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Movie Review: Princess Mononoke
Nutshell
Review: Princess Mononoke is a Japanese animated film set in historical Japan that explores the trials of nature versus an ever-encroaching civilization. Famous artist/writer/producer Hayao Miyazaki has broken the charts with Mononoke Hime, released in the U.S. by Miramax Films as Princess Mononoke. This is a movie that anime fans and non-fans alike will delight in seeing.
Rating: 10/10 Reviewed by frohike / Dan Potter The Scenario
The setting is historical Japan in the Muromachi era (1392-1573), during the time when firearms were first beginning to appear in the country. A raging monster enters the up-to-then peaceful village of Ashitaka, a young warrior. It plows with towering hatred straight towards the village, aiming to destroy it and kill every human it can find; so strong is the hate in the creature that the very grass it runs across wilts away to brown mush. When Ashitaka defeats the demon, it finally speaks to the gathered humans with its dieing breath. It tells them that it was a great boar protector-god of a faraway forest who was overcome with anger at the destruction humans had caused in his forest. The boar curses Ashitaka in the form of a consuming disease in his arm. As its already-dead body crumbles away it utters a scathing curse on humanity.
Such is the intensity present throughout much of Mr. Hayao Miyazaki's latest full-length film, released in the U.S. as Princess Mononoke. There are really two parts to a proper review of the American release of this movie -- a review of the movie itself, and a review of the cultural adaptation and dubbing -- so I'll handle those separately.
A small note before I begin, I was privileged to see this movie because Austin has a small but thriving film community that brings film festivals to town occasionally. It was shown in a (mostly =) normal movie theater (The Paramount), and it was attended by Neil Gaiman (more on Neil Gaiman's relation to the movie in a moment). The movie won't be coming out for the public until early November, and there is more information on that below.
The Movie: Mononoke HimeAs many anime fans are aware, Mr. Miyazaki, and associated Studio Ghibli, are famous for creating films that contain excellent artistic talent, entertaining stories, and are just plain neat movies. You may know that team for such titles as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Laputa (Castle in the Sky in the American release). All of those good qualities are present in this movie, but at about twice the normal strength for a Ghibli film. The artwork and animation of Mononoke Hime is breathtaking, the scenery is fabulous, the musical score is worthy of comparison with the contemporary greats, and the issue is close at hand: man and his continuing detrimental effect on nature. Only, in Mononoke Hime, the battle is a bit more tangible.
The story begins when a forest-protecting boar god intrudes on a peaceful village and imposes a curse on the young warrior Ashitaka. His fate is to leave the village and discover what has unquieted the boar god so and cure his curse if possible. His journey takes him across streams, through enchanted forests, and finally to "Iron Town" (as it is called in the American release). Here he witnesses the reason for the anger of the forest gods: a city setup across a lake from a forest whose residents aim to mine the iron from the hills in whatever way possible so that they might make ends meet. The story is even more complicated when Princess Mononoke herself appears, a human child raised by the forest wolves who is also out to eliminate the Iron Town.
This story is noticeably darker and more serious than most from Mr. Miyazaki. On the other hand, it is not without its light-hearted moments, and it comes across as very well balanced in that regard. If you took the kids to see My Neighbor Totoro and that's all you've seen of Mr. Miyazaki's works, you might want to consider seeing this one first without the kids. It was definitely written for an adult audience. It is also probably one of Miyazaki's longest single pieces: it weighs in at about 15 minutes past two hours.
The Dub: Princess MononokeOk, when Neil Gaiman first came out before the movie and stated that he had done a "cultural adaptation", I groaned. I'm sure I heard a number of other anime fans groan too, because we are all quite familiar with said adaptations. They usually involve a butchering of the dialogue until it's not recognizable, replacing the good music with bad, and just generally tearing the show up to make it sell with American marketing.
If that's what you're expecting, you'll definitely be disappointed. It took a little bit of getting used to the English voice actors/actresses, but overall they are very good. Having seen the Japanese version a few times, I can say that the translation and "adaptation" is also very good. Mr. Gaiman said that his goal was to make an adaptation that made you feel like you were watching a movie produced in English, not a foreign film that's been dubbed; he succeeded quite nicely in that goal. The lipsyncing is very good, and the only real changes were a few extra bits and phrases thrown in near the beginning to try to insert a bit more historical background for a non-Japanese audience. Way to go, Neil! You just produced the first dub that I, a die-hard subtitled-anime fan, actually enjoyed and would recommend!
