end with cautious hope, for the future
of not just the country but for children in general.
Miyazaki's
output after My Neighbor Totoro would go back to out-and-out fantasy, though
most would deal with childhood's end. Perhaps his two most lauded films would
deal with the desecration of the wonder of nature (1997's Princess Mononoke)
and the corruption and exploitation of children (2001's Oscar-winning Spirited
Away), but both were much harder edged and lacked the lilting wistfulness of My
Neighbor Totoro.
Takahata's
subsequent movies, on the other hand, stayed in the same arena, all about life
in Japan, growing up, and family. Only Yesterday dealt directly with
returning to your hometown and remembering childhood, while the beautiful
oddity Pom Poko was about the ill effects of human growth on nature,
specifically through the eyes of the revered Japanese animal, the tanuki.
With
their one-two punch, Miyazaki and Takahata made the world--not just Japan--take
notice. Both films ended up in Roger Ebert's book of Great Films, both won many
awards, and both cemented Studio Ghibli's place as the top storytellers in
their field. 30 years on, both movies pack indelible punches and will certainly
last 30 more years, and probably until the end of time.
Images:
Studio Ghibli
Kyle
Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He's the writer of Studio Ghibli
retrospectives Miyazaki Masterclass, Takahata Textbook, and Ghibli Bits. Follow
him on Twitter!
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