Studio Ghibli: A Retrospective, Part Twelve - Princess Mononoke

Part of me wanting to write these Studio Ghibli retrospective articles was that they would present an opportunity to discuss some of my all-time favourite and most-beloved films. I stand by that Miyazaki is the greatest living filmmaker. And in 1997, he unleashed what can only be described as his magnum opus. Princess Mononoke. I'm getting shivers just writing the name of the film. It's that good.

So I've written extensively before about how Princess Mononoke tracked my whole experience of being a cinephile. I first saw the film when I was 13 or 14 and it left a huge impression on me. In fact, it was one of my earliest articles for this blog and the last one I wrote before going on a mini (read three years) hiatus. Then a couple of months ago, I declared it as my all time favourite film. So really, a lot has been leading up to writing about Princess Mononoke. Strap in because there's a lot to talk about ...

The production of Princess Mononoke can be traced all the way back to the 1970s, in which Miyazaki first sketched a princess wandering through the woods with a beast. The germ of the idea began to take shape when Miyazaki began sketching out the film in 1993 and began to produce the storyboards. Ultimately, this version of Princess Mononoke was very different to what was eventually released in 1997. After a long and exhausting war, a samurai gets lost in the forest but is helped by a giant wildcat - a mononoke. The mononoke saves the samurai but in exchange for his daughter's hand in marriage. Whilst some elements of this story were brought forward to the final product, such a Iron Town and an early battle scene, there is a distinct Beauty & The Beast meets My Neighbour Totoro vibe to it. A number of reasons led Miyazaki to abandon this version of the story - 1) It was too similar to My Neighbour Totoro in tone and style and 2) Miyazaki's world view was becoming much darker. I discussed in the Porco Rosso article how the Yugoslavia War helped to inform the tone of that film and similarly helped to shape Mononoke. Speaking to Empire Magazine, Miyazaki said that "after [the war], we couldn't go back and make a film like Kiki's Delivery Service. It felt like children were being born to this world without being blessed. How can we pretend to them that we're happy?" (1). Deciding that this vision was not in keeping with the current mood of the time, Miyazaki abaondoned the project. If you're at all interested, Viz Media released Miyazaki's outlines and drawings as a gorgeous storybook edition a couple of years ago, retaining his original pictures, entitled Princess Mononoke: The First Story.

To get his creative juices flowing again to get past his writer's block, Miyazaki agreed to do a first for the studio - design and animate a music video. On Your Mark is an under-discussed part of the Ghibli canon but it's quite an important one. It's fairly difficult to find but if you know where to look (any good anime streaming site should have it) you'll be track it down and it's well worth your time. The video was produced to accompany the then popular Japanese rock duo Chage & Aska (having sold 31 million albums and singles in Japan) and is basically a short film. The video is non-linear and tells the story of two policemen who infiltrate a religious cult and discover a winged girl, akin to an angel. She is quickly whisked away to a lab, so the duo decide to hatch a plan to rescue and release the girl. The song itself is ok but the accompanying video is nothing short of a masterpiece of its form. In four minutes, Miyazaki crams in an emotionally engaging story line with some great sci-fi world building (think Blade Runner meets Akira meets Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind). The video was widely praised for its brilliant animation and is actually an understated key turning point in how Ghibli formed its worlds - this is the first product they produced that made use of CGI. While still mostly hand-drawn, On Your Mark uses CGI to extend backgrounds and create a sense of motion not possible in 2D animation without incredibly time consuming, and costly, labour. The techniques learned here would be used directly in Princess Mononoke and pretty much all future Miyazaki productions (until the back-to-basics Ponyo). In any case, if you can hunt the video for On Your Mark down, it is well worth it. It's about as perfect a short film as you can hope for. With his writer's block sorted, Miyazaki was ready to embark on the journey to creating the most financially successful film ever released in Japan at the time.

