Amazon.com Essential Video
This epic, animated 1997 fantasy has already made history as the top-grossing domestic feature ever released in Japan, where its combination of mythic themes, mystical forces, and ravishing visuals tapped deeply into cultural identity and contemporary, ecological anxieties. For international animation and
anime fans,
Princess Mononoke represents an auspicious next step for its revered creator, Hayao Miyazaki (
My Neighbor Totoro,
Kiki's Delivery Service), an acknowledged
anime pioneer, whose painterly style, vivid character design, and stylized approach to storytelling take ambitious, evolutionary steps here.
Set in medieval Japan, Miyazaki's original story envisions a struggle between nature and man. The march of technology, embodied in the dark iron forges of the ambitious Tatara clan, threatens the natural forces explicit in the benevolent Great God of the Forest and the wide-eyed, spectral spirits he protects. When Ashitaka, a young warrior from a remote, and endangered, village clan, kills a ravenous, boar-like monster, he discovers the beast is in fact an infectious "demon god," transformed by human anger. Ashitaka's quest to solve the beast's fatal curse brings him into the midst of human political intrigues as well as the more crucial battle between man and nature.
Miyazaki's convoluted fable is clearly not the stuff of kiddie matinees, nor is the often graphic violence depicted during the battles that ensue. If some younger viewers (or less attentive older ones) will wish for a diagram to sort out the players, Miyazaki's atmospheric world and its lush visual design are reasons enough to watch. For the English-language version, Miramax assembled an impressive vocal cast including Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup (as Ashitaka), Claire Danes (as San), Minnie Driver (as Lady Eboshi), Billy Bob Thornton, and Jada Pinkett Smith. They bring added nuance to a very different kind of magic kingdom. Recommended for ages 12 and older. --Sam Sutherland
Review
The epic film effort of director Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli, Princess Mononoke preserves the director's spirit of humanism while succeeding as a daring action-adventure. Though it contains more violence than his earlier works, it expands on his frequent ecological themes without falling into the black-and-white polarity of good guys versus the bad guys. Humans, animals, and gods have reached a point where they cannot live in harmony, and each faction -- be it lepers, wild boars, or forest spirits -- is warranted some dignity. Based on drawings of ancient forests, the scenery is breathtaking, being the first of Miyazaki's films to utilize computer-generated animation, although the bulk is still, thankfully, drawn by hand. Once the highest grossing film in Japan (before being surpassed by Titanic and later Miyazaki's own Spirited Away), Princess Mononoke was dubbed into English and distributed by Miramax. Fortunately, the raging forest battle does not get a sentimentalized treatment from the U.S. company. Rather than stock Disney-anthropomorphized animals, the forest creatures are represented with a variety of sincerity, compassion, and ferocity. The plight of the animals and forest gods rarely resorts to a simple moral explanation, and the central romance is not written off with a happily ever after. What Princess Mononoke does have is a beautifully rendered mythical forest inhabited by inventive creatures, while evoking as much rousing adventure as a sense of wonder. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
