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Rating: What makes an animated film great?
The Western school confirms that the equation "excellent technical achievement" + "entertaining/touching content" almost always results in great critical and public success. And hefty earnings. And happy children who dive into the merchandising.
The Eastern school, on the other hand, has always proposed more than one approach: some use technical achievement as their battle horse, perhaps setting new standards for years to come. And then there are those who, along with good technical realization, offer a product of remarkable depth, capable of making the viewer reflect. There is no pretension to break all the box offices; indeed, most productions do not even leave Japan. Studio Ghibli, headed by the supreme Japanese Walt Disney, embraces precisely this latter philosophy.
Mononoke-hime takes us to an imaginary time where men and ancient Gods from Japanese culture coexist and fight. The protagonist of the story, young Ashitaka, is faced with his destiny: infected by a god turned demon, he gains part of the latter's strength but knows the plague that struck him will consume him to death. With karma far from exhilarating, the young man sets out on a journey to find a cure. A journey that will lead him to encounter some of the most common metaphors of the dark and good sides of the human soul. A humanity that, on one hand, exploits and bends nature to its will, believing it has the right to plunder the world and the duty to demonstrate its supremacy over any other form of life. Even over the Gods. And on the other, a humanity that fights alongside the Gods and nature itself in a battle that has gone on forever but that they are losing. Ashitaka will naturally find himself caught in the clash, and the meeting with San will prove crucial for the evolution of the conflict.
Halfway between an ecological fairy tale and a war film with a fantasy backdrop, Mononoke-hime leaves aside some of Miyazaki's typical themes (above all, childhood and flight) and focuses attention on man's ambition, nature's vulnerability, and the precariousness of life's balance. The criticism of industry, then, has a not too veiled Tolkienian touch.
The characters are astonishingly characterized for an animated film, the personalities are complex and not easily categorized until the end of the film; the plot itself is slightly more complex than usual, leaving no doubt that this time the target is decidedly more mature. Such choices (in clear countertrend with the studio's habits) are not surprising when we discover that Mononoke-hime almost risked being Miyazaki's last film. The production was extremely exhausting, and his obsessive attention to detail led him to create almost half of the film's animations by himself, by hand. Exhausted, the master was, however, rewarded by the incredible success in his home country (it's likely few Japanese have not seen this film) and the attention it managed to attract abroad.
The master's entire filmography is studded with masterpieces, and it can be said that since the creation of Ghibli, there has never been a single false note. This incredible film undoubtedly represents the peak of his career, and if you ask me, of animation in general. Sure, technically there is always something better, but this animated film has something that all the art and talent of Disney and Pixar still have not offered: this film has a soul, a personality, and above all, something to say.
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