Comments on: Movie Review: Ponyo

By: Benjamin Friday

Benjamin Friday — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:54:05 +0000

I had heard he was going to retire after making Howls Moving Castle as well, but then when I heard he was making Ponyo I just naturally assumed he was deciding to press on. One of my housemates out here in LA is a Korean animator named Byung and he loves Miyazaki’s work. He told me Miyazaki had always intended to hand the reigns of Studio Ghibli over to a man named Yoshifumi Kondo and then retire. Trouble was, Kondo died of a sudden aneurysm in 1998, having only directed one Studio Ghibli film, Whisper of the Heart in 1995. That was the year after Miyazaki had made Princess Mononoke (1997)… he went into depression following Kondo’s death and took a few years off. After that, Miyazaki went on to make Spirited Away (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), and Ponyo (2008)… after the release of each film, he has claimed it would be his last, yet he continues to return to work and make more films every time. We’ll see how long this new retirement lasts… I would like to see him stay in production for the rest of his life, but I’m biased towards his films now that I’ve seen more and they’ve grown on me tremendously.

If you like his films, try watching a film by Isao Takahata sometime… he co-founded Studio Ghibli with Miyazaki back in 1985, and yet his films are decidedly vacant of the fantasy themes that populate Miyazaki’s work, tending to focus much more on realism. His greatest film is probably Grave of the Fireflies, made in 1988. It’s a very harsh look at war through the eyes of innocent children in Japan, and one of the most emotionally mature animated films I’ve ever seen. Takahata has been dealing with more mature themes like death long before Pixar made Up… I’ve heard many of my friends say the first time they cried in an animated film was in Grave of the Fireflies…

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:51:51 +0000

Thanks for your comments, Ben. It was our first theatrical Miyazaki too. I read in World magazine that he came out of retirement to make this and thus it could be his last film. Heard anything along those lines?

By: Benjamin Friday

Benjamin Friday — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:03:55 +0000

Hey Professor Wainer! I saw Ponyo in theaters out here in LA with a full audience of mostly (Asian) children… and loved it! I didn’t discover the work of Hayao Miyazaki until my junior year at PBA, and never really fully embraced him until moving to the west coast where, no doubt due to a high Asian population, his work is more widely available and discussed. I’ve since grown to appreciate his full body of work, and was excited to have the chance to see Miyazaki live on stage at the Academy just a few weeks ago when he visited LA to sit down for an interview with John Lasseter of Pixar. Billed as the “greatest living animator” and “Japan’s answer to Disney”, I awaited the evening with Miyazaki with anticipation, only to be unable to attend by a cruel twist of fate: I was employed for a 3 week period that included the date of the Miyazaki symposium and my job kept me at the office until nearly 9pm every night, making attending the event impossible. I was able to drive by the Academy later that evening after the event had already transpired and pick up a program at least that included some essays by film critics and historians about the contributions of Hayao’s work and his studio Ghibli to the film community at large. In short, as I sat and watched Ponyo a week later in theaters (my first Miyazaki on the big screen), I was once again transported back to the child-like state of wonder and reminded of the old classically drawn Disney films of my elementary years. Everything about Ponyo – the art, the bright primary colors, the music, the innocence… well, lets just say I loved it all and (while only 24 years old!) felt a sad sense of nostalgia that some of this innocence has been lost today in the world of Hannah Montana, Coraline, and, dare I say it, even some of Pixars more mature storylines. Don’t get me wrong, I love a complex piece of animation, and even Miyazaki has done much heavier work himself, such as Princess Mononoke with it’s PG-13 subject matter, but I was deeply appreciative of Ponyo’s story and it’s effects on the audience. I’m glad we still have artists like Miyazaki laboring the old fashioned way, bringing us back full circle to a simpler time after a heavy summer of Up and Coraline. Those two were both brilliant technical and thematic achievements (Up was one of my favorite films of the year so far), but frankly neither touched me on the same nostalgic level the way the innocence of Ponyo did…