Over the past week, I have binged most of Hayao Miyazaki’s films and I have discovered one of my absolute favourite filmmakers. Almost each one of his films has connected with me emotionally on at least some level, some more than others, and all have been worthwhile experiences, impressive considering the sheer number of them.
I have identified certain key traits that run through all of his films and why those traits make his films so relatable and easy to connect with. Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service have been the two films that connected with me the most and are my favourites of his, so they will be brought up most often.
Yubaba is the closest character to an antagonist in Spirited Away, and yet she also has a twin sister that looks just like her who turns out to be one of the more positive characters in the film, despite her initial entry consisting of her attacking Haku. Now, combine these two characters into one and you will get a majority of the side characters in Miyazaki’s films. They are equally good and bad, just like people. Real people are not villains, nor are they heroes and the characters in these films reflect this beautifully.
It might be a bit early to say, but these movies have made me a better person. I noticed a more compassionate outlook on people and life slowly developing which is just a testament to how impactful and beautiful these films are. As a Letterboxd user, @ianamurray, said more perfectly than I ever can on a review for Kiki’s Delivery Service, “make movies kind again”. This essay will be split up into sections that build on one another but can be read separately and in any order.
Movement
While watching Princess Mononoke, the film I started my binge with, I noticed something that blew my mind. Despite the often exaggerated movements in the film, there is an impressive amount of humanity and quirks in the way people move. There was one moment I recall in which a character is rounding a corner while running and stumbles.
This detail did not have to be in the film. And yet it is. And it adds so much humanity and character. This is only one example of the countless little quirks of movement that are present in all of Miyazaki’s films; My Neighbor Totoro has a scene in which the baby sister climbs onto the older sister’s back to take a nap and remains there for a fairly long time. The older sister has to occasionally readjust her in order for the baby sister to not fall off her back and the way it is animated is just so detailed and human.
I heard an interview with Miyazaki in which he talks about how he loves to sit in public areas and observe humans; how they move, talk, behave, etc. It shines through in his films in a way that words cannot describe. There was another bit I heard where Miyazaki personally re-animated a character falling in Princess Mononoke as he believed the movement was not clumsy enough. A story in which talking wolves and giant boars fight humans and the movement is still more human than a lot of movies that do not have any fantasy elements.
Spirited Away visually presents an entire character transformation just through body language and posture. When I finished rewatching the film for the second time, I skipped around just to relive some moments and what I noticed was just how reclusive, cowardly, and jumpy Chihiro is at the beginning and how the exact opposite of that she is towards the end of the film. A transformation so subtle yet so powerful I did not notice it while watching, and yet still felt it. One of my favourite scenes in the film is towards the beginning and involves her climbing down a flight of stairs. Miyazaki lingers on this simple action for quite a while and it builds character as Chihiro slowly, nervously climbs down each step in a very scared, anxious manner. This is echoed later in the film when she goes down those exact steps but in a much more assured, anxiety-free way. There are so many little details in the movement in this film and it is all used to convey humanity and character transformation very effectively.
There is a shot in Castle in the Sky in which Sheeta’s eyes visibly glimmer, done through a slight shake of the whites of her eyes. I won’t go off about why this is a great detail as I feel like it’s pretty self-explanatory.
And yet, despite all the humanistic realism, there is still just the right amount of exaggeration in the movement. The films are animated, after all. My favourite example is whenever somebody is shocked or embarrassed; clothes visibly start to shake and ruffle as if picked up by a gust of wind and hair defies gravity and follows suit with the clothing. This does not compromise the emotional honesty of any of the movements and adds an animated quality that is not possible in live-action.
It is genuinely hard to describe all the little quirks and the general flow of the movement across all of Miyazaki’s films which is one of the reasons I encourage you to just experience them for yourselves.
Colour
I tried fitting this section into the overall essay better at first but it has always devolved into just me gushing about how pretty the colours are so that is exactly what I will now do. The overall takeaway here is that Miyazaki uses colour well to create an atmosphere and makes his characters more memorable by giving them a distinct colour identity.
Each film has a varied colour palette and the main characters all both clash and fit into it; Kiki’s bright red bow combined with the cool blues of the world, the calm orange of Chihiro’s worker’s outfit combined with the insanity of the bathhouse, the red of Porco Rosso’s plane against the blue skies, the blueish-grey of Totoro’s fur juxtaposed against the greenery of the location, I could go on for a while here.
I especially love the colour palette in Ponyo, one of Miyazaki’s most lightly coloured films which reflects the very child-like nature of it. The backgrounds are also all hand-drawn and coloured with what looks like actual pencils, giving the film a real children’s storybook feel. Kiki’s Delivery Service also looks gorgeous with so many various shades of blue, each one amazing in its own way.
