My Neighbor Totoro
March 12, 2006
Forgive me for repeating myself, I know I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again to anyone who brings up the subject, but on the occasion of “Howl’s Moving Castle” and the beloved “My Neighbor Totoro” debuting on DVD, Hayao Miyazaki is my hero. Not only is he my hero, and the hero to millions of animation fans who believe his list of films represents perhaps the greatest run of masterpieces in the history of animation, but he may also be one of the ten greatest Japanese directors of all time. Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Suzuki, Imamura, and Miyazaki, that is my list, and of the six, only Miyazaki’s films are universal; they defy language barriers and appease everyone from the very young to the very old, with their lovable characters, social realist messages, and unbelievably beautiful colors. To involve yourself with a Miyazaki film, be it the goofy espionage of “The Castle of Cagliostro”, to the soaring majesty of “Spirited Away”, the ecological dramatics of “Princess Mononoke”, or the delightful witchcraft of “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, is to lose yourself in a universe of slightly altered human figures and altogether fantastical creatures, mixing it up in a palate of colors and worldly emotions the likes of which would rival any impressionist master or Russian novelist. One need only to pick up the new edition of “My Neighbor Totoro”, his 1988 children’s film that has been hard to find with its Japanese language track since the original release, to experience the kinds of scenic wonders, visual delights, and emotional complexities an animated film about little girls and fuzzy animals can behold, and to finally accept that in the hands of the skilled Miyazaki, anything is possible, and it always looks spectacular.
“My Neighbor Totoro” is a film for children and about children, from a man drawing on his own childhood for inspiration on how to please that basic child’s mentality in everybody. It’s about new places, new adventures, new friends, and new challenges, where the anxiety and sadness over the illness of a parent is channeled into imagination, and released through the playful attentions of forest spirits and dust bunnies. What is at once scary and real in Miyazaki’s films is also a harbinger of the unreal, where the pressures put upon two pre-adolescent sisters in the face of their mother’s sickness finds an outlet in the woods behind their new house, where a giant, cuddly, bear-like forest spirit, a “Totoro” as the youngest girl says, takes the girls on wild flights of fancy involving a flying spinning top, a magical cat bus, and a rapidly ascending forest of magic Camphor trees. To watch the girls have their fun with the Totoro creatures, which not surprisingly are invisible to adults, is to see childhood adventure and imagination at it’s purest, an escape from reality through the basic need for blissful escapist pleasure, shared with a close sibling and unbeknownst to the rest of the universe. Who in their right mind doesn’t wish for a second that they were four-year-old Mei, tripping into a gigantic tree trunk and landing on the soft belly of the sleeping Totoro, or 11-year-old Satsuki, in perhaps her last year of eligibility to view the child-only spirits, traveling through the countryside, secure in the confines of the leaping 14-legged cat bus, whose eyes light the way through the forest, over the hills, and tiptoeing down power lines. Back in reality, the girls have a mother in the hospital that they dearly miss (Miyazaki’s mother was also confined to a hospital bed with TB when he was a boy), and a burdened father who does his best to calm their fears, but it’s the forest spirits, the giant Totoro, his two smaller companions, and the elusive dust bunnies that greets the sisters at their new house, that eases the pain, and provides a much needed diversion from the eventualities of growing up, and missing a parent. Inevitably, the greatest gift the film has to offer adults is that, in remembrance, we all had a Totoro under the bed, or in the trees, at one point in our lives, and the comfort of that memory is priceless.
“My Neighbor Totoro” premiered in Japan as part of a double bill with fellow Studio Ghibli masterwork “Grave of the Fireflies”, in arguably the greatest animation double feature of all time, but where ‘Grave’ is a stark, and utterly devastating parable of wartime Japan, ‘Totoro’, with its blue skies and bright green forests, is a relative landscape of pleasing colors and happy images. As I was re-watching the film, for the first time in its original Japanese language track, I was struck by how much Miyazaki emulates the classic Disney films, especially “Bambi”, with his detailed forest backgrounds, unflinching realities (mothers and death/sickness), and creature comforts. I could make the case that, like “Bambi”, Satsuki is no longer a child by the end of the film for having lived through her mother’s illness, or that, like in the greatest of Ozu’s Japanese silent comedies (specifically “I Was Born, But…”), the protagonists don’t relinquish the rights to their childhood, but gain the necessary knowledge to further appreciate what is left of it. The comparisons would be apt, but Miyazaki’s work doesn’t need to be held up against the classics of animation, or the forbearers of Japanese cinema, because in its wisdom and wonderful characters, it stands alone as a perfect portrait of the young, the magical, and that plush furtive soil we all remember, between childhood daydreams, and adulthood responsibility.
“My Neighbor Totoro” has been released by Disney, the
American distributor of Studio Ghibli’s films, with an alternate English
language track, original trailers, and feature length storyboards, which
are strictly for animation buffs. Everyone
else, just enjoy this one-of-a-kind picture.
by Adam Suraf