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Rating: The sun chained and dragged by a walking mountain, the moon tied with invisible threads by white spiders, gently moved by a feathered colossus, and the guardian who caresses those threads as if they were harp strings, inside his gigantic hump. In Mune, the history and mythology of the earth is rewritten with fantasy and sweet balance, or rather of a fantastic planet where the essential elements of our reality are maintained, but explained in a completely new way. And this is one of the best aspects of the film, its construction of a vivid and fresh mythology, but one that has as its starting point – and arrival – the normal existence of life and the infinite cycle of day and night. Just like the classic one, which tried to provide answers to man’s fundamental, and most difficult to satisfy, questions.
For this reason, Mune immediately gives the impression of being a film less light than its peers, an essential film, that sets a tight-knit discourse, firmly planted on philosophically important concepts. This is not a gratuitous adventure; it is a fantastic suggestion anchored on a concept as simple as unavoidable: day cannot exist without night, and vice versa. Within it, the nuances are numerous and all with ample margins for interpretation: as the sun gives life, so does the moon, to creatures different from the diurnal ones, who feed on its magic dust. Day and night are equally fertile and complement each other, yet they can never touch. In between, a wonderful creature, made of wax, which needs both warmth and evening coolness to stay alive. Like a keystone that completes the arch of existence and its opposites.
But not all themes proposed are "cosmological." There are different, even antithetical, coming-of-age paths. There’s the pure-hearted one, who doesn’t feel up to the task imposed on him and seems to give up. Then there’s one who, due to too much swagger, makes banal mistakes out of superficiality. And then there are several other co-stars, each interesting and differently characterized. There’s the coward, who chose the path of the abyss rather than face the evil serpents; there’s the gigantic titan, as great in good as in evil, once corrupted. And there’s the wax maiden, as fragile as she is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to restore the cycle of days, unavoidable for all creatures and especially for those fragile like her. In the end, no one is truly evil (and in this, it reminds me of Mononoke), simply in the cosmological system everyone has different roles. Then there are those who get corrupted. In the Ghibli film, corruption was caused by pain, but here it is phantom serpents, alien figures, that seem to represent simply the principle of non-life. The void that seeks to desertify being.
Returning to the characters, unlike many animated films (and films in general), the protagonist's and his companions' growth journey is particularly calibrated and gradual, reasoned with dreamlike journeys, confrontations and clashes with rivals, understanding the world and its metaphysics thanks to wise elders. And an almost catabasis, a descent into infernal depths to recover the dying sun.
Graphically, the superior beauty of this work is given by its being in computer graphics, yet still often maintaining the tones and shades that seem like those of pastels. And the design of characters, creatures, colossi, is equally fresh and varied, though not lacking in evident sources of inspiration: Miyazaki for the spiders, of course, and something Disney-like for the two little demons, perhaps Hercules. But their handling is decidedly intelligent, charming, and never redundant. They too are important links in the cosmological chain. The use of fully pastel sequences is not so surprising but proves useful and functional to distinguish the ontological planes of the action.
A wonderful journey, one that does not pale beside the greatest masterpieces of animated cinema. Unfortunately, not all critics sufficiently appreciated it and even if positively received, I don't think it even managed to cover production costs.
7.5/10
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