Everybody has different colours that appeal to them and each film has such a distinct colour identity that at least some are bound to connect.
Morality
My favourite film in terms of morality is Princess Mononoke in which there is no main antagonist, despite what the viewer might initially assume due to pre-existing character archetypes. It would be easy to assume that Lady Eboshi is the antagonist of the film as she is the leader of the village that is the representation of industrialism and wants to chop down the forest. Yet the film spends a significant amount of time inside said village showing us the lifestyle, the people, the hard work that goes into maintaining it. There is a real spirit to it and the characters that populate said village are likeable and intriguing. One of my favourite scenes is when the women of the village are showing Ashitaka how they produce iron and he joins in and helps them do their work. This scene does not exactly advance the plot, but that is just what’s so beautiful about it; it simply immerses the viewer in the world and lets them bask in its beauty.
The character of No-Face from Spirited Away initially comes off as an outsider, only to later transform into a giant monster, only to then transform back into a shy, kind creature. He reflects the environment he exists in; when he’s inside the bathhouse he is greedy and bloated, when he leaves he is back to the shy outsider we saw earlier. Miyazaki says through this character that people are not inherently evil, but a product of their environment, which is echoed in some ways in Princess Mononoke; the humans and animals are both simply trying to live a good life.
The American character in Porco Rosso also initially comes off as a villain and fills that narrative purpose for the duration of the film. And yet, as the film goes on, he is established not as an evil outsider, but simply as a comically egotistical goofball who just wants to be liked by everyone.
This remains true for so many of Miyazaki’s characters. Almost none of the villains (Castle in the Sky excluded) are truly evil, none of them are despicable or unlikable. That is if there is even a villain in the first place.
Sound and Music
Music does not just show up just whenever; placement of the score is purposeful and makes it more memorable as a result. Miyazaki and Hisaishi have figured out when music is appropriate and when the soundscape and visuals just speak for themselves.
The use of “The Path of the Wind” in My Neighbor Totoro is one of my favourite examples of the use of music in a film, it’s one of my favourite Hisaishi scores as a result. It only shows up whenever something magical is happening, echoing the awe and wonder of the children and making the viewer share their feelings.
Castle in the Sky’s use of silence and the minimalistic score also impressed me. The film allows you to take in the spectacle and the visuals without music guiding you through how you’re supposed to feel and it is breathtaking. There is a moment in which Sheeta and Pazu are flying in a mini-aircraft above the clouds and the camera just zooms out and lets you bathe in the vast emptiness of the sky with a windy soundscape, it's a gorgeous moment.
But my favourite Ghibli score is Spirited Away. There are grand moments in it for sure, during the action scenes specifically, but the main theme is a simple, melancholy, haunting, and oddly nostalgic piano melody that plays at key moments throughout. The heart of the score is something so simple and yet so effective, it makes the musical identity of the film so much easier to connect to. The melody is easily recognizable and is remarkably stripped down most of the time, performed on a piano with little instrumentation to accompany it. There is something inherently human about the simplicity of the melody and the same can be said about many of Hisaishi’s scores. Beauty in simplicity is the name of the game with his music.
Characters
“When a man is shooting a handgun, it's just like he is shooting because that's his job, and he has no other choice. It's no good. When a girl is shooting a handgun, it's really something. When I saw a movie Gloria, I really felt so, well, it's not a girl, but a middle-aged woman (obasan)-- She shoots a handgun as if she is throwing dishes. It's really exhilarating. (The story of) a man gaining independent always told though (some events) in which he defeats an opponent in a battle, or fights his way through a difficult situation. But in the case of woman, it's to feel, to accept, or to cradle, something like that... Nausicaa is not a protagonist who defeats an opponent, but a protagonist who understands, or accepts. She doesn't think about avenging her parent's death. She is someone who lives in a different dimension. Such (character) is a woman rather than a man. If it's a man, that's too weird. I feel that men (depend) more on words. I felt that, for the issues concerning nature, women deal with them by feeling.”
Hayao Miyazaki
The man himself sums it up better than I can. The art of feeling comes through so strongly in his films, characters do not try to resolve complex problems by explaining them, they grow and develop. Kiki does not start reading books on how to be a witch when she loses her powers, she gives herself breathing room. She understands that sadness is an inherent part of her life at that point in the story and does not try to run away from it or find a math formula to solve sadness (not literally but you understand what I mean, I hope). There is not one concrete reason for why she is sad, that’s not how complex feelings work. She does not try to artificially cheer herself up. It’s hard to put into words, the best I can do is to tell you to just watch the films. If you are an emotionally intuitive person you will just understand, the way emotions are portrayed through the characters is not simple and easily explainable and yet they are so relatable.
