Review #345: 'Princess Mononoke' (1997)

When his village is attacked by a giant boar demon, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) kills it, and receives a cursed arm in return. Upon learning that the curse will torture and ultimately kill him, he sets out West in search of a cure from the forest spirit, only to get caught up in an ongoing battle between Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver) of Iron Town who is slowly destroying the forest with her iron mining, and San (Claire Danes), a human who has been raised by wolves. Ashitaka sees no way of their being a clear victor, and sets out to arrange some kind of truce, but wandering monk Jigo (Billy Bob Thornton) is employing Eboshi to help him get the head of the forest spirit.

Studio Ghibli was long established in its native Japan when this film was released in 1997, with critical hits such as the deeply upsetting masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies (1988), and commercially successful action and children's films like My Neighbor Totoro (1988 - in my opinion, one of the best children's films ever made) and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). But Princess Mononoke was the film that was meant to break the global, and more importantly, the U.S. market. It was a critical smash, but was only released in selected theatres and Ghibli only remained a favourite with Japanophiles and art-lovers. It wasn't until Spirited Away (2001) won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature four years later that people started to sit up and take notice.

As brilliant as Spirited Away is, Mononoke is just as good, if not better. Director Hayao Miyazaki had been planning the project for years, and had a multi-layered epic complete with fantasy, history and war in mind. What came out of it is indeed epic both in scale and in ambition, with a deep and detailed mythology to boot. The film is also surprisingly violent for it's PG rating - heads are lopped off with arrows, and a samurai's arms are both ripped off and pinned to a tree. But it needs to be, as Miyazaki is showing us the brutality of nature and the darkness of mankind, highlighting a wider message about man's terrible treatment of all things natural.

But the film is not just a poem to tree-huggers, it's also a quite exceptional action film, with some exquisite animation (a blend of hand-drawings and computer effects). The attack by the wolves on the workers of Iron Town is as good as anything I've seen in live-action fantasy, as men tumble off the cliff to their deaths and Eboshi lets loose with her rifle. And, going back to the animation, there's some inspired moments here, namely in the strange tree-spirits that are both cute and quite unnerving, and the night-walker, a kind of giant jellyfish in the shape of a man. Ghibli have made outstanding films with a mixture of genres, but Mononoke remains my personal favourite of Miyazaki's efforts, and can be enjoyed by children, a mainstream audience, art-house lovers, and stoners, and there's not many films out there capable of that.


Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
Voices: Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, Gillian Anderson
Country: Japan

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie