Hayao Miyazaki
La Città Incantata

I'm concluding this mini cycle of reviews (I'm off to vacation), with what is, perhaps, the best animated film of all time, and I hope the die-hard Disney fans won't hold it against me (I adore Disney's golden era, period 1937-1942) or the lovers of a dirtier, more direct Oriental cinema (any reference to works like "Grave of the Fireflies", which is beautiful, is not purely coincidental).

Let's clear up any doubts right away; to the most canonical question, "What are your three favorite Miyazaki films?", the undersigned responds, without a shadow of a doubt, 1. My Neighbor Totoro (1988); 2. Spirited Away (2001); 3. Castle in the Sky (1986). And Howl fourth, voilà. So why do you say that what you consider second is better than what you consider first? Simple, Totoro is beautiful, but upon closer inspection, it is less multifaceted and complex than "Spirited Away," which, in the long run, is more poetic but is childlike. I love it as a personal memory—it was my first Miyazaki—but the 2001 film, Golden Bear at Berlin (the first given to an animated film, tied with "Bloody Sunday" by Peter Greengrass, hm...) and Oscar for Best Animated Film is a whole different matter.

In fact, "Spirited Away" has nothing that Miyazaki hadn't already expressed in his other films; in fact, all the themes covered had been addressed elsewhere. Nature as a living and human subject to be respected always and in any case; childhood as something to be preserved, almost infinitely; a classical pictorialism that includes the use of digital, but in small doses; the eternal discourse on flight; the most fervent antimilitarism, in short, everything has already been said. Yet, all these themes, in this film, seem to be sublimated, taken to the maximum of their potential, so much so that no other film of his after this will have the same kind of authorial and imaginative force. Not even Howl, which is a good "sequel," but the mountain of characters that pile up here, the mountain of colorful and complex sets (the topography of the enchanted city is a real visual architectural exercise), and the mountain of narrative cues are the zenith of Miyazaki's thought, and of Studio Ghibli more generally.

Challenging the most common logic of physics and narrative, inventing a world where the lines between good and evil are constantly blurred, Miyazaki recomposes in his own way the mad and brilliant world of "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, adapting it to Japanese culture (which he makes heavy use of in the symbols here, although in the subsequent Howl he will be even more precise, and perhaps less understandable to a Western audience) and builds scenes of great evocative impact, some similar to horror (see the initial transformation of the protagonist's parents into huge pigs), and all, really all, the characters remain in memory even after just one viewing, from the ambiguous prince Haku to the disturbing witch Yubaba (who dominates the enchanted city), from the man with the mustaches and numerous legs in the boiler room to the protagonist Chihiro, a true champion of growth (from adolescence to adulthood to save her own parents). Some passages are even magnificent, see the entire long central sequence of the Filthy River God. Others are peaks of emotion that are rarely reached in an animated film (the final journey on the water-submerged railway).

An animation colossus that gives no respite, in rhythm and visual aspects, flavored with the splendid soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi. I think it's a film that everyone knows; I found it appropriate to say a few words. Happy holidays to all.