Pom Poko

Cafe Society
1

I watched this movie again last night and I think I love it more each time I see it. Even though I’ve already seen it five or six times, it still has me crying at the end – not just sniffling there’s-something-in-my-eye crying, but Holly-Hunter-in-Raising Arizona “I love this movie so mu-u-u-ch” bawling.

It’s Japanese anime from Studio Ghibli, not directed by Hayao Miyazaki but by Isao Takahata. Nausicaa.net has more info on it, including the full title Heisei Tanuki Gessen Pompoko (The Heisei-era Tanuki War Pompoko). As the link will tell you, it tells the story of a pack of tanuki, racoon-like animals, who find their habitat being destroyed by a housing development outside of Tokyo. What the link won’t tell you is how it delivers its environmentalist message much more effectively than any other film, and teaches gaijin like myself about Japanese folklore & mythology at the same time.

It’s like Watership Down in that the animals speak and have their own culture, but are never truly anthropomorphicized (which I’m 80% sure is a real word). That is, they walk and talk, but remain animals throughout. That’s key to the message of Pom Poko, which is that humans have subverted the relationship between themselves and nature; we’ve set ourselves apart from nature instead of acting as a part of it. The environmentalist tone of the movie isn’t subtle in the least, but it pervades the film to such a degree that it rarely feels heavy-handed. Princess Mononoke, by contrast, feels like an anime “Captain Planet” – a pseudo-spiritual tree-hugging allegory thinly covered by an action movie so that audiences will watch it. Pom poko feels a lot more sincere to me; it just is what it is, much like the tanuki themselves.

Anyway, I could go on about the animation and about the sub-stories and the mythology and all, but I’d rather talk about Disney. Because they own the US distribution rights for Pom Poko, which means that the movie will never, ever, ever be released in the US. They thought Mononoke was high-risk (hence the Miramax release), but at least that was a fairly straightforward anime with lots of bloody action scenes to pull in the teenage Gundam crowd, and an environmentalist message to make the adults (and Roger Ebert, apparently) consider it a thinking-man’s movie.

But Mononoke didn’t have so many testicles. All of the male tanuki in the movie are drawn with balls-on, and their testicles are a source of their power. (A scene towards the end has a pack of the tanuki growing their privates to enormous proportions and attacking hapless human construction workers with them). Based on what I’ve read, that seems to be a key element of the folklore – I dunno, I’d never heard of tanuki before this movie and Super Mario World 3, where Mario was only given the tanuki tail instead of the complete package. And I have yet to read an English-language review of the movie that doesn’t obsess over that. So if Disney tried to release it, American parents would freak out that they took their kids to see some perverted movie from The Land of the Tentacle Rape And Underpants Vending Machine. And American teenagers and other anime fans would freak out that they went to see an anime that didn’t have giant robots or bloody swordfights, but instead just had a bunch of cartoon raccoons dancing and singing. So once again, cultural bias has left me with only a not-quite legitimate, poorly translated and grainy copy of one of my favorite movies.

Any other Dopers see this movie? What’d you think of it?

2

Actually, I hadn’t seen just because most of my Japanese friends said it was the weakest of the Ghibili movies. I may have to give it a try now. I did, however, just see another Ghibili movie (by Miyazaki), Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away). Very good, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

And yeah, the testicles are a big part of the whole tanuki mythology. There are tanuki statues all over the place in Japan, and they all have enormous cojones hanging off them (often rather prominent penises, as well).

3

I am a big Studio Ghibli fan but I haven’t seen this one. In fact the only Takahata I have seen is Only Yesterday which I thought was excellent. Have you seen it?

BTW I disagree about Mononoke which is one of the best films I have ever seen. I think its message is much more sophisticated than simplistic tree-hugging. And normally I don’t care too much about action sequences but the ones in Mononoke are just something else. San’s attack on Irontown in particular is a masterpiece.

Anyway I will try to see Pom Poko if I can.