The original concept for Princess Mononoke took a drastically different tone and narrative route

On Your Mark is an underrated and often forgotten piece of Ghibli history

As Princess Mononoke began to take shape it soon became clear that this was the single most ambitious project the studio had ever taken on. With a massive ballooning budget, Princess Mononoke produced a staggering 144,000 individual cels that make up its 130 minutes running time, with Miyazaki personally correcting or re-drawing 80,000 or them. But it was more than just the massive budget and huge time consuming process of animating it. Princess Mononoke was quickly morphing into the darkest and most challenging story Miyazaki had ever tackled. Compared to the director's previous works, the more serious and adult tone of Princess Mononoke was a direct reaction to the atrocities of the Yugoslavian War, as mentioned earlier. While initially unsure if children should see the film, Miyazaki eventually came round to the idea that is was important for them to see this one. While Totoro and Kiki dealt in large part of themes of growing up, Princess Mononoke is much grander in scale with its concerns - the environment, tradition vs. progress, life etc. These elements have been present in Miyazaki's previous films but are fully explored at the forefront of the text in Princess Mononoke. Yet it never feels weighty or self-important - it just feels like an ancient tale you might have heard a long time ago.

Princess Mononoke doesn't spend a long time getting us sucked into its violent and dark world, set in feudal Japan. While on patrol around his village, Prince Ashitaka must defend his homestead from a furious rampaging boar-god covered in an off-putting and sickly corrupting mess of tentacles and goo. And it is absolutely thrilling. The perfect way to open a film. This disgusting mess soon envelops Ashitaka's arm, leaving behind a visible dark mark that is slowly creeping up his body. After defeating the beast and speaking to the local soothsayer, Ashitaka's prospects look grim. The only clue to how the beast came into being and where it came from comes in the form a bullet lodged in its side, which is traceable back to an iron town making a name for itself far to the west. The young prince takes it on himself to leave the village and find answers as to why the boar became so enraged in the first place and perhaps find a cure to his curse. "To see with eyes unclouded", the ancient soothsayer says. And already we're in the realms of iconic scenes. Ashitaka cutting his hair in front of the village elders, a Japanese way of saying "I am dead to you" is a culturally powerful and beautiful send off as our hero begins his quest. And that's the first major point I want to make about why I love this film - the culturl specificities. This is a story so intrinsically Japanese in the way it channels tradition, history, spirituality and culture.

Under the cover of darkness, Ashitaka begins his journey to the West as we the audience take in the gorgeously painted vistas and the soaring Joe Hisaishi musical score (the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal by-the-by). However, we soon find that this world is the not usual Miyazaki fare. For the world of Princess Mononoke is cruel, violent and ruthless. Ashitaka's first encounter finds him in a middle of raid on a small village, as blood-thirsty bandits move in to pillage the citizens in a scene which easily could have been lifted from a Lone Wolf and Cub film. The scene is complete with Ashitaka, armed with an increased strength gifted by his curse, severing heads and arms off the bandits. Definitely not the stuff of the gentle worlds of Totoro and Kiki. The wide-spread violence of Princess Mononoke is a definite reflection of the hardening world view of Miyazaki in the face of contemporary genocides and massacres. The hero in a Miyazaki film is now a murderer and works as part of the film's general moral ambiguity towards it characters. None of the characters are painted as villains, just confused people trying to do their best to protect whatever little ground they have found in life. This can easily be seen in Jigo, the travelling monk, who befriends Ashitaka following an incident where the young warrior shined a gold piece in the face of a stunned shop owner in the next village over. He is a weary reflection of the traditions of the old Japan reflected in this character which turns into a vindictiveness as the film goes on. I would even lobby the same ambiguity to Ashitaka. I would argue that in the beginning of the film his actions are purely driven by a need to lift the curse, until he throws himself into the centre of the conflict between Lady Eboshi and the forest (more on that later) and realises he is part of something bigger.

Incidentally, I love the scene where the two share rice soup, setting up camp in the middle of a deserted village. There's a real ominous and other worldly aura to the scene which sets up nicely what is to happen next.