This goal was also helped by the all-star cast. While the voice acting talent of some of these folks hasn't been tested, their voices are well known, and they did a pretty good job. Billy-Bob Thornton as the monk is a really nice touch, and Lady Eboshi's British-accent-wielding voice actress gives her a very aristocratic touch (not that Brits are inherently aristocratic, but she does come across as very refined and regal among the more normal voices of Iron Town).
There was a nifty Q&A session after the showing with Neil Gaiman, and I think it's a bit out of scope to post all of that with this review, but I'll give two little tidbits that stand out in my mind.
The first one is the story of Mr. Gaiman meeting Mr. Miyazaki. There's an Asian restaurant Neil Gaiman frequents, and the daughter of the owner is a really big Miyazaki fan. So of course she asked Neil to get something autographed. He said he would do it, but that he's really a very shy person, and the idea of meeting this man who many consider to be a minor deity of animated film making was just a bit shaking. To make a long story short, he did indeed meet him for a few moments at a dinner, and he came away with a signed CD, a signed art book with a little Totoro sketch, and a hug from Mr. Miyazaki. Deal!
The other one is talking about how he got involved in the production. There is more info about that on the web site for the movie, but here's the part they didn't include. Mr. Gaiman said he didn't want to be involved in this. He went to see a subtitled version at Miramax, though, and came away feeling like he'd seen something phenomenal. The next thought that went through his head was, "What's the next guy they try to hire going to do with this show?" That was what decided him. His statement on the matter was (paraphrased), the next guy who works on this may just look at it as a job, without the respect it deserves and really f*ck it up; but at least I'll f*ck it up with respect! (censored for the innocent, and for the web policing packages ;-)
What's Bad?
I can't think of a whole lot that detracts from this movie. There are a few points that may turn you off from it though: its long length; the number of things you still won't understand about Japanese culture from the added dialogue (unless you already know); keeping track of the crazy procession of things that happens towards the end; and of course, despite the quality of the dub, I'm still a die-hard subtitled fan and a sometimes student of the Japanese language, and I like to hear the Japanese ^_^;
What's Good?
What's not good? ;-) The quality of the animation is excellent, the music is good, the plot is neat. You get to feel close to all of the characters, not just "the good guys". In fact, there aren't really any "good guys and bad guys" in this movie like in so many movies. There are several sides to a conflict, and every side has humane and cruel qualities, and every side has a valid argument. Exemplary of this is the fact that Lady Eboshi, while she appears at first to be the "bad guy" of the story, is just trying to make a life too -- and to help make a new life for an entire group of women from a local brothel, and a group of lepers, and so on. She turns out to be their humane savior, even though she encourages the destroying of the forest.
Watching this movie leaves you with a ponderous feeling. I don't want to spoil the ending for you, but I will say that they did not cheese the heck out, and that is one of the most endearing qualities of it.So What's In It For Me?
An easy glance into some aspects of Japanese culture; a look at some of the latest in state of the art animation (not a lot of computer rendering! =); and of course, a good time. If you're an anime fan, seeing it in good ol' analog on the big screen is a real treat! While much of the mythology of the movie was created by Mr. Miyazaki himself, it does have a very Japanese feel to it, and many of the history tidbits are fairly accurate.
Showing informationThe movie will be showing at the "20 major markets" at first. You can find more info on the web page about the movie. The web site, while a bit flashy for my tastes, is actually kinda neat. It has a pure HTML version, but the interface is a Shockwave-esque Myst-like environment that includes lots of information snippets, Quicktime movies of scenes, etc. On the top of the front page is a link to the "20 major markets" and when it will be showing at each. They start in late October (29th in New York City) and go from there.
The success of this small run will be the determining factor if they show it nationally, and in fact if they bring any more things like Mononoke Hime to the U.S. If you like this kind of film, please go see it and vote with your dollars! Tell your friends too! =)
I apologize for the length of this review, but it's such a neat movie and there's so much that could be written about it. If you have doubts, give it a shot, you might like it! If you are a Miyazaki fan already, the dub won't disappoint you!
A final note, if you can read Japanese or have translation software, there is also a Japanese Mononoke Hime site at the Ghibli web site; and if you want to find more about anime in general, try The Anime Web Turnpike.
The Anime Perfect Blue is currently playing in movie theaters across the United States. Perfect Blue breaks away from the traditional giant robots / technology theme and focuses on a japanese sub-culture and psychological issues. The Animation quality is certainly up to the Levels of the anime classic Ghost in the Shell. Definetly worth checking out if you are lucky enough to live in a major US city.
They reviewed the original and dubbed versions. (So you can see what you're missing.)
