Princess Mononoke

1997. Movie. 133 min. Fantasy/historical epic. dir Hayao Miyazaki. scr Hayao Miyazaki. mus Joe Hisaishi. des Kazuo Oga, Youji Takeshige, others. -bc

Princess Mononoke is arguably Hayao Miyazaki’s artistic peak, how an animated film might look if directed by Akira Kurosawa. A tale of humans at war with nature in feudal Japan, this riveting adventure is a work of epic animated art, a deeply thought-out treatise on humans’ essential drives and their shifting relationship with the natural world.

In the 14th century, young Prince Ashitaka defends his remote village in northeastern Japan from an attack by a cursed boar god, but is left with a scar on his arm that is destined to grow and possess him. Determined to seek out the cause of the attack, he leaves the village and travels to a mountain region in the west, near the sacred Forest of the Deer God, and finds a fortress housing an ironworks run by Lady Eboshi, who uses ex-prostitutes and lepers to make iron and craft sophisticated new firearms. The weapons are used to fend off the angry denizens of the forest, including the wolf god Moro, the boar god Okkoto, and a tribe of hungry apes, all angry at the stripping of their forest for fuel. Ashitaka learns that the boar god who attacked his village was shot by Eboshi in this forest. Ashitaka encounters a wild human girl named San, the adopted daughter of Moro, and is drawn to her, but is torn between his essential respect for the forest and its creatures and his camaraderie with the people of the ironworks who have befriended him.

Jiko, a monk who’d befriended Ashitaka on his travels, shows up on a mission for the Emperor, who wants the head of the Shishigami, the deer god, which is believed to bestow immortality. A local noble, Lord Asano, sends his army of samurai to attack, eager to plunder the ironworks, and Eboshi’s men fight back with their firearms. The boars get wind of all this and decide on a foolhardy plan to attack the fortress once and for all. As Eboshi makes plans to trap and kill all the boars, leaving only the women and lepers to defend the fort, Lord Asano’s samurai renew their assault. San and the wolves are committed to help the boars, while Ashitaka desperately tries to both save San and get help for the women holding the fort. Eboshi and Jiko, however, are determined to get Shishigami’s head, setting the stage for a confrontation that has disastrous implications for them all.

The film took five years to make and it shows in the detail found in every shot. Every image is breathtaking, from the sweeping landscapes Ashitaka passes on his journey, to the eerie, mystical quiet of the Forest of the Deer God, to the moments spent in the company of San and the wolves on a mountain under a moonlit night, to the epic battle scenes and the drastic transformation of the forest in the final confrontation.

The images reveal the full range of life in the primeval forest, starting with the kodama, cute little forest sprites who help guide Ashitaka to safety at one point and whose presence indicates a forest’s health. There’s a magical quality at work when the deer god’s presence is seen or felt, manifested in the way the light is filtered, in the glow and coloring of the vegetation and water, and the abundance of ancillary wildlife (dragonflies, insects, butterflies, birds, etc.) in many shots.

The main characters are all strong and distinct, with faces and bodies that reflect their inner natures, from the feral San, who runs with the wolves, to the arrogant, regal, and darkly beautiful Eboshi to the short, squat, sneaky monk, to the noble and princely Ashitaka. The animal characters are crafted with great detail as well, most notably the wolf mother, Moro, who is as close to what such a wolf would look like as is possible in the medium of animation. She’s a majestic creation, big and ferocious, all teeth and jaws and glowering eyes and white fur that one can almost feel. The boars are just as expressive, as felt in a scene where they confront the wolves and express anger over their harboring of a human (Ashitaka).

Unlike Miyazaki’s other films, there is a dark quality here, an underlying tone of tragedy, and frequent moments of bloodshed and horror. Large portions of the forest have been stripped of trees and vegetation and are distinctly lacking in the color and life that mark the distant, untouched parts. The skies are overcast in these scenes as well. The human characters are more mature than we see in most Miyazaki films, more jaded, more corrupt, and more determined, eager to resort to violence. Ashitaka is the only real innocent here, but he loses that quality very quickly.

Actress Tokiko Kato performs the voice of Gina on the Japanese track and sings two songs in the film, one in French and an ending song in Japanese that she also wrote. Entitled “Toki ni wa Mukashi no Hanshi wo” (Once in a While, Talk of the Old Days), the end song is performed in a style designed to recall the great French singer, Edith Piaf. Ms. Kato is a famous singer in Japan and an environmental activist. This is the only anime film she has worked on.

