Feelin' Kinda Ghibli

FILM:

Much has been made, over the years, of the artistry of the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and rightly so.  They are indeed stunningly gorgeous, and despite the tendency in our world to simplify and streamline, they have become increasingly so.  Each movie brings a new batch of details, observations of nature, that I have never seen before in an animated film.  But that's not what I want to talk about today.  Today, I'm preoccupied with the emotional content of Miyazaki & Ghibli's films.  I think this gets overshadowed a lot, because there are so many outstanding aspects of their films.  Nevertheless, I find that the emotional content -- and I'm not even talking about the obviously sad and happy moments here -- is not only richer and more refined than we're used to expecting from animated films, but stands in rare and lofty company among all of cinema.

Miyazaki is the master upon whom the studio, Ghibli, was founded, but he's not the only director among the bunch anymore, and if he's to be believed, the master himself has retired, so it's up to his heirs (literal and spiritual) to continue his work.  When I speak of Ghibli, I'm including Isao Takahata (director of Grave of Fireflies and Only Yesterday), the late Yoshifumi Kondo (director of Whisper of the Heart, originally tapped as Miyazaki's replacement until his untimely passing), Hiromasa Yoneayashi (director of The Secret World of Arrietty), Goro Miyazaki (director of From Up On Poppy Hill, also Hayao's son) and the other artisans working with Hayao Miyazaki, but for the most part, I will refer to them collectively as Studio Ghibli, which has followed his lead.

That lead has guided the creation of animated films that express feelings of more subtle delicacy than most live-action films.  This, shockingly, disappointingly, can make Ghibli's films a bit hard to digest for certain self-professed (alleged) "anime" fans, more accustomed to stories that focus on the collecting of X number of ancient/cosmic artifacts to save the world/prove themselves the Chosen One, with an emotional range spanning from "UH!" to "YAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"  Their films deal with emotions that don't always have names.  A moment may not necessarily be simply "sad" but can be, say, a nuanced sort of melancholy tinted with the sweet satisfaction that it won't always be thus, and the comfort that it's -- at least for the moment -- not anxiety.  This is what capital-A Art is.  It doesn't simply tell you, and it goes beyond merely showing you.  It creates that feeling within you.  Miyazaki (in particular, but we can include some of his studio mates) is a better actor with a pencil than most Oscar-winning performers are with their whole voice, face and body.

I first started to catch on to this richness in Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.  While it does indeed include a climactic action set-piece, the real conflict has nothing to do with the crashed dirigible.  The antagonist of the movie is not a person or separate entity, but self-doubt, and the greatest battle Kiki wages is against melancholy.  Not exactly what you were expecting from a story about a teenage witch who sets off on her own for a year of independent study.  American culture, especially our media culture, and extra-especially our animation, doesn't like to acknowledge feelings like melancholy and self-doubt.  The morals of our stories tend to be "Be yourself, and if that doesn't work, be even MORE yourself!"  Nevermind that we don't often take the time to find out who ourselves are, or that our corporate culture actively punishes us for straying from shared mediocrity.  Our protagonists might momentarily feel badly about themselves, but persevere through sheer American belligerence.  No one can keep us down for much longer than the muical montage it takes for us to bounce right back!  The bastards won't grind US down!  But that's not how life really works, and that's not how Miyazaki works.  It's not the girl who hurts Kiki's feelings that needs to be overcome, heck, it really isn't even about her.  It's Kiki's feelings themselves which must be overcome, and then, only by other feelings.  The little bit of spiritual advice she gets from a friend eschews the typical "Yah! Focus! Persevere!" ethos that we're used to, and instead advises her to get her mind off of it and let the change come in its own way.  It was strange and a little startling to me at first.  No movie has ever offered this kind of advice, which I now recognize as completely correct, based on my own experiences as a writer and artist, which, not-so-coincidentally, Kiki's friend is as well.

