Top Ten Animated Films with Guest Writer Tucker Meijer: #3 Critics' Take
Here are Tucker’s take on my choice for our 3rd best film Princess Mononoke and my take on his choice, Mulan. Below are our original posts.
Jeremy’s Take on Tucker’s #3: Mulan
I want to begin by saying thank you to Tucker. Mulan is one of the first truly surprising choices on either of our lists. That is why I love doing these lists and reviews because you get to see how a movie truly affected someone. He admits in the beginning of his review: “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.” And as such, I was surprised to see it on his list at all, let alone this high, but am glad he chose it as it gives us a chance to see what movies truly impacted him.
For myself, I have to admit that I have a love / dislike relationship with Mulan (I was going to say love / hate, but I don’t hate the movie at all, I just am generally annoyed with it at times). Being Chinese, myself, Mulan is a celebration in that Disney finally gave us an Asian story, but it also gave us a western understanding of an Asian story for which it can be forgiven given the company’s limited and commercial perspective, but that doesn’t make the story easier to digest for myself.
Let’s begin with the love aspect. The animation is gorgeous, playing on the idea of style like Bambi (Impressionistic) or Hercules (combining Gerald Scarfe’s comic style with Greek drawings) where rather than presenting the film in realistic animation, Disney instead chose to be inspired by Chinese paintings with simple brush strokes and colors. The result is one of Disney’s least realistic looking pictures, but one of their more profound visual statements. Watch how the opening animation starts in ink with brush strokes before coloring in and creating the Great Wall. There is a famous saying in Japanese art. If you drew it with 10 brush strokes, you can do it with 5 less.
Also with Beauty and the Beast, Disney began experimenting with animating hand drawn cells digitally. This is how the incredible floating feeling is created when Belle and the Beast dance. With Mulan, Disney perfected the technique. Watching the Hun charge down the mountain side is one of the most exciting shots I had ever seen at that time. A huge army, barreling towards the few Chinese soldiers left. It is reminiscent of other great action scenes like the charge in Lawrence of Arabia.
The other triumph of the film is Mushu who Tucker also talked glowingly about. Indeed, Mushu is one of Disney’s best sidekicks. I would also place the cricket from this movie in that category. When I heard that Eddie Murphy was going to voice a dragon in Mulan, I was upset. How could this be appropriate for ancient China, and yet, Eddie Murphy doesn’t pull any punches, bringing an obviously African American accent with his character that somehow works so well. I still don’t understand it, but I never question why he is there. Mushu is as funny as he is essential to the story. While Fa Mulan must learn how to “be a man”, Mushu must learn how to be a dragon given that he too is judged based upon his appearance. What a great moment when he introduces himself to Mulan with his shadow rising above the flames, before stepping out and revealing his small stature. He’s so small, the horse mistakes him for a bug and tramples him.
Finally, the movie is a “who’s who” of Asian actors. I can forgive them by casting a Japanese actor or Korean actors as a Chinese men. That makes no difference to me, just as an Irish actor can play British or Italian. Here some of the greats include not only the lead voice Ming-Na Wen (Mulan), but also BD Wong (numerous famous roles including on Law and Order: SVU) as Shang, George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) as the First Ancestor, James Shigeta (Joseph Takagi in Die Hard who has an amazing scene with Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber) as General Li, Soon-Tek Oh (for years one of the few Korean actors on TV) as Fa Zhou, Gedde Watanabe (Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles [a racist representation, but I don’t blame an actor for needing to make money and he provided the comic relief in the film]) as Ling, the great James Hong (who has been in so many movies including Blade Runner, but is probably most famous for his role as David Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China), and finally the great Pat Morita (who was nominated for playing Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid) as the Emperor. So awesome to see such a great group of actors being able to play non-stereotypical Asian characters.
But, then the annoying part comes in for me. First of all, the lack of understanding of Chinese customs and culture abound. Granted, Beauty and the Beast plays with French culture about as well as Mulan does Chinese culture, but Chinese culture has long been skewered in entertainment, reading it to stereotypes and here they are numerous. The story of Mulan is one told by grandmothers to their grandchildren. My grandmother told it to me. The story of Mulan is about the Woman Warrior whose training involved some mystical arts as well as other training. As a result, she was not a male warrior, but a female one. One of the first lessons she learns is to listen and observe. To fight in a different manner than her male counterparts. In her story, she does not give up menstruation, which may be too much for a children’s movie, but it’s an important detail in the story to show how she remains a woman. As a result, she does not become a hero by learning to “be a man”, but in fact, does so by being a woman. The best version of this story is written down in Maxine Hong Kingston’s biopic The Woman Warrior, which in one chapter recites an incredible version of the legend, which changed into folklore as the years passed. The lack of connection to the ideas of the story continues to bother me.
