PRINCESS MONONOKE: Probably the last, best animated film of the Twentieth Century

The Japanese animated film PRINCESS MONONOKE is an archetype unto itself. And a good one it is. It is so very good that I doubt if anything like in the animated genre was ever created on the same level of excellence in the 20th century. Not that good ones have not been produced in the 21st century, but in 1997 this was a pearl of magnificence, and it is still one greatest myths set in cinema, yea animated cinema, of all time. It is not an accident that this was the biggest box-office hit of all time in Japan.

Don't be fooled by the fact that this is an animated film which you may automatically think makes it a children's movie; this is most definitely an adult film which some children may understand and enjoy, but which tells a story for old and perhaps young alike.

The mythic story is set in rural Japan at the beginning of the Iron Age. Wounded by a dying monster which was once a boar-god, a very brave young warrior (Ash*taka) defends his village from annihilation by the beast, which curses him and in its death throes promises that all humans will be destroyed. The warrior is infected by a disease from his wounds, and so to protect the world and to seek healing for himself, he embarks on a quest to a forest spirit. He is (reluctantly) helped by a courageous human girl (San/Princess Mononoke) who lives with the wolf-gods (Moro and others) and is hindered by another human female (Lady Eboshi), a dauntlessly brave woman who is possessed by a belief that technology will triumph over divinity and the forces of nature so that she and her people will become the richest people on earth.

The writer-director Hayao Miyazaki created his own mythological context, for the most part, which severely questions the exploitation of the natural order of ecology by human beings

An underlying premise is locked within this myth: did the Japanese people, whose history has always been deeply spiritual and attuned to the glory of nature, sell out that cultural heritage when they first imitated, then duplicated, and now in many ways have dominated the culture of technology that was shared with them, especially after World War II, by the technological pioneers of the West? Have the Sony and the Mitsubishi and the Toyota and the Panasonic products that have flooded the rivers of international commerce in the last few years also washed away at the foundations of the centuries-old core of the flower-petal beautiful balanced and peaceful Japanese soul? If that is what Miyazaki is trying to tell us within his myth, it is one of the most artfully packaged social polemics ever set into story form.

Ah, but the story itself is a jewel. The animated artwork is on a level to mentor that of Disney artists, the music is extremely well suited to the story, the plot itself is very complex but very coherent none-the-less---and blessedly, unique! If you haven't seen the movie before, the odds are 10-to-1 you will find its twists and turns unpredictable enough to keep you fully alert.

One caution here: this is, as we say, an adult story. That doesn't mean you are going to see naked geisha girls being chased around by naked samurai warriors. But it does mean you are going to see some heads and arms lopped off and a lot of blood and some very gruesome monsters. So don't expect Snow White or even Mulan. The battle scenes, though cartoonish, are more on the level of Saving Private Ryan in some places. And yet the violence does not really jeopardize the realism or the balance or the adventure of the story.

It was a joy, in the English version, to hear the voices of Gillian Anderson (Moro the Wolf), Billy Bob Thornton (Jigo) and others dub in the English to these characters. They did a fine job catching the Japanese rhythm and the flow of the dialogue and because of that, the level of humor is high and there is never a dull moment.

Animation has come a long way in the last few years. To see a serious adult story set within an adventurous myth with the overtone of a social critique, and to have it all work together is a very fine thing indeed. If your tastes run in these directions, and you are wondering what some of the finest cinematic minds in Japan are doing these days, take a look at PRINCESS MONONOKE. For my money, it's a five-star keeper.


*****