THE FILMS OF STUDIO GHIBLI: POM POKO

Let's be honest here:  Pom Poko is one of the weirder selections in the Studio Ghibli portfolio.  It doesn't get nearly as much love in Ghibli fan circles as some of their higher profile releases like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke do, but there's a lot about this less celebrated film worth recommending.  The action centers around a group of raccoons (okay, anime nerds, tanuki) whose natural living space is being infringed upon by ongoing human settlements.  So, basically, we've got an environmentally-themed kid's movie about urban sprawl.

Doesn't sound very strange to you?  What if I told you that these particular raccoons are shape-shifters, able to take on any form that they wish?  Furthermore, the male raccoons use their distinctly masculine, um, "pouch" in a likewise magical manner, inflating it at will or having it appear as a rug, etc.  One would be hard-pressed to point out an example of an animated product from the West containing such frank, anatomical depictions.  In Pom Poko, there's little hoopla associated with the choice to portray the characters this way; they're male, so, of course, they're packin' heat.  The movie doesn't get bogged down by this, so we won't either...

The far more interesting thing about Pom Poko is how it handles the raccoon population's attempts to address their shared problem.  They start in a fairly common place, trading violence for the violence being wrought against them and their homes.  Soon enough, though, the group becomes divided in opinion about how to proceed, many feeling uncomfortable about the dire consequences that their actions have had on individual humans.  In a sense, what director Isao Takahata's story is showing us is the birth of a politically-charged, activist movement, one that just happens to be made up of raccoons.

It's interesting to see such adult concepts as group process and consensus being tested out in a children's entertainment, but maybe that says more about the utterly banal films being released for kids by Hollywood nowadays.  If anything, Pom Poko respects the intelligence of children; sure, it's plenty silly at times, offering up more than one raccoon party involving folk songs about roadkill, but there's also more than a few losses stacked up by the end of the film, making the resolution of the film nothing if not bittersweet. 

Pom Poko is an odd duck of a film, no doubt.  Though, if you've somehow neglected seeing it, this final week of the NW Film Center's Studio Ghibli retrospective offers the perfect opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past.  As well as a chance to ponder the fate of raccoons, I suppose.

Pom Poko screens as a part of the retrospective series, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli.  More info about the Studio Ghibli series here.
It plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Friday, May 25th at 7pm and Sunday, May 27th at 2pm.


Remember to find and "like" us on our Facebook page.
Subscribe to the blog's feed here. 

THE FILMS OF STUDIO GHIBLI: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO

Okay, I'll admit it: I'd never seen My Neighbor Totoro or the majority of the output from the geniuses at Studio Ghibli until very recently.  That's part of the pleasure of writing for the newsroom site (as well as covering NWFC content on the blog); since a good chunk of what's programmed at the NW Film Center is repertory-based, I get the chance to wax philosophical about old favorites as well as other works of note that may have passed me by somewhere down the line.

So, yeah, many of you have probably seen the film more than a few times with your kids, grandchildren or friends.  But, since it's new to me, I'm going to willfully ignore everyone else's superior knowledge of all things Totoro and just let this play out as if we're all looking at a new, unbelievably great anime.  (The author takes a deep calming breath).  Okay, here we go...

Two young girls, Satsuki and Mei, move into a large, dusty house with their father, preparing the home for when their convalescing mother is well enough to rejoin the family.  The girls waste no time, rushing to explore their new surroundings and, what do you know, they happens upon otherworldly creatures, unlocking a world teeming with magical possibilities.

I know what you're thinking; these are fairly standard tropes within both children's stories and coming of age flicks.  My Neighbor Totoro, however, is no common children's entertainment.  It's a wondrous work of beauty that takes familiar elements and blends them into a highly accessible, ageless masterpiece that transcends cultural and generational barriers.

The animated feature hails from 1988, long before Disney turned Hayao Miyazaki into a household name in the West.  With Totoro, Miyazaki draws more than a little from the atmospherics (and some of the imagery) of Lewis Carroll's most famous story.  It's impossible to watch Mei travel through the arched thicket without being reminded of Alice's trip through the rabbit hole.

Miyazaki would later dip again into Carroll's iconic tale when making Spirited Away (2001), but, between the Cheshire cat-like bus and the white "rabbit" (or whatever it is) spirit that Mei bounds after through a field of tall grass, Totoro's borrowing of these recognizable features feels more in line with the sense of discovery forwarded in Carroll's writing than it does in that later film.

Discovery is what drives this film.  And Mei and her older sister findings aren't limited to just Totoro and his spirit companions.  As the story progresses, the girls deal with some fairly advanced emotional material: worries about the future, their mother, each other.  It brings to mind what Slavoj Žižek says in Sophie Fiennes' The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema about how to read the films of Alfred Hitchcock.  Žižek observes that if one peels away the supernatural or fantastical event, it's far easier to see what is really happening in the story.

Read this way, Totoro reveals itself as a film about the anxiety felt when first entering into the knowledge of harsh universal truths, such as coming to terms with the vulnerability of loved ones and, by extension, one's own mortality.  It's pretty heavy content for a kids film but, in Miyazaki's masterful hands, it's deftly balanced with a boundless sense of wonder that lifts the work into the stratosphere, where hope can fly in the face of despair. 

My Neighbor Totoro screens as a part of the retrospective series, Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli.  More info about the Studio Ghibli series here.
It plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Saturday, May 5th at 4pm and Sunday, May 6th at 7pm.  
The film will be presented in the original Japanese w/ English subtitles. 


Remember to find and "like" us on our Facebook page.
Subscribe to the blog's feed here.