Mononoke is not just a beautifully crafted and designed animated historical epic, it’s a work of art that illuminates humankind’s relationship to nature and how it had to change in order for the modern world to emerge. The loss of humankind’s connection to nature is seen as tragic but inevitable. Lady Eboshi is the film’s ostensible villain, yet the film never judges her, but treats her with respect, her motivations and goals made clear for all to see and understand. She doesn’t fear the gods of nature or their many dangerous protectors. She wants to create an egalitarian community where outcasts like lepers and prostitutes can work and create something new and useful, something that betters human society in the long run. She puts humans first and uses technology and ingenuity to break the fearful hold that nature once had on humans. Ultimately, it can be read as an allegory about that moment in time when man wrested his destiny from the gods.

Each character represents a different historical force. Moro and the wolves represent primeval nature, the kind of wild beasts who were once man’s greatest threat. San represents a human living in complete harmony with nature who rejects human civilization. Ashitaka is from a traditional tribal village and has one foot in the natural world and one foot in the human world. He’s a prince of his tribe but he can talk to the animals and read the winds of nature. Jiko, the crafty monk who serves the Emperor, represents the machinations of the organized institutions of religion and politics that manipulate human and natural forces to their own ends. Lady Eboshi represents the driving force of humanity, the impulse to build and create and forge ever stronger societies, and to take nature head-on. Finally, we have the ordinary people, the iron workers of Eboshi’s fortress; Toki, an ex-prostitute and her husband Koroku, who are buffeted about by the whims of the powerful but are smart and sensible enough to make their own choices when they can, who represent the family, the basic unit of civilized society. Toki also represents the spirit of women, the ones who work and persevere and keep society going while the men are at war or off on pointless forays.

It’s a heady tale, filled with grand themes and sweeping movements of historical and natural forces. It gets complicated at times, yet it’s told in such a way that every aspect is made clear and every motivation understood. We are not manipulated but are caught up in the swirl of it, taken to its heart and allowed to feel the movements of every soul in conflict. And despite the film’s moments of horror and bloody violence it’s all told in a way that a child can understand and appreciate. It’s a fairy tale, a myth, a legend, told in all its brutal glory, with all the magnificent artistry at Miyazaki’s command.

The film is full of spectacular action scenes, starting with the opening attack on Ashitaka’s village by the dying boar god and Ashitaka’s battle with it to save his village. Midway there is San’s bold, singlehanded nighttime attack on Eboshi’s fortress, in which she ascends the walls and scampers along the rooftops dodging gunfire and arrows, overcoming the guards as she seeks out Eboshi to kill her. Empowered by the curse of the boar god’s scar, Ashitaka successfully intervenes and stands between San and Eboshi at the crucial moment and keeps them from killing each other, an effort which leaves him badly wounded nonetheless. Finally, there is the three-pronged climax with Eboshi’s battle with the boars, the samurai attack on the fort, and the final eruption of the Shishigami’s power and its drastic transformation of the forest.

A mainstay of Studio Ghibli’s extraordinary design and production team is Michiyo Yasuda, the color designer for Princess Mononoke, several other Miyazaki films from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to Howl’s Moving Castle, and other Ghibli films including Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, and My Neighbors the Yamadas. She has worked steadily with Miyazaki and Isao Takahata since early in their careers.

Mononoke was the highest-grossing release in Japan’s box office history, until the release of Titanic later that year (1997) beat it out. It remained the highest grossing Japanese film in Japan until the success of Miyazaki’s next film, Spirited Away (2001).

Mononoke was the second film (after Kiki) released in an English dub by Disney as part of its license with Studio Ghibli, but the first given a theatrical release in the U.S., although a very limited one (through Disney subsidiary Miramax). Miyazaki attended the premiere of the film at the New York Film Festival in 1999, accompanied by some of the voice actors from the film. The English-language voice performers included such well-known film actors as Claire Danes, Billy Crudup, Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Keith David. Pokémon: The First Movie followed Mononoke into theaters by two weeks, becoming the first Japanese animated movie given a wide release in the U.S. by a major studio (Warner Bros.).

As the Japanese animation industry was switching to digital animation (in which pencil drawings are scanned into computers, which are then used to add color, shading, backgrounds, etc.), Mononoke was created largely by traditional hand-painted cel animation. Some shots, however, were accomplished via CGI (computer-generated imagery) and others received some computer enhancement.

violence This is a violent tale with lots of combat among humans and between humans and the denizens of the forest, the wolves, apes, and boars. Some of the violence may be more gruesome than Miyazaki’s family audience would like, including a couple of shots where Ashitaka fires his arrows at enemy bandits and sends their heads flying off. advisory The dying boar god, covered in thick, slimy brown worms in the opening sequence, may scare some younger children.