Top Ten Animated Films with Guest Writer Tucker Meijer: #3
If you want to read the introduction from Tucker and myself, please go to our choices for the #10 best animated film. Here are our selections for #3.
Tucker’s #3: Mulan
I should start this review with an acknowledgement: Mulan is not Disney’s “best” in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, I would probably put The Little Mermaid and even The Lion King above it. But the reason I’m including it on my list (and so high, nonetheless) is that it remains one of my favorites, despite the occasional misstep.
One of the things I love the most about Mulan is the titular protagonist. She is everything a heroine should be: strong, fierce and loyal all while retaining some semblance of emotion. The movie does a brilliant job of setting up the conflict; from Mulan’s botched attempt to win over the matchmaker (in a beautifully chaotic scene), we can tell that she does not fit into the strict societal gender roles.
This is, in fact, the central conflict of the film. The movie is not about an attempt to stop the Huns from invading China. This is simply a narrative thread to move the needle towards the bigger story: Mulan breaking free from the confines of her life. At its core, it’s a movie about a rebel. But, more than that, it’s a movie about a woman rebelling against sexist structures.
That’s what I find so salient about the film. It was released in 1998, but, unfortunately, many of the similar problems that Mulan faces are present in our world today. There is a district juxtaposition in the space Mulan is allowed to occupy. Jeremy mentioned last week that Ariel in The Little Mermaid is confined to certain spaces, but then finds a way to cross the threshold (ie. going from water to land). A similar thing occurs in Mulan: Mulan is forbidden from the battlefield, from the training camps, from defending her country because she is a woman.
In a similar way to Ariel, Mulan finds a way to cross the threshold and occupy the space that was originally forbidden to her. But she does so by disguising herself as a man. While this occasionally plays out to comedic effect, Mulan is forced to confront sexism and misogyny in its full ugliness. It’s a move that allows Mulan to reclaim her power. The juxtaposition between the Mulan at the beginning of the film and the Mulan who learns to fight at the end of the training montage is stark.
As with any Disney movie, Mulan is surrounded by all of her sidekick, Mushu the dragon. Mushu occasionally falls into the Disney trap of the sidekick being the comedic relief but his character is elevated by the fact that he is given is own small character arc. Just as Mulan is trying to prove it to herself and her family that she is capable of fighting alongside the men, Mushu is similarly trying to prove himself. Mushu’s quest to fulfill the role he has been given deepens his character and elevates it from the one-dimensional comedic relief that most Disney characters have.
Not only does Mulan have an incredibly salient message, but it also has a great soundtrack. I think that Mulan has some of the best songs out of all Disney movies. Buoyed by Broadway star Lea Salonga (the singing voice of Mulan), the songs traverse emotional (“Reflection”) to comedic (“Honor Us All”) to iconic (“Let’s Get Down to Business”). There’s so much to Mulan. And I love every minute of it.
Jeremy’s #3 Princess Mononoke
While Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro may be the quintessential Miyazaki movies in terms of style, no film Miyazaki has made has approached the brilliant complexity of Princess Mononoke. Combining history (the Emishi were a real tribe) with fantasy and a classic hero’s journey narrative, Miyazki explores that polarizing extremes of human nature: east vs west, technology vs nature, hate vs love, humanism vs religion, men vs women, balance vs chaos. These philosophical discussions are woven into an incredible story about a prince of the Emishi tribe, Ashitaka, who must journey to discover the cause of a curse placed upon him, and in doing so, discovers a war between the forces of humanity and gods of the forest.
The film begins with a shot of the mountains, covered by clouds (clouds will be important throughout the work) before the camera cranes down, demonstrating perhaps a change, a moving from the heavens to the earth, as the narration explains that these were the times of “gods and demons”. Then, a demon made of CGI black tentacles crawls its way eastward, leaving behind a devastation of vegetation; something evil has been created in the west.
This is the first film Miyazaki ever used digital effects in, preferring painstakingly hand animating at least 40,000 cells himself in every one of his films. The CGI is used sparingly and brilliantly to animate the elements that are supernatural such as demons or the Night Walker (the non-corporeal form of the Forest Spirit). As a result of this, it is only those elements that don’t belong in the physical world that are done in another form of animation, adding to their other worldliness.
Going back to the beginning of the film: as the demon is exposed to the light, the tentacles fly off it, revealing a giant boar, Nago, underneath, before it continues forward. Its path takes it directly into one of the few remaining Emishi villages. The Emishi are a dying people, known for their superior horse riding and archery skills that had kept the Yamamoto at bay for generations. In the story, their lineage is dying, as are their customs. They watch helplessly as their environmental, Shinto ways recede into the past to be replaced by the age of Samurai and the Imperial Throne of Japan. In the path of the demon is a watchtower, created by logs laid on one another in perfect balance and harmony. The watchtower is composed of two triangles, one on top of the other in an hourglass formation. The image is one that appears throughout the film whether in the medicine woman’s hut or on the face of the Forest Spirit. The triangle is the most balanced of all geometric shapes. The hourglass shape requires perfect balance between the two points that meet. Different characters wear either a triangle pointed upward, while some wear a triangle pointed down. Comparing the images provides us with a base understanding of the two forces. Few have both, and those who do often appear balanced.
The demon destroys the tower and then moves toward the village. Prince Ashitaka springs into action, begging the demon to spare his village, but the demon will not be tamed, and Ashitaka is forced to defend his village with violence, letting his arrows fly. Before the demon can be brought down, it curses Ashitaka. The medicine woman’s attempts to clean the wound using both earth and water; one of the many examples of Shintoism throughout the film. We will see ancient Shinto temples with their cleansing water throughout his journey as well as ruins of other temples. Ashitaka, now cursed, is told that a ball of iron found in the beast’s chest caused him to turn into a demon. The beast was consumed by hate. Ashitaka must now journey west to find the cause of this curse and hopefully the cure.
In the west, Ashitaka finds two of Miyazaki’s best characters at war with one another: Lady Eboshi of Irontown and Princess Mononoke (San). Lady Eboshi is not a villain, as Miyazaki does not believe in black and white morality. She is a representation of western values. She values the lives of humans over the spirits of the forest. This value goes as far rescuing women from brothels and giving the jobs in Irontown. She also attends to others that society has tossed aside. In a Christ-like reference, she cares for lepers who humanity has tossed aside. In fact, the lepers design the rifles she uses to wage war on the spirits of the forest. When she realizes that her actions caused Ashitaka’ s curse, she is genuinely sorry because she has caused another human pain. Ultimately, she is a pragmatist and will do what she has to in order to protect her town and her people. In is in these qualities, her feminism, references to Christianity, and use of technology, make her the embodiment of western values. The fact that in the American dub she is voiced by Minnie Driver, a British actress, only enhances this symbolism.
Princess Mononoke, or San, is the daughter of Moro, the wolf goddess. Later in the film, Moro explains that San is the daughter of humans who she caught defiling her forest. They threw their daughter down at Moro’s feet as a sacrifice and ran for their lives. Moro decided instead of eating her, to raise her as her own. As a result, San is the embodiment of the forest. She is the polar opposite of Eboshi (Eboshi is a symbol of the west; San represents the eastern practice of nature worship. Eboshi represents technology while San represents the natural order. Eboshi is a middle-aged; San is a teenager). San sees it as her responsibility to kill Eboshi while Eboshi sees victory as killing the Sprit of the Forest so that she can capture all of the natural resources in the forest to exploit to profit Irontown.
Ashitaka comes to this conflict to “see with eyes unclouded by hate”. Throughout the film, smoke, clouds, haze are used as symbols of hate, blocking the sight of each person as rage overtakes them. Being an outsider, Ashitaka does not have a side in the conflict, but wants both Irontown and the forest to succeed. Miyazaki seeks to express the importance of balance or harmony through the visuals in the film and the relationship between the three main characters. Miyazaki is not saying technology is bad, which is unfortunately how some people view the film; just as he is not saying that natural resources cannot be used by humanity in a sustainable way. He does not end up siding with either eastern or western beliefs but believes that we need to respect both sides and approach life and others from a place of love. This balance is the final message of the film.
One of the under appreciated elements that makes the story work so well is the pillow time. Earlier in my review of Spirited Away, I talked about Miyazaki’s attempt to animate the silence between claps. After every major moment involving philosophy or an insightful understanding about human nature, there is a moment of silence: pillow time. These come as beautiful stretches of nature or as rain falling and water collecting on a stone until it is wet. These silences are meant to allow you to ponder the meaning of what has just happened. It is in this rhythm that we come to understand the profound morals Miyazaki is asking us to consider.
I teach film classes in high school. At the end of my class, students placed into groups to present on 1 of 5 films. I see each of these movies yearly. Princess Mononoke is one of them. Every year, a group of courageous students performs a fifty-minute presentation on the film and each year, I continually learn more and more about the film each year as its depth continues to astound me.