The reviews are heartfelt but also quite funny.
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
Slashdot is nice because it's a very specific forum for us to talk about computers and OSes (read: Linux). If we bog it down with less salient issues, it will become garbage.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Neil Gaiman of Sandman and literary fame...
This is an unfortunate trend. Sandman is Gaiman's most acclaimed literary credit, but we sort of trip over the idea of calling it "Literature". Sure, there are words, but there are... GASP... PICTURES! It's a COMIC BOOK!
Books like Sandman will continue to challenge the assumption that works with storyboard-style pictures are not Literature. This is a Good Thing(tm).
Or, to paraphrase Gaiman from a talk he gave at MIT: If it's a picture we call it art, and it's respected. If it's a book with words, it's literature and it's respected. If it's a book with words and pictures, it's crap for kids.
I certainly hope that the dubbed version was not ruined by Disney (as they have been known to turn originbal works into trash). I saw the movie with subtitles, and personally quite enjoyed it. I think the foreign language (the way it sounds as oppiosed to what it says, when you can't understand it) is an integral part of the film. I wonder if the dubbed version is really worth seeing... Although the film itself is spectacular!!!
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Mr. Low Resolution
Yeah, that's one of the main reasons I like anime so much, along with a lot of other people -- it's generally aimed at a mature audience, not the Saturday morning cartoonies. Animated movies as a medium really haven't see much in the way of serious movies here in the U.S.
One other thing of note:
The fact that Gaiman, one of my favourite authors, did the translation is yet another reason to go see it.
Hmm... I guess one thing that I didn't really say very explicitly is that Neil Gaiman only did the dialogue adaptation. The other credit listed for the translation/adaptation (Jack Fletcher) is apparently the one who did most of the raw translation work. He translated the bulk of the text pretty literally, and then that was picked up by Neil Gaiman and made more natural sounding and such. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
For those interested in this, and movies in general, visit Ain't It Cool News.
The site is dedicated to movie industry news and rumours, and the search engine should point you to past rumblings about Mononoke and anything else at all..
Don't forget to check out the buzz on Pitch Black.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Let's just look at the trend here:
See http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=movi es for a lot more examples of non-technical news. Oh yeah, this is just a tech news site. This is a site dedicated to a particular set of cross-cultural interests held by the new technical sub-culture (oooh! I just made that up
If what you want is to have a site that caters to your specific tech bent, then exclude the movie info (that's under preferences). Slashdot is Slashdot. If you see it here, that's Slashdot content. What you think is Slashdot "style" is rather beside the point.
Your silly japanese cartoon comment is very telling that you haven't a clue. The Japanese animation that I've seen and have is geared towards the adult viewer, many with adult situations, violence, and language that would easily rate an R or even X rating. Most all have an excellent story line, unless butchered during the English translation process.
In contrast, the vast majority of American cartoons are geared towards children, and are not worth seeing for those not in a family way. This does some to be improving, Iron Giant was a pleasent surprise!
Most of my collection is on Laser Disk, though I've started getting DVD titles now that I've a Thinkpad with DVD support.
One of the Tenchi Muyo specials would be especially popular for this group - it's a major spoof on Microsoft, complete with Gates and his attempts to monopolize the Japanese Computer market.
[ ] I want to marry Belldandy!
[ ] Every other paycheck covers anime goodies!
[ ] I watch a lot of anime.
[ ] Some of it is all right.
[ ] Not really interested, thanks.
[ ] Isn't that all just pr0n and ninjas?
[ ] What's anime?
[ ] Foo!
Hey Rob! Let's have a real poll on this!
For those of you who enjoy good Anime, this is *definitely* worth checking out.
This is the man who created my all time favorite Anime, Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä (Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind). Not only is this a full length story (weighing in at right about 2 hours...I hate 45 minute 'movies' with no time for a real plot) but the depth, the characters, and the writing are all abosolutely amazing.
It's strange, but very few people in the US seem to be familiar with Nausicaa, despite the fact that I'm told it almost always places in the top 5 of every Japanese poll about the greatest Anime ever. I suppose part of the reason may be that no Enlglish dub was ever made (Technically, there was an English dub, it was called Warriors of the Wind. However, I refuse to count it, because it was so horribly chopped, mangled, and destroyed, it's not even worth watching. They cut out almost half an hour in the dubbing and editing, essentially everything that was important for the plot, leaving you with a few disjointed action scenes.)