As Ashitaka's journey continues, he soon discovers some distressed men from a local iron mining town (which might be where the bullet came from), who have suffered terrible wounds in a recent encounter with the local wolf pack and the mysterious Princess Mononoke. With his interest peaked by the iron town and his need to help the men, Ashitaka begins to lead them through the a forest inhabited by the kodamas, cute woodland spirits that seem to terrify at least one of the close-minded iron town workers. The kodamas help to guide the group through the forest, until they come to a clearing off the bank of a river. Here Ashitaka spies the infamous wolf pack and their adopted human daughter, Princess Mononoke, who we later learn is called San. San serves as the crux of the whole inner conflict of the film. Discovered by the giant wolf Moro and her cubs as an abandoned baby, San was raised as a wolf (not dissimilar to Mowgli) and as such has lost touch with her human side. We are first introduced to San sucking the blood out of an injured Moro. The blood smeared over her face being a key indicator of her ferality and how far she has distanced herself from her own kind. It is probably one of the most iconic introductions to a character in the history of animation. San is a wonderful character, who learns to reconnect with her human side across the course of the film and one of the all-time great female protagonists of animation, instantly iconic and powerful.

The oddly quite cute kodomas became instantly iconic characters 

San instantly became one of the most iconic characters in animation

Following this encounter, Ashitaka eventually makes it the iron town. The townsfolk seem to friendly enough, with a strong female presence working the forges in a time when this was not expected of them. Ashitaka soon begins to form a picture of how this Iron Town took advantage of its location (an island in the middle of a lake surrounded by the forest) and forged its fortune. However, we learns from a local village that they recently burned a significant part of the forest and drove out the local boar god, shooting it with their newly acquired guns from China. Putting two and two together, Ashitaka correctly concludes that the boar that ravaged his village and cursed him was sent into a fit of blind rage following him being gravely wounded by these guns. Ashitaka storms to meet the leader of the town, Lady Eboshi.

So we come to Lady Eboshi, ruler of the town and one of the most nuanced and interesting "antagonists" in film, or even fiction in general. You see, like Ashitaka and San, Lady Eboshi is not a bad person. She is ambitious, clever and fearsome, in a time when women were expected to be none of these things. She forged an incredibly rich and successful mining town with some fairly progressive values that gives work to some of the most underprivileged in feudal Japan. Low-lives, former prostitutes, leapers etc. - basically, people viewed as human trash in built-up towns and settlements. Lady Eboshi takes them, gives them a job and a purpose. She puts the women to working the bellows, stoking the fires to keep Iron Town running. Yet, for her many strong values, Lady Eboshi is also a destructive force, with little to no regard for the ecological and spiritual impact on the landscape around her. While she believes in the existence of spirits, her developing plan of effectively killing and decapitating the local Forest God (the ultimate way of showing there is no force that can stop her) is a clear sign that she fears neither traditional values such as state and God. Indeed, in his first encounter with Lady Eboshi, Ashitaka almost strikes the leader down in a fit of fury brought on by his curse. However, until she tries to behead the Forest God, I don't think there's a vindictiveness to her. She is merely trying to forge the best possible lives for the community that surrounds her and no shogunate army or forest spirit is going to stop her.

