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My Neighbor Totoro
Dec. 28th, 2008 10:36 pmMiyazaki Hayao is a master of the animated film. Perhaps one of my favorites of his films is My Neighbor Totoro, an 1988 film that features no violence, no mustachioed twirling villian; it features a father taking care of his two girls in a large old farmhouse in a rural village (rural area no longer) in 1958 and visiting his wife who is ill with an undisclosed disease. This movie, along with others, was a huge inspiration for the American series Avatar: The Last Airbender--most noticably for its character Appa, the six legged white flying buffalo. Totoro features a Cat Bus-a many legged friendly cat-beast that travels the magical Other world, where everything is friendly and child-like.
It is perhaps one of Miyazaki's most optomistic films, and certainly a huge one in its cultural influence in Japan.
Here you can see the Cat Bus. There are a lot of similiarities between the Cat Bus's magical abilities and the double-decker bus in the Harry Potter series that can squeek past narrow objects, part objects, and so forth. I have no idea if Cat Bus was partly the inspiration for the HP bus, but it's possible.
And here's a picture of the main cast (sans Father and Cat Bus)
Totoro and the girls live an in almost-ideal world, if only their mother wasn't sick. Their father, although distracted by his work as a professor, is still something of a kindred spirit to the girls, and understands their world of fantasy, even if he doesn't completely believe it himself. In many ways, he's a spiritual brother to the father in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Of course, Bradbury's story features two boys who are as close as brothers battling against the evil of a carnival visiting their town. Both stories feature the supernatural, the small-town life, an ideal father, an absent mother: if you haven't read Wicked, or watched Totoro, it's worth reading and watching the two stories.
It's unusual for animation or fiction to tell the story of how little girls grow up. Fiction and the movies are rife with the coming of age of boys...in this case, the two girls don't suddenly Grow Up, but they do get their mother back, and the kindly supernatural spirits of the trees and fields help them work with their complex feelings of love, abandonment, desire for family and Mom.
Miyazaki is a master of not only animation, but he's also able to (at least in this point of his career) to treat girls as people with their own stories. It may have been difficult for him to frame this story with two brothers, since boys tend to shout out Adventure and Danger and Adversaries! at every turn. It works with his two girls. They are charming, and their adventures in the woods around their house are reassuring instead of dismaying.
Highly recommended.
It is perhaps one of Miyazaki's most optomistic films, and certainly a huge one in its cultural influence in Japan.
Here you can see the Cat Bus. There are a lot of similiarities between the Cat Bus's magical abilities and the double-decker bus in the Harry Potter series that can squeek past narrow objects, part objects, and so forth. I have no idea if Cat Bus was partly the inspiration for the HP bus, but it's possible. And here's a picture of the main cast (sans Father and Cat Bus)Totoro and the girls live an in almost-ideal world, if only their mother wasn't sick. Their father, although distracted by his work as a professor, is still something of a kindred spirit to the girls, and understands their world of fantasy, even if he doesn't completely believe it himself. In many ways, he's a spiritual brother to the father in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Of course, Bradbury's story features two boys who are as close as brothers battling against the evil of a carnival visiting their town. Both stories feature the supernatural, the small-town life, an ideal father, an absent mother: if you haven't read Wicked, or watched Totoro, it's worth reading and watching the two stories.
It's unusual for animation or fiction to tell the story of how little girls grow up. Fiction and the movies are rife with the coming of age of boys...in this case, the two girls don't suddenly Grow Up, but they do get their mother back, and the kindly supernatural spirits of the trees and fields help them work with their complex feelings of love, abandonment, desire for family and Mom.
Miyazaki is a master of not only animation, but he's also able to (at least in this point of his career) to treat girls as people with their own stories. It may have been difficult for him to frame this story with two brothers, since boys tend to shout out Adventure and Danger and Adversaries! at every turn. It works with his two girls. They are charming, and their adventures in the woods around their house are reassuring instead of dismaying.
Highly recommended.