If you'd like more information on Hayao Miyazaki and his Animes and Mangas, check out some of the following URLs:
http://www.nausicaa.net/
http://www.princess-mononoke.com/
http://www.ntv.co.jp/ghibli/
Find out for yourself why the old stigma 'cartoons are for kids' only goes in the US. This will show you how amazing an indepth a 'cartoon' can be.
Topher
Well, if you remember the American release of Akira, they hyped the hell out of it, and because of the piss-poor shitty-ass job of dubbing, (the American voice "actors" made it sound like a Scooby-Doo episode)(IMNSHO), it sucked at the box office. Even Anime fans hated it (of course, they all had a subtitled or japaneese version at home on VHS anyway).
I don't suppose they want to repeat a gamble like that, regardless of Mr. Gaiman's passion.
I might make the round trip to SF to go see it. . . (only 8 hours including the movie)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Some little points I thought I'd share with the rest:
*) The movie came out in Japan 2 years ago.
*) Ashitaka comes from a race known as the 'ainu' (I think it was) who (in real history) died out somewhere between the 5th and 10th centuary or something. Originally, "shogun" used to be short for something that meant something like "army leader and suppresor of the Ainu". (I don't have some of my history books around, so I'm just doing it from memory)
*) "mononoke" means something like a "vengeful ghost/spirit" - doesn't translate very well. "hime" is a name suffix which normally translates as 'princess', though in some periods it can be a bit more like 'lady'.
*) The "wolves" are "mountain dogs" in the original
*) In Japan, firearms were removed from the whole country by the government in the early 17th centuary. They were originally introduced by Portugease missionaries, who offered them to local lords in exchange for the lord and people going christian.
*) I like this film a lot, though that doesn't mean it'll be like that for everyone.
Having contributed a couple non-techie book reviews, I'm very aware of this issue.
/. so big that it was necessary to exclude stuff to be able to keep up kill the core culture or not? It doesn't seem like it would have to.
A couple of my friends have been talking about whether it would be possible to do a general alt-culture website based on the Slash code, and the consensus has been that, to be worthwhile, it would have to be heavily configurable, with multiple department editors maintaining different areas of interest.
Well...the arrival of the YRO, Apache, and BSD sections have gotten me wondering...could Slashdot broaden that way itself?
At the moment, I suspect that most users don't exclude any subjects--would making
Thank you also for taking the time to visit Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator and asking it to generate three paragraphs in my honor.
Cute.
(Yes, I've had this nick for a few weeks now. Only because my regular one was already taken.)
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Surely you must admit that people who know the language should prefer to see the film in the original language, rather than English.
Your comment that every animated film is dubbed is completely false. You must be under the impression that the images are drawn first and then the voices are recorded. In fact, an animated film is made in the opposite order. First the audio is recorded, and then the images are drawn, frame by frame, to fit the voices exactly. Fitting drawn images to a prerecorded audio track gives much more satisfying results than trying to fit a new audio track to an existing video. That is one reason why some people genuinely prefer to view animated films with the original sound track.
Finally, as has already been remarked above, Japanese voice actors do voice acting for a profession, while American movie stars are not accustomed to the role. In Japan the actors spend a lifetime honing their skills at voice acting. In America voice acting is treated as an afterthought. It should come as no surprise that the Japanese actors deliver much more pleasing performances.
Quite a few of the comments posted so far seem to qualify their praise for MONONOKE HIME by adding that it's a good *animated* film, that for a movie made up of cartoon characters, MN is an impressive piece of work. Personally, I think that does not do the show justice at all, or for that matter anime. Just as there are B-grade material around in the traditional genre of the film, there are porn and inane violent flicks in anime (and manga). Why should one choose to highlight the poorer quality of some anime as representative of that art-form in general, hence at the same time, implicitly assert the superiority of the traditional medium (with real live actors etc)? While this may be a comforting way of asserting some control in one's life (by claiming that there are some [foreign] things that one can safely designate as "bad" and avoid at all costs-- a notion that Disney would love considering the potential competition anime could present to it), it hardly makes any sense. Certainly there are differences between anime and the traditional film, and the question of superiority (if one assumes such a question is worth asking at all) is necessarily a subjective one. I can think of at least one way by which anime allows for greater creativity-- scenes of the other-worldly or quasi-supernatural work much better with anime than with traditional movies even with the use of computers nowadays. In MN, The depictions of the forest that housed the Great Spirits were nothing short of magical. I doubt if any real-world construction of such beauty could provide the same effect as Miyazaki's animation. MN is a very good film, period. It deserves to be treated as a film, the same way one might look at other movies on the listing. I do agree with some others though, that MN isn't Miyazaki's greatest work but I'll just leave this for now.