Blog Talkback: Miyazaki Week: Why "Princess Mononoke" is Not an Environmentalist Fable

I think you're spot on, Ed. I've seen criticism of PM along the same lines, and like you I've wondered if I saw a different version of the movie as the critics.

I do have a little bit of sympathy for the people making the complaint, though. PM was the first Miyazaki movie I'd ever seen, and I'd never even heard of him at the time; I'd only heard that this movie was made by Japan's "Disney equivalent." About fifteen minutes in I started to get the "this is going to turn into some enviro-preachy nightmare like 'Fern Gully', isn't it?" vibe, and began to cringe in my seat. And then we hit Iron Town and the lepers, and I thought "Wow, this is a movie that sees all the sides of the issue."

I suspect people have been so beaten about the head by the Fern Gullys of the world into thinking that any artistic representation of nature is intended to be Good, and any representation of industry is supposed to be Bad, that they don't see the very equivocal, even-handed, and perceptive take that PM has on Nature and our relationship with it.
 
I'd say its kind of insulting to environmentalism to say Princess Mononoke is not environmentalist. It supports industry while also saying it's probably not too good of an idea to screw with nature precisely because nature is so scary. Seems environmentalist to me, simply smarter than most environmentalist cartoons.
 
I'm happy to see someone else acknowledge that the cast didnt seem to develop in any way across the narrative. This was my first Miyazaki movie and that factor is why I don't quite love him as much as most do. I don't need a happy ending and a moral but the cast existed in this weird state of flux- if you didn't like them when you met them, 99% chance you wouldn't warm to them elsewhere in the film.
 
The thing is, it's not environmentalist in the same way that, say, Nausicaa is, where man is reaping considerable cost for wrecking the Earth and the poison jungle has actually been healing the world all along. Nausicca's great task is to appease the forces of nature so that her valley is not destroyed. Mononoke is certainly not like Ferngully, where nature is basically pure and man is a wicked aggressor. I won't get off-topic by repeating my criticisms of James Cameron's Avatar.

The key is that Mononoke strikes a balance, whereas when people level the "environmentalist" charge as a criticism it's almost always intended to be an accusation of an anti-human message. Hell, even Wall-E got some of that, which was and is a tremendous load of garbage.

Sadly, I think there's also a tendency on the part of some to lazily assume or decide that every Miyazaki movie has the exact same message about mankind and its relationship to nature. Ed's post exposes that falsehood, which I think is a tremendously useful service.
 
It may see both sides of the issue, but it's still a fairly heavy handed view of looking at things. I don't think both sides are really delineated in as complex manner as people say. Maybe Americans weaned on Hollywood entertainment might find it sophisticated, but the issues thrown down in PM have all the feather touch of a sledgehammer.

My second problem with PM is that when it comes down to it, it's just too obsessed with working out its thematic issues to really work as entertainment. It views more like an essay film than an actual film. It's not really "juicy".

Lastly, despite the violence in this film, you can pretty much tell Miyazaki has no taste for violence overall. That makes his action scenes lack any sort of real excitement, gorgeously rendered as they may be.



I actually think that's sort of the point if you look at it thematically. Look how stubborn people are on rabroad when it comes to their thematic and political opinions. That's Miyazaki's pessimism at work there.
 
I should have made it more clear that I was using "environmentalist" throughout the essay as described as a pejorative term in the first paragraph. This is mostly the view of environmentalism adopted by its opponents, but there is a small minority of the environmental movement that seems entirely dedicated to ensuring that no matter what we are doing, we are supposed to feel bad about it because it's an offense against Nature. This minority is pretty much the lunatic fringe, but they also tend to be the loudest and the ones that get covered by the entertainment programming that America calls the "news" these days.

I don't hold much truck with the folks who would use environmentalist in this pejorative sense, mostly because I think that's unhealthy in the opposite extreme. It seems that those who sling the term as an insult view any position other than "Man dominates Nature, end of story" to be too crunchy granola, which I think is bogus and unhelpful and provably wrong, but in the more limited confines of Princess Mononoke, uh...they're STILL wrong. :p



This threw me for a loop when I saw the movie for the first time as well, but over time, I've come to think of it as one of the movie's strengths rather than one of its weaknesses. I also don't necessarily think that you're supposed to really intensely like or dislike anybody in the movie, just as there are no clear good guys or bad guys in it. Everybody has their own short-sighted agenda, everybody has aspects that make them likable (or at least admirable -- I don't think I "like" Lady Eboshi much at all, and I don't think you can really "like" the big spirit of the forest), and they'd all do the exact same things all over again even knowing what they know. Depressingly accurate to a whole lot of human experience, as can be seen in the reactions to any number of current events.