Another prime example of this emotional complexity comes from Yoshifumi Kondo's Whisper of the Heart.  The story is about a couple of young people who meet and who want things.  I could be more specific than that, but that's kind of what it boils down to, particularly on the emotional landscape.  It's really, very barely a "story" in the conflict/resolution model that we're used to expecting.  The main character is Shizuku, a schoolgirl.  She likes to write, but is that really what she wants to be?  Is she really that good at it?  Will she be accepted for it, even if she is?  She meets a boy who wants to be a violin maker, but he faces similar questions, and they're questions that don't necessarily have definitive answers.  Then there's the matter of their budding friendship.  If he gets accepted to an apprenticeship program, what does that mean to her?  It's a fascinatingly open-ended emotional narrative.  Joy is tempered by sadness, and melancholy is sort of an exhalation between a moment of youthful satisfaction and the next moment of trepidatious hopefulness.  There aren't always answers to the big questions, because first of all, that's why they're the BIG questions -- they require continued asking and the answers are neither definitive nor permanent.  They're life, and that's what these characters are grappling with.  A recurring theme throughout Whisper of the Heart is Shizuku's adaptation of John Denver's "Take Me Home Country Roads," and it's an apt one.  She has translated it into Japanese, and adapted it to her context, living in suburban Tokyo.  It speaks to a yearning; both for leaving the world which she has known and outgrown, to see what the world has to offer, as well as for returning to that feeling of belonging; finding the sense of home once again, even though it can't be the same as it once was.  It's a basket of difficult-to-define feelings... just like adolescence.

I hope I'm not giving the impression that Ghibli's films are all mopey intellectual ponderings.  Far from it.  They're filled with wonder and imagination.  The characters are beautifully realized and they learn and grow.  Even the more traditional "villains" are more complex than simple hand-wringing caricatures of "evil."  They're simply people who want other things, and have other expectations about how they might achieve them.  I think Princess Mononoke is Miyazaki's most successful film in the States.  It's certainly the one that gets the most appreciation from people who are otherwise skeptical about his films (again, these self-professed anime fans, often teen, and the young adult males who are under the impression that the film industry exists solely to enhance their power fantasies and male identity).  Even Mononoke is filled with emotional complexity and ambiguous achievements.  The "good guys" aren't blameless when it comes to mindless destruction and the "bad guys" often have valid points, and valid reasons for their anger.  Winning isn't necessarily the same thing as victory, and things are lost that make the whole world a little poorer.  In that way, Mononoke actually captures the essence of the end of Lord of the Rings better than the Peter Jackson movies did.  Today's triumph is tempered with the knowledge that it can only last for so long, and the more complex our world becomes (out of necessity) the less we will be able to take comfort in easy answers.  With so much emotional vagary in Ghibli's films, it's particularly ironic that they're distributed (poorly) by Disney, possibly the biggest advocates of broadly, narrowly and overbearingly expressed emotions in the world.

All of this brings me to Miyazaki's final film, The Wind Rises, in which this tender and mature consideration of human emotions reaches its fully-embraced pinnacle.  It's Miyazaki's most adult film, by a fair measure, which probably accounts for Disney's unenthusiastic promotion and distribution, despite an Oscar nomination (which fell, egregiously, to Disney's own deeply flawed Frozen in the end).  It's the fictionalized story of Jiro Horikoshi, a boy fascinated with flight, who grew into an aeronautical engineer during the run-up to WWII.  This, briefly, led to some low-level "controversy" among low-level thinkers who clearly hadn't seen the movie, or who were simply congenitally incapable of getting the point.  You see, among other airplanes designed by Hoshikoshi, the most notorious was the Zero; one of the fighters used in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and often employed in kamikaze attacks.  Naturally, the usual suspects got all bent out of shape (are they really "out of shape" when they're always IN that shape?) about a film that "glorified" (it didn't) the creator of a plane that was "responsible" (guns don't kill people, but planes do?) for taking so many American lives.  You know, because we're the only nation allowed to engage in nationalism.  So, never mind that that wasn't what the movie was about, and in fact, if you actually SEE the movie and UNDERSTAND it (I know that's a lot to ask of some people), you might find that it includes all kinds of complex emotional content about the tragedy of something that is born out of the spirit of wonder and beauty being used as a tool of war.

From the very beginning, Wind is filled with complicated emotions.  Young Jiro is filled with awe about flight, studying all he can and dreaming about its possibilities at night.  At the same time, he's afraid that his eyesight will preclude him from having anything to do with airplanes, and facing the cultural and economic state of Japan, which is a poor environment for doing cutting-edge engineering.  As Jiro grows, so to does the scale of his life's conflicts.  Flight, his passion, remains a source of hope, but one fraught with the obstacles of reality.  Nothing is ever just one thing, just one shallow interpretation of human emotion.  Characters are often calm in tumultuous situations, and we are filled with the sense of what we would be feeling in those situations, and understand that they must too, but they are prisoner to the need to go on, to keep moving forward within the lives that they must live.  In the good times, there is fear, and in the bad times, there is hope.  While taking a train home from school, there's a devastating earthquake (which