by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
If Princess Mononoke ever gets an American remake, it will be a western.
I say this not to make some kind of point about The Seven Samurai evolving into The Magnificent Seven (and I'm sure there are other examples) but to say that Princess Mononoke is very much a frontier movie. I don't imagine that 15th century Japan was all that much like 18th century America, but (at least in this retelling) they both appear to be frontier societies.
The first thing you need in a frontier society is the technological progress that allows you to get to the frontier in the first place. In America, you have things like the rifle and the Conestoga wagon. To colonize Australia, you need a working chronometer and a knowledge of how Vitamin C wards off scurvy. To tackle the Japanese forests, you need to know how to make iron and guns. The iron in Princess Mononoke is made at the fortress of Irontown, which serves as the prerequisite Western town. (It's even in the western part of Japan.)
But like all Western towns, Irontown is menaced by outside forces. Unlike Western towns, Irontown is not menaced by outlaws or ranchers or Indians, but by... er... well.. gods. Irontown needs iron ore and wood to make iron, and the forest has plenty of both. Unfortunately, the forest also has wolf gods and boar gods and the "spirit of the forest", none of whom like the idea of people cutting down trees and mining.
In the middle of all this madness walks one lone, silent, honorable man carrying a terrible curse. But unlike the guilt carried by gunfighters like The Outlaw Josey Wales or Shane or Bill Munny from Unforgiven, this curse has a little more of a physical manifestation. Prince Ashitaka (Billy Crudup) carries a horrible, spreading infection, the legacy of a battle with a boar god. The boar god was wounded by an iron bullet fired from an Irontown gun. Instead of dying, the boar god was consumed by nightmarish snakelike demons, which caused Ashitaka's wound. Ashitaka travels to both Irontown and the forest to discover the cause of the enmity between humans and the gods.
Irontown is a busy place. It's an island fortress, ruled by Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver, with the haughty accent down pat), where the fires of the forges burn all night. In an American film, the capitalist owner of the steel mill would be a villain, and a nasty one too. In contrast, Lady Eboshi is a real sweetheart, looking after her employees in a manner that is both egalitarian and matriarchal. She even hires women -- straight from the brothels -- and people with disabilities. (The latter employees are lepers, building rifles in the ultimate sheltered workshop, but hey, it's the 15th century for crying out loud, give her some credit.) It's a tribute to Lady Eboshi that the character who steals the show is Toki (Jada Pinkett Smith), an outspoken, liberated ex-brothel girl.
We get to the forest before we get to Irontown, though, and it's an alien world. It's ruled by the "spirit of the forest", which takes on all different forms. The deputy rulers of this forest are Moro the wolf god (Gillian Anderson) and her three kids -- two wolf, one human. The human is San, the Princess Mononoke (the spunky Claire Danes), the ultimate Woman Who Runs With The Wolves and a supercool ninja to boot. (There's also a bunch of annoying little ghostly forest elves.) The forest gods are rightfully unhappy about their trees being cut down left, right and center, and they're getting ready for a final battle with the humans.
Ashitaka walks right into this sorry mess like Gary Cooper, with Crudup's voice supplying the steely will and moral courage of a true Western hero. But unlike a good-guy bad-guy Western, Ashitaka isn't on one side or the other. Instead, he's looking at the situation with "eyes unclouded by hate", seeking an elusive harmony between the forest and the city. Ashitaka sees the goodness inherent in both the forest and the city and seeks to preserve both the lives of the villagers and the mystery of the forest.
Observant readers (that's you, right?) will notice that so far in this review, I haven't mentioned that Princess Mononoke is an animated film. Nor have I mentioned the name of the director (Hayao Miyazaki) or the word "anime". I've done this intentionally. Princess Mononoke is first and foremost a good story with some decent characters, and if that's what you're looking for, don't let the "anime" tag scare you. People who know more about Japanese animation than I do (that is to say, anyone who knows anything about Japanese animation) already know about this movie and can tell you much more about it than you probably want to know. Go see Princess Mononoke -- not just for the stunning animation, but for what it says about the frontier of all our hearts.
-- Curtis Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
Movie Reviews: http://www.hsbr.org/buzz/reviewer/reviews/bdreviews.html http://www.epinions.com/user-curtisedmonds
"Oh, if life were like the movies, I'd never be blue." -- Alan Jackson, "Here In The Real World"
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