I can't argue a lot with the rest of your comments, since any disputes I have over them really come down to degrees and how much I'm willing to hold them against the movie as a whole. However, I do disagree with this statement. I think the opening scene where Ashitaka has to take down the Boar God is absolutely thrilling and one of my favorite animated action scenes, and I remember the knife fight between San and Lady Eboshi being pretty exciting as well. I didn't think the big climactic battle at the end worked as well as it could, but that was partially because the movie was beginning to topple under its own weight at that point.

Princess Mononoke is one of those movies that I manage to get more out of every time I watch it. I suspect there's going to be a mass Miyazaki fest in the household sometime soon as a result of Miyazaki Week.
 
It just comes down to personal taste. I think his action scenes have always lacked a sort of nihilistic glee at portraying action. The best action films-- and scenes--are always slightly chaotic. I always feel that while Miyazaki is too good to make any scene BORING, he's always "flinching" when people are hitting each other. They're always too controlled, too calculated to not become TOO violent. And I think that's a limitation of his. Even the decapitations and dismemberments in PM are rendered in a sort of teeth-gnashingly reluctant way.

Seen in total isolation, Ed, I would agree with you that they are well done. But compared to other films--and even other anime--his action scenes come up feeling neutered to me, and the only advantage they have is Ghibli's larger budgets and higher frame rates over other anime.

For all the comments in the critical community about how Miyazaki is "different" from Pixar or Disney, the truth is his plot driven, action oriented films resemble Disney and Pixar more than most think. And this is no more evident than in how he choreographs his action scenes--(many of them would not look out of place in a Pixar film, excepting the blood.) But in Princess Mononoke--where I feel a harsher physical approach is needed--it is nowhere near where it should be. It should be closer to Kurosawa than Disney, but it isn't.
 
Thanks for clarifying. You should probably edit something along this line into the article, since otherwise it looks like you're sinking down the level of the people who would use "environmentalist" as a pejorative against a movie like Mononoke.



No clear bad guys, yes, but Ashitaka's pretty clearly set up to be a good guy. His only notable flaws seem to either be innocent personality issues nobody would really consider "bad" or are otherwise the fault of his curse. I definitely thought he was the most boring thing about the movie and is basically the whole reason I rank Mononoke quite lower than most of the other Miyazaki movies.



I guess this is where we're just getting into personal preferences. Saying Mononoke's action scenes are like a Pixar film isn't an insult in my mind because I consider The Incredibles one of the great action movies. Most of my favorite action films are of the hyper-choreographed Yuen Wo Ping style (i.e. Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Kill Bill) which do get more frantic than Miyazaki's stuff but have a similar aesthetic strength to them.
 
It might be an interesting "cinema studies" type project to actually take a close look at the way Miyazaki handles action scenes (and violence in general) to see if this kind of thing really is borne of "flinching" or whether it is a deliberate aesthetic choice on his part motivated by thematic concerns and interests. I have no dog in this fight, but I'm reminded of a famous scene in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain:

Paul Newman has to kill an East German agent. The problem is that it is actually very hard to kill another human being. I don't mean "morally," I mean physically, if you don't cheat by having a gun or a tank or a bunker-buster. So there's this grim and harrowing five-minute sequence in which Newman, armed with nothing but his bare hands, a few knives, and some blunt objects, tries to beat and stab another human being to death. It is not fluid and it is not exciting and it is not action-packed, and Tom Cruise wouldn't be caught dead in it, but the style was part of the point: This is hard, ugly, nasty, cringe-making stuff.

Similarly, I find myself wondering, why should a man who rather famously has pacifistic leanings choose to make action scenes of "nihilistic glee"? And why should action scenes be "better" for being nihilistic, if they are part of a story that (as is usually the case with Miyazaki) is rather at pains to not make fighting attractive?
 
Regarding Ashitaka: I actually don't think he's boring at all. In fact, he's one of Miyazaki's most fascinating heroes because he, much like the movie, is interested in both sides of the conflict and doesn't want anyone to die. He's a fundamentally good person, and that has real value, I think (I also love Billy Crudup's performance in the English dub, so that might have something to do with it).

As far as Miyazaki's action goes, I've always found it thrilling, and Mononoke is no exception. The curious thing is that there's a lot more ground-based combat, whereas in the other films the combat was divided into ground-based and flight-based action. Here, there's no flying, and thus no aerial action.
 
Interesting article. I admit I think it did carry somewhat of an environmental message, but with a striking balance. Then again, now that I think about it (and having read this article), this may be less of a "respect nature or mankind will die" as it is more "Man vs. Nature" - just a simple antagonistic nature between the two without a heavy Aesop. The beauty of the film is that we're seeing both sides, the pros and cons.