Then, there is the music. Unlike Tucker who praised the music as some of Disney’s best, I will actually go in the opposite direction. I think it’s some of Disney’s least impressive numbers; certainly not as bad as the racist numbers “What Makes the Red Man Red”, but still not good. None of the songs are memorable in a good way. You don’t come out of the movie humming any songs like you do for the movies these songs belong to: “Under the Sea”, “Be Our Guest”, or “Friend Like Me”. You don’t have a love ballad, which aid in making Disney stories so epic: “Beauty and the Beast”, “Kiss the Girl,” “I See the Light,” “A Whole New World,” “Can You Feel the Love,” or even Hercules “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love)”. Imagine in this case if the love ballad had been sung by Shang, now that would have been revolutionary (also BD Wong has an incredible voice as I saw him in the Broadway musical Pacific Overtures… still don’t understand why he didn’t sing his own part). Ultimately, Mulan lacks a show stopping number, it lacks a love ballad, it lacks the side character song (Mushu never gets one). Instead we get “Reflections” which means well, but is such a simple song and doesn’t add new feeling to the character of Mulan that we didn’t already know say the way that “Part of Your World” does to Ariel’s character. Then, there’s Mulan’s “Be a Man”... this song is memorable for all the wrong reasons. It’s a pop album, second rate number that burrows your way into your head and you cannot get it out no matter how hard you try. It’s the same reason I hate “Master of the House” from Les Mis; that and the fact that “Be a Man” entirely disrupts the point and theme of the movie. Mulan to be a hero has to learn to be like a man… it could have been so much more.
Tucker’s take on Jeremy’s #3: Princess Mononoke
The first time I ever saw Princess Mononoke was in Jeremy’s film class in my senior year of high school. Now that I’m thinking about it, Princess Mononoke was the first animated film to which I ever applied a critical lens. For that reason alone, the film holds a special place in my heart; it showed me that animated movies contain the same depths, complexities, and ideas as live-action films. This is something that I’ve mentioned before in this series, but is always worth repeating. Often, animated movies are hidden under the guise of a movie for kids, but I would say that Princess Mononoke is unlike a lot of animated movies in this regard. The themes and narrative of the film are on the same level of the live action movies that win Oscars (indeed, Princess Mononoke was submitted for a nomination in the Best Foreign Language category, although it ultimately wasn’t nominated).
For one thing, the movie does not present a clear good versus evil conflict. There are characters that are “bad” but their motives are ambiguous. Often, these characters are not necessarily evil; they are more misguided or short sighted. Take Lady Eboshi as an example. She wants to destroy the forest, which, at first, seems like an evil motive. However, when you take a step back and look at her reasoning – that she wants to protect her village and see it flourish – she becomes an incredibly complex character. San is similar. She is the antithesis of Lady Eboshi; she wants to protect the forest. However, she will stop at nothing to fulfill this goal, even if it means hurting other people.
These dualities not only make the characters in Princess Mononoke more interesting, but they also make them more real. These are flawed people (or spirits), all of whom have their own independent opinions and thoughts about how the world should operate. This is a very real phenomenon; in a parallel to the real world, people are not so black and white. The gray areas of motives and personalities all come to light in the film and makes for much more compelling characters.
Back in my review of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, I talked about how that film touches upon a whole host of environmental themes. These are even more present in Princess Mononoke, which covers a lot of ground in depicting the conflict between humans and the forest. Much like the characters, this conflict is not as simple as preservation versus development. Instead, this conflict is framed as one that is much more applicable to our world: how the good of development (in its gift of community, structure, and stability for people) is mediated by a need to preserve the natural world.
Princess Mononoke presents a world that is swiftly developing by the humans. But in this development is a community of people who are brought together in one town or place. Take Irontown for example. Lady Eboshi is passionate about this community and only wants the best for it. This wish, however, is antithetical to the forest protectors like San who despise this expansion. Both Lady Eboshi and San survive at the end of the movie, a narrative point that suggests that these two things (development and preservation) do not need to exist on opposite poles. Indeed, they can (and should) find a way to coexist in ways that are advantageous to them both.
Princess Mononoke is Miyazaki at its best and I’m kicking myself for not thinking to include it anywhere on my list. It has everything that Miyazaki excels at: a layered social commentary, a rich world, and complex, compelling characters that you can simultaneously root for and despise.
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.