Kiki does not spout off about how a certain moment I do not want to spoil in the film has affected her emotionally, it is expressed through her body language, facial expression, and the way she just comes home and falls into her bed, face down.
Also, obviously, so many of the characters that populate these films are relatable, likable, and memorable. They are what drives the story. My favourites being Kiki, Chihiro, Porco Rosso, and Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle, a film that is nowhere even near my favourite Miyazaki film and yet there is still a character I connected to in it.
Emotion
I, unfortunately, cannot find the actual quote, but I distinctly remember something David Lynch said that stuck with me. He talked about how in every movie there is one scene that does not make film sense (illogical, does not advance the story) but makes emotional sense. One scene that does not fit but also the only one that does.
There’s an iconic scene in Spirited Away in which Chihiro and No-Face simply ride a train for a few minutes. There is no action, nobody says anything. The viewer is allowed to bask in the environment, the feeling of the scene.
Another one of my favourites is a scene in Kiki’s Delivery Service in which Kiki gets overpowered by sadness. Again, it is not explained why and to some it may be confusing, but the situation and her reaction to it is so realistic and powerful. Emotions don’t “make sense”, they just happen and the lack of rationality in Miyazaki’s films help sell them and make them relatable.
Logic
I adore how unexplained and open each one of these films is. Spirited Away does not feel the need to ground its world in reality somehow, it's simply not concerned with making anything realistic. A lot of western animation, cough cough Pixar, has been striving towards photorealism which is limiting the creativity of their films. Photorealism has its place but it reduces a lot of animated films into glorified tech demos as opposed to actual creativity.
Movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, as well as pretty much all of the films discussed here, are wildly imaginative not only visually, but conceptually. And yet the lack of logic does not compromise the emotional attachment one can have to any of these. Spirited Away is fantastical and shows you things you have never seen before, and yet at the core of it is a girl trying to save her parents and find her place in the world.
Each film is so wonderfully animated, in every sense of the word, and would simply not work in any other medium. Nothing in Spirited Away would make sense in live-action, the animated medium is crucial to selling the lack of logic and fantastical whimsy of the world.
And yet the stories, no matter how imaginative and weird, are always grounded in human conflict and always make emotional sense if not visual.
Story
Despite often being fantastical and weird, the core of the stories in Miyazaki’s films is always very human.
Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service are both about finding one’s place in a world that feels alien, finding the people that make it all bearable, the wonder and joy of discovery. Porco Rosso is about PTSD and not feeling accepted in society due to one’s past actions. Howl’s Moving Castle is partly about not fitting into your age group, among other topics. The Wind Rises is about following one’s dreams despite all, you get the picture.
There is always something that grounds the whimsy and visual craziness; a core human conflict that at least somebody will relate to. I have scanned many people’s rankings of these films, and I noticed an unprecedented amount of diversity in what people’s favourites are. Everybody goes through different troubles in life and while Miyazaki does not tackle every single human issue that exists, there is a wide variety of them and at least one is bound to connect with you.
Structure and Pacing
The way Miyazaki approaches a story is very unique, especially for animation. He often does not have a full script before the start of production; the story starts visually and develops organically. He believes the story should tell itself and that it is not his place to write one out at the start.
Once I heard about this, everything made so much more sense. Suddenly, I realized that there most definitely is a very organic flow and pace to his movies, a flow that reflects real life more than it does the standard structure of a movie.
My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service don’t even have traditional act structures, at least not obvious ones. There is still a progression to them with satisfying climaxes and endings, but most of the runtimes are spent experiencing life from the points of view of the characters.
Real-life does not exactly have a three-act structure; it’s more akin to phases and extended periods of time. There are still events that happen in these films and, as I said before, a progression but the films do not exactly force events to happen to move some kind of plot. Again, due to the way Miyazaki “writes” his films as he goes along, they feel more organic and involve characters going through phases. The story serves the characters, not the other way around.
Many of the films discussed also do not exactly “end”. A character goes through an arc, yes, but solving one problem in their life does not solve every problem they will ever have and Miyazaki understands that. A crisis is dealt with, but life goes on. Chihiro does not go back to how her life was before the start of Spirited Away, she learns to overcome her fears of moving to a new place. Kiki does not get rid of her inherent sadness but she takes an important step towards overcoming it. I do not want to spoil endings but just keep this kind of structure in mind when watching.
Conclusion
And with that, I would like to end this little project of mine. Just like Miyazaki’s endings, this essay is not a be-all-end-all discourse on one of the greatest auteurs of our lifetimes; it is simply one person’s experience.
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