Princess Mononoke - Miyazaki does it again!

Surprise world! Welcome to Japan's best kept secret - well, at least at the time, that is. Back in 1999 when Princess Mononoke was released in America, nobody had heard of Hayao Miyazaki, and cartoons were just for kids. Anime was either demon tactical rape movies or stupid kids fair like Pokemon and its kin. And then Disney, mostly at the prompting of John Lassiter and the guys over at Pixar, took a huge gamble, drafted some big name stars to do the voice work and released Princess Mononoke in a limited arthouse run with little to no advertising.

Not surprisingly, the film didn’t make back it's money.

It did, however attract all kinds of critical attention - folks like Roger Ebert proclaimed it as one of the best films of the year. And that huge mountain of praise? The film earns every ounce of it.

Set in Japan during the Muromachi Period (1333-1568) Princess Mononoke takes place just before the dawning of the modern era. The story follows the journey of the last Emishi prince, Ashitaka, who was inflicted with a deadly curse saving his village from a wild boar god. Seeking a cure that will save his life, Ashitaka sets out from his home to the forests of the west only to find a battle between Lady Eboshi and the citizens of Irontown, and the creatures living in the surrounding forest led by the brave Princess Mononoke. Can Ashitaka forge a peace between the two before it's too late?

And now I run into a problem. What do I say about this film that more eloquent critics haven’t said before? It's definitely Miyazaki's most mature and ambitious film so far. This thing plays more like a Akira Kurosawa samurai film thrown into a blender with all kinds of Japanese legends and a healthy dose of fantasy elements. It's certainly no Totoro or Cagliostro, that’s for sure.

The story is extremely complex, requiring a lot of attention on the part of the viewer (the cultural context is important to the film), but underneath it's very typical Miyazaki story about man and the environment. In a way it's like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - strong environmental themes, sympathetic characters on both sides of the fence, a strong female lead, and ordinary people who are neither purely evil nor purely good - they're just doing what they have to do to get by. Even the character that is designated the "bad guy" has redeeming features - Lady Eboshi is exploiting the forest at the expense of the animal life, but doing it to carve out a place to live for lepers and former prostitutes. The film doesnt end with the vanquising of evil, but in reconciliation and understanding.

Although this movie is not Miyazki's best film ever (that honor belongs to Lupin and the Castle of Cagliostro), this movie is still a helluva good flick on many levels.

THE DVD -
The release is a downright fantastic looking print - anamorphic and progressive scan, in 1.85:1 ratio. To be blunt, the image is nearly perfect. The colors are vivid and bright, and the textures are stunning. The audio contains the original Japanese soundtrack, an English dub, a French dub, English subtitles and English dubtitles (the hard of hearing close captioning).

The voice acting is, as far as dubs go, quite good. Considering the talent expended, that's not surprising. Neil Gaiman did an exceptional job of translating a difficult subject filled with all kinds of cultural idioms and mythology, making acceptable to the American viewer - but still maintaining the spirit of the original.

THE EXTRAS -
Perhaps the only weak spot on this disc is the extras. The five-minute "featurette" is little more than a vapid fluff piece, showing only a few seconds of Miyazaki at work and instead showing too much of the American voice actors going on about how wonderful Miyazaki is. A theatrical trailer for the domestic release is also included. Disney also provided an alternate angle on the R1 disc for the opening credits - either English or Kanji, depending on the setup.

What's even worse is that the Japanese R2 release utterly blows the domestic version away. It includes over a dozen trailers from Japan, the US and Europe, trailers for other Ghibli films, more subtitles for more languages that you can shake a stick at. There's a storyboard to film comparison as a separate disc - basically the film again with an angle option to view the storyboards - and dozens of documentaries in a language I cant understand. None of this made it to the American release.

Although considering that Disney wasn’t even going to release the movie with its original Japanese soundtrack until the fans rebelled and threatened to storm the castle, we should be grateful for what we got.

THE MPAA RATING -
Unlike previous Studio Ghibli titles, this is a violent film and scary film. While it's not gratuitous or exceptionally bloody, its definitely not for young kids either. Give them a copy of Totoro and save this one for after bedtime.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
Stunning artistic achievement doesn't even begin to describe this film. This should be a mandatory DVD that is handed out with every new player sold.