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My Neighbour Totoro DVD (U) |
Dir: Hayao Miyazaki, 1988, Japan, Japanese with subtitles, 86 mins
Voice Cast: Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi
Two young girls, Satsuke and her younger sister Mei, move with their father into a ramshackle house in the country to be closer to their hospitalized mother. The girls discover that the nearby forest is inhabited by magical creatures called Totoros and their adventures begin.
If Spirited Away (2001) was just too weird (and Disney too Americanised) for your tastes then this enchanting film may be just enough to restore your faith in Anime. Made towards the beginning of Hayao Miyazaki’s career as a director this features many of the themes that recur in his later films; strong independent girl leads, an underlying ecological message and a simple but effective storyline that keeps you engaged with the characters.
Suspension of belief is easy in Miyazaki’s benign netherworld for even the most hardened viewer. Characterisation is so three dimensional and the switch between reality, dreams and the supernatural occurs with so little sense of drama that we fully accept the blurring of existential boundaries. One minute we are drinking in the sumptuously realistic detail of the family’s heavily laden pick-up, the next we easily believe that the children are scampering after dust bunnies and trolls in their new house.
Landscapes are rendered in stunning, luminous clarity and Miyazaki occasionally pauses the action to allow us time to view the super-reality of his animated world; a glimpse of an empty bottle in the depths of a gently flowing stream or to watch the wind making patterns on a field of rice.
There is no ‘cast of thousands’ in My Neighbour Totoro, just a family and their neighbours, but we are totally convinced that there is a world beyond that which we are allowed to see. We see glimpses outside the neighbourhood, the children’s mother in the far off hospital and their father in his office, but we know that if the camera spun on its axis or raced to the distance, Miyazaki would effortlessly preserve the integrity of his imagined world.
It is difficult to argue that a film which features trolls, cat-buses and magic acorns extols the virtues of ‘less is more’, but this movie is the proof. With good, restrained storytelling, limited cast and beautifully constructed scenes this is a small movie with a big heart.
And kids love it. Junior reviewers Ronan (10) and Brendan (8) thought it was ‘brilliant’.
Extras:
Trailers for a selection of Studio Ghibli films (all of which you will want to see). |