4

I’m definitely going to see Spirited Away as soon as it’s released. I’ve heard nothing but good stuff about it.

Based on what I’ve read, Pom Poko is almost universally regarded as Studio Ghibli’s weakest movie. I don’t agree, obviously, but I guess I can understand why. It’s not story-driven like Totoro or Kiki, and there’s next to no action, unlike Laputa or Nausicaa or Mononoke. And of course, there’s no cool airplanes like Porco Rosso. I’m not being completely condescending when I say that there are no action scenes to grab the audience, and that the characters are very cartoonish – you do have to have something that’ll grab the audience, after all.

But as I said, I think the message is conveyed so well in the movie that it has more meaning than any of the other environmentally-themed Ghibli movies. It’s not just “wicked humans are destroying the Earth!”, it’s that humans have lost an essential part of our souls. The closing scene is so sad and so happy at the same time I can’t imagine anybody watching it with a dry eye.

I haven’t seen Only Yesterday, but it’s on the same not-quite-legal collection of Ghibli movies I’ve got. (If Disney’s not going to release them, I’ve got to do something – I can’t believe I’d never seen Nausicaa until last year!)

And Mononoke is a fine movie, but it really disappointed me because it just struck me as so superficial. Technically, of course, it’s excellent. But it was impossible for me to identify with or feel sympathy for any of the characters, so throughout I felt as if I was just watching the same Industrialists vs. Nature thing that I’ve seen before. I did like the spinning-head forest creatures, though…

5

Princess Monoke was a lot more than a tree hugging plotline with an action cover. It dealt with numerous sophisticated and ethereal themes in a graceful and engaging fashion and the voicework and art was absolutely superb. If an “Industrialists vs. Nature thing” is really all you got of it I’m going to have to take your Pom Poko recommendation with a grain of salt.

6

You’re free to take it with a big old salt lick, even. But:

a) my opinion of one shouldn’t affect your opinion of either; I’ve put it out there that Pom Poko shouldn’t be overlooked and welcome you to judge for yourself.

  1. instead of just saying that my take on Mononoke is correct, why not put out some examples of why you think it’s incorrect. What are some of these “sophisticated and ethereal themes” that you believe I missed?

iii) I have to disagree about the voicework on Mononoke, unless you’re talking about the Japanese version. I thought that a lot of the voices were grating or inappropriate, especially Gillian Anderson’s growling and Billy Bob Thornton as a monk. (I could see where they were going with Thornton – as in Disney’s Robin Hood, they used an actor with a southern accent to denote a “rural” character. But Robin Hood used in consistently, while in Mononoke it just stood out as one sour note.) I did think the art was flawless, and I hoped I was making that clear with my other posts; my problems were with the plot, storyline, and characters, not with the execution.

7

Mononoke deals with at least three intertwined themes:

  1. Man vs Nature: But not in a cliched way like you think. This is exactly the opposite of Captain Planet where people seem to destroy nature for the pure pleasure of it. Here it is clearly shown that there are benefits as well as costs to industry and that there are no easy answers about what balance to reach. Neither humans nor animals are whitewashed or demonized. This alone makes it superior to a typical Hollywood film.
    2)Violence and Revenge: Mononoke is also an an anti-war film about the futility of war and violence in getting what you want.
    3)Personal love versus collective duty: The San-Ashitaka relationship. Once again there are no easy answers and the movie provides an open ending about their relationship.

The excellence of the movie lies in the mature way these themes are handled; without preaching or excessively simple answers. Of course in addition that it’s simply a damn good yarn with stunningly beautiful animation, amazing action sequences and some terrific music by Joe Hisaishi.

As for the voice acting astro was probably referring to the Japanese voice acting which is consistently good. Actually the English voice acting isn’t that bad. The only real weak point IMO is Clare Danes as San. I found Thornton OK as the monk; he wasn’t that different from the Japanese original.