Lady Eboshi - one of the all time great characters of fiction

The first act reaches its climax as San infiltrates Iron Town with the intention of killing Lady Eboshi for all her indiscretions against the forest. This is really where the film's central themes begin to blossom. It becomes clear that Princess Mononoke is a story dealing with environmentalism and spirituality. Indeed, the central conflict of the film, advancement (Iron Town) and tradition (the Forest), seem to reckon with these very concepts, each threatening to upend the other. On the one hand, Lady Eboshi's Iron Town is a very progressive society, forged through hard work and unending human desire to live, but this comes at the cost of the natural world and further political machinations. Indeed, Lady Eboshi's expansionist policies have brought her into direct conflict with the local lords of the region, leading a small-scale war. On the other hand, the characters of the Forest represent tradition and it is important that this be kept alive. Most people view Princess Mononoke, myself included, as a sneaky remake of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. While I am very fond of Nausicaa, I do think it paints the conflict as too black-and-white. The silly humans just need to learn their lesson that you don't mess around with nature. The ultimate disaster at the end of Princess Mononoke comes from humans trying to play God but I would also argue that the wolves and various other animals spirits of the Forest don't help themselves in being unwilling to work with the humans to achieve ultimate balance. Thus, Ashitaka represents a force willing to jump in and find some kind of middle ground, interrupting and stopping the fight between San and Lady Eboshi. Ashitaka, seeing what hatred from both sides can bring, now seeks to find a middle ground - where Iron Town and the Forest, advancement and tradition, reality and spirituality, can find some kind of balance.

Anyway, following the conflict in Iron Town, Ashitaka is brought to the centre of the Forest by San, Moro (San's foster mother) and the other wolves following a grave injury incurred in the conflict and he essentially dies. However, the God of the Forest arrives to breathe life back into the young warrior in a truly powerful and beautiful scene. The Forest God is just a perfect piece of design work. We see in the film two versions of this creature. One is a strange and giant globular mass and another is the iconic deer like creature for when he needs to interact in the material world. The character never has any sound-effects associated with it and has a very limited amount of facial animation. Something that I only picked up on a second viewing was the subtle coding of the aura of the God. With every step he takes new flowers and plant life bloom but as soon as he step away, this new life quickly wilts and dies. The Forest Spirit can just as easily take life as he can give it. Again, it is that central conflict between two worlds that defines the narrative and thematic arc of Princess Mononoke.

The Forest God is a perfect piece of design, at once peaceful, yet also other-worldy and mildly off-putting

From here, we go from classic scene to classic scene. San nursing Ashitaka back to full health by chewing his food for him is a beautiful scene and works to bring the two of them together (with them eventually falling in love). Jigo also gets re-introduced into the film and is revealed to be an agent of the government, seeking to kill the Forest God and return its head to the Emperor of Japan (believing it gifts immortality). Jigo is revealed to be a much more sinister character than they way he is set up earlier in the film and, I would argue, is closet the film gets to a real antagonist. Essentially, Lady Eboshi has been dogged on to kill the Forest God, the ultimate representative of the natural world in the film, by Jigo who has taken advantage of her dominating personality.Their encounter with the angry boar tribe, seeking retribution for the death of their leader in the opening of the film, is thrilling and kind of morbid, especially when the new leader (the blind Okkoto) gets in involved. This leads to their traumatic assault on Iron Town as they run straight into a trap killing most of the army and is probably one of most harrowing scenes Miyazaki ever committed to film. Then there's the blooming relationship between Ashitaka and San. I love the scene where Moro berates Ashitaka for thinking he can connect with San's human side. Also, just this bit of animation of Moro laughing is fantastic.

If I have one slight criticism of Princess Mononoke (and it is very slight), I do think the second act gets a little formless but it does all pay off because the scenes are fantastic and it leads into one of the best third acts I think of in a film. There's plenty to discuss, and loads of scenes I wish I could go into from this section, but this article is long enough now and I wanted to give a broad overview of my favourite aspects of the film.

The film then begins to reach its dramatic conclusion. Following the destruction of the boar clan, San attempts to lead Okkoto back to the Forest God (being a few of the only survivors) in the hope that the Forest God can heal the boar god's wounds. However, following a nasty trick by Jigo and his hunters, Okkoto soon succumbs to same rage that consumed his predecessor. The Forest God eventually appears and gifts Okkoto with a peaceful death. However, Lady Eboshi and Jigo (in hiding in the central grove) use this as the opportunity to kill the Forest God.

