Princess Mononoke reminds you at once of how far Japanese animation has come since Speed Racer and how much it’s stayed the same. The motion is still jerky, the dialogue choppy and heavily reliant on exclamation marks, and the good guys’ faces are all drawn exactly alike. They look like what would happen if someone tried to draw Ron Howard after seeing ten seconds of the Andy Griffith Show. Hayao Miyazaki somehow accepts all those conventions completely while aiming way past them. We’ve seen three of his movies. Kiki’s Delivery Service, in which a young country witch finds her place in the big city, is a complex coming-of-age story about selfhood and loyalty and trust. My Neighbor Totoro is another coming-of-age story, this time with giant animals that change their shapes at will. Princess Mononoke is about all that, plus medieval ironworks and ecological forest spirits and stuff. Each of them has taken over Laura’s world for weeks at a time. Not even Pinocchio or Dorothy gripped her so tightly.
The basic Mononoke story is, it’s the 13th century and a girl raised by giant wolves is waging a guerrilla war against some people who are clear-cutting the forests to feed their iron foundry. The ironworkers are women ransomed from brothels by their leader, the mysterious Lady Oboshi. (There are some guys around, but mainly for carrying stuff; it’s the women who do all the talking and shooting.) A mysterious young warrior arrives from afar, seeking the origin of a curse that has befallen him. The curse takes the form of a burn mark on his arm that gives him fearful strength in moments of anger. Through quick thinking, physical courage and a whole lot of shouting, the wolf girl and the warrior defeat the ironworker chief, some soldiers and a monk (yes, he’s mysterious) and bring peace to the forest and themselves.
I like this stuff, but I liked Wing Chun, the Michelle Yeoh action vehicle, better. It was a lot like Mononoke, but without all the supernatural silliness. And you can pick up cues from the faces of the actors as they ham it up, which doesn’t work that well in cartoons. But most of all, Wing Chun had some slapstick, some lighthearted parts to dilute the menace, while Mononoke is as dead-earnest as only Japanese animators know how to be. Despite the graphic violence, I felt comfortable with Laura acting out Michelle Yeoh’s moves, because they were all about protecting the village and embarrassing the bully, not saving the world from rage-driven demons.
What degree of literary distance is available to a small child? We know she makes distinctions between story and the “real” world, but on what basis? Why is physical force such a compelling theme for her; why is she so eager to act out swordplay and martial arts? When do these movies and this acting build her self-confidence, and when do they erode the sense of fair play and peacefulness that we try to promote? I don’t know. I’m going to watch some old Speed Racer episodes and see if they have any answers.