San and the wolves represent the side of nature, Lady Eboshi the side of humanity's progression. That's why we have the main character Ashikata who portrays as a middle man of both. I see him as the balance, the one who can see both sides and with it, work between the two. He doesn't have a lot going for his character, but as the leading character, he certainly serves as an appropriate catalyst for the two.

Seems like I need to rewatch this movie and rethink some of my priorities.
 
I'm not really sure what you mean by rendering the dismemberments in a "reluctant" way. The best I can come up with is that Miyazaki doesn't dwell on them, but he's also not taking any joy from them and that seems to be by design.

I'd also say that the action is not really the point of the movie. It may be perfectly true to criticize the swordplay of a Kurosawa movie for being sub-standard, but doing so also kind of misses the point I think. Those action sequences are important to the movie and they are often enjoyable in their own way, but I definitely don't get the kind of kinetic thrill out of the swordplay in The Seven Samurai that I get out of something like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

All that being said, I think there is something to the idea of looking at the use of violence in Miyazaki's films. Maybe for Miyazaki Week 2: Miyazaki Harder ;).



Since you pointed it out, I can see how easily it can be read that way, so I'll see what I can edit in about that.



While I agree with you intellectually, I do think Ashitaka suffers from the same kind of blandness as a lot of animated action heroes. He definitely has a unique viewpoint and, as I said, may be the only character in the whole movie capable of learning anything from his experiences and changing his viewpoint, but if he were a live-action actor, I'd have to describe his performance as "wooden," especially when compared to the kind of sly intelligence played close to the vest I see in Lady Eboshi or the rascally scoundrel of Jigo.
 
It's easier when you're focused on your goal or a role. Ashitaka was thrown into a feud of 3 sides while battling death during exile, while Eboshi and Jigo were in their element playing out their roles. A jack-of-all-trades role, so really IMO making more dynamic in either sides would ruin the perspective view.
 
That's the problem. Miyazaki's violence IS too attractive.

I feel that by keeping his violence "clean", he's basically neutering the harshness of his themes. Violence in the context of PM's story isn't supposed to be clean and "nice" and "polished." It should be harsh and awkward and physically brutal. I don't get that feeling in PM. He covers up a lot of the brutality with nimble feet and "magical ooze".

I compared him to Kurosawa because like Miyazaki, Kurosawa was a pacifist and a humanist as well. But Kurosawa knew very well that when two angry forces collide, the results are brutal, messy and awkward. His figures stumble all over the place grappling with each other, fall down constantly, and are physically hampered by real wounds. Kurosawa knows that to show violence as it should be, he has to step back and accept that violence is inherently nihilistic. Miyazaki's characters jump and fly all over the place, and can get their limbs cut off and still move on. I think that "magical physics" stuff works in his gentle fantasies, but not in PM where he's on his political soapbox. If you're going to make an essay film (which Princess Mononoke is) you had better not pull any punches. Miyazaki does in Mononoke. He just can't help but censor himself, and he does his film a disservice by doing this.

See, there is no such thing as a pacifist action film, because action scenes are inevitably SUPPOSED TO BE exciting. If, as a director, you bring the pacifist attitude into your violence, then you're basically contradicting yourself.
 
Well, I think PM has got one of the most starkly realistic portrayals of nature in any animated movie I've ever seen. The animals hate humanity and would be perfectly content to wipe them off the planet. They don't want to live in harmony with man, they want to wipe them out. Nature it's self, or, in this case, the forest spirit, simply doesn't care about either side and while man has the power to kill it, doing so means disaster so in the end, it's a force you just have to endure, beholden to none, caring about no one and totally indomitable.

If that spells out 'environmentalism' then meh, I guess it is, but it's not playing by the usual playbook, that's for sure.
 
Taking war seriously does call for a serious portrayal of violence, this is true. However, Mononoke already involves a substantial number of casualties and very serious injury, from animals being blown up to Eboshi having her arm bitten off by a disembodied wolf head. It's the most violent Miyazaki film by a significant margin. I'm not sure what would be served by having it play like a more realistic Ninja Scroll or something. Yeah, it would have perfect integrity if it were good & grisly I suppose, but then Ghibli waves goodbye to the mainstream appeal that it's courted with most of its films. I'm honestly not sure what is supposed to be meant by PM's "political soapbox", but it isn't as though it has quite the same point as Grave of the Fireflies or Space Runway Ideon (war is hell, and we're damn well going to show it to you whether you're prepared to handle it or not).

There's also an apparent casual connection being made between "exciting" action and brutal action that I don't necessarily acknowledge. Gundam Seed indulged in some pretty graphic death scenes during its series run to drive home the barbarism of certain atrocities, but I would not necessarily call it a more realistic series than, say, Mobile Suit Gundam on those grounds alone.
 
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