So, Lady Eboshi has blown the head of the Forest God. And soon things take a really bad turn. The whole forest begins to decay as the kodamas begin to die along with the rest of the forest, their eerie bodies floating down like a snowflake. The colour palette changes to a gross brown/purple as it appears as if the whole world is dying and a black amophorous mass begins to sprout from the body of the dead Forest God.  It soon becomes clear that this mass is looking for its head. Our characters scramble to try and avoid the now expanding mass, desperately trying to escape this bizarre phenomena. Even crazier, the severed head of Moro (on the brink of death in the previous scene) seemingly comes back to life and bites off Lady Eboshi's arm (echoing a sentiment the character says earlier in the film "cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite"). With Hisaishi's strange off-kilter soundtrack and the over-worldy animation, this is just a truly unforgettable sequence. The forest has been destroyed and all hope seems to be lost. Ashitaka ultimately concludes that the only way to stop this thing is to return the head to the now formless mass spreading across the forest. Ashitaka and San work to reach the highest summit of the landscape and declare that they are returning the head. And this is the really beautiful element. It takes two broken people from both sides of the conflict coming together to resolve the crisis. And the music cue that swells as Ashitaka and San hold the head up just gives me the biggest goosebumps. This is honestly one of my favourite conclusions to any film. The head is returned and a huge rumbling rips across the landscape, the scene fading to white.

The Forest begins to die in the face of the loss of the Forest God

Balance, ultimately, becomes the key. Progress needs to go hand-in-hand with preservation with a mutual respect toward each other. San and Ashitaka awake to find that the destroyed countryside has been revitalised. The grass and the flowers re-grow in front of our eyes as greenery returns to the landscape. And Joe Hisaishi's gorgeous piano motif kicks and the goosebumps just run up my spine. San and Ashitaka, whilst forming an unbreakable bond, admit that it would be difficult for them to co-exist together. San commits to looking after the forest and Ashitaka will help the remainders of Iron Town to re-grow. Lady Eboshi, sitting with what is left with the community she forged in the green ruins of Iron Town, promises to carry out a more sustainable settlement, one that keeps in mind the needs of the forest. And as the final shot, we return to the forest as one of the kodamas returns. Life must continue. Live. Fade to black.

Live.

Princess Mononoke's release in Japan in 1997 was unprecendated. The film received rapturous applause, critical praise and audience adoration. It quickly became the most financially successful film of all time in Japan, until the release of James Cameron's Titanic a few months later. Princess Mononoke eventually won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture, being the first animated film to do so. The film was also submitted by Japan to the US Academy Awards as their selection for Best Foreign Language Film, but alas was not picked up.

If you haven't gather yet, I think Princess Mononoke is a phenomenal film. Every single frame is a gorgeous work of art. The characters are all brilliant, wonderfully fleshed out and doesn't shy away from presenting them as morally ambiguous. It is such a rich film that demands to be watched several times. It's the only way to take in the full beauty and majesty of Miyazaki's accomplishment. More for animation, it is proof that the art form can be more then funny animals and singing princesses (not that there's anything wrong with this, of course). For many, it is a special film - one that launched hundreds of thousands of anime fans and film lovers worldwide. Princess Mononoke is just as sophisticated as some of the works of the all time great films. It is a giant to be reckoned with and is almost a perfect film.

And then there's the dub, which is well worth exploring. Princess Mononoke has the distinction of being the first Ghibli film to get a wide release English dub with a very impressive cast. Bought up by the now infamous Harvey Weinstein as part of Disney's subsidiary company Miramax (now defunct), the now disgraced producer met with Miyazaki to discuss a wide North American release of the film. Weinstein demanded several cuts be made to the film, reportedly to reduce some of the more violent scenes. Following the meeting, Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki sent Weinstein a katana blade in the post with a note attached to it - "No Cuts". Thus, a new film legend was born and Princess Mononoke was released on a very limited run in 1999, to a small box-office return.

Adapting a script from a foreign language to English is hard. It's more than just translating word for word what the original script says. Things that make sense in the context of the Japanese language can be lost when translating to English. Then it's keeping the original author's intention whilst trying to fit that into enough syllables to match the pre-rendered character mouth movements. It's a tricky job, definitely, but Mononoke's English script and dub largely pulls this off perfectly, with a dub cast that almost matches the original. The masterstroke here though was hiring fantasy author Neil Gaiman to adapt the script. Gaiman, as an author, has a real love of exploring ancient myths and legends and reinterpreting them in a modern setting (see American Gods or his wonderful collaboration with Terry Pratchett Good Omens, where, similar to Princess Mononoke just Westernised, figures of Biblical literature interact in the human world). Princess Mononoke draws upon numerous sources of Japanese lore to create a stylised version of its past where myths about gods and spirits interact in a vaguely familiar historical setting. I almost view is as similar to Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, who imagined his own pre-history fantasy world to explain how we got to where we are now. So, Gaiman is the absolute perfect writer to adapt a script - an author with a proven track record of understanding the importance of myths and legends. He had the unenviable job of finding English words that matched the intention of the original Japanese - the shishigami became Forest Spirits, as an example. The rationale for this being there simply is no word in English that can convey the original meaning of shishigami, so Forest Spirit it is.

Anyway, you probably want to here more about my thoughts on the English cast as opposed to rambling about the intricacies of translating from Japanese to English. Overall, this is an excellent dub - truly excellent. Billy Crudup is pitch perfect as Ashitaka. Clare Danes is brilliant and feral as San. Minnie Driver is pitch perfect as Lady Eboshi, understanding the moral complexity of the character. Billy Bob Thornton channels his conferential persona into a quiet and fairly subtle performance as Jigo.

An interesting change in the dub is how they handle Moro. In Japan, it is quite normal for a male to a voice a female character - just one of them culturally specific things. So when San's mother Moro speaks with a male voice in the Japanese dub, it's quite appropriate and not surprising. To an English viewer though, this can be somewhat perplexing. Quite wisely in my opinion, they decided to use a female voice for Moro in the English dub, employing Gillian Anderson in a brilliant take on the character. You could go on about how this isn't in keeping with the original author's intent but remember - dubs are adapting the script and performances from Japanese to English to suit the English-speaking audience who is going to see it and sometimes that does mean losing some of the original culturally specific details. There are several example of this in Princess Mononoke - Jigo complains that a bowl of rice tastes like "water", which is a cutting remark in Japanese but doesn't have the same bite in English - thus the rice tastes like "donkey piss" in the dub. Another interesting cultural change is Kaya, briefly seen in the opening of the film. In the dub she is Ashitaka's sister however in the original dub she is Ashitaka's bride-to-be (not blood related!). See, Kaya calls Ashitaka anisama which can mean brother but can also mean follower, simply by the fact that they live in the same village. To avoid this potential minefield, Gaiman changes it so Kaya is simply just Ashitaka's sister. Outside of Mononoke, a good example I like to use is in Kiki's Delivery Service. When Kiki first goes to the bakery and enjoys a warm drink with Asano, the Japanese script is clearly kohi - coffee. Now I don't know how Japan views this but it's somewhat inappropriate to give a child coffee in the West. Thus, the dub changes it to hot chocolate, which is a bit more age appropriate. Even the English subtitles on the Japanese version keep this as hot chocolate! Most of the time, two scripts are made for anime dubs - one, more accurate one to go along with the Japanese version and another which is just a standard set to match what the English dialogue is. Remember that English dub scripts have to morph the meaning to match the movement of the pre-rendered character mouth movements, so a more accurate English translation is presented to go along with the Japanese presentation. So even retaining "hot chocolate" on this set is an interesting little detail in key cultural differences. If you learn anything from this it's that dubs are adaptations not direct translations.

References

(1) "Miyazaki on Miyazaki: The Animation Genius On His Movies" https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/hayao-miyazaki/ (accessed 17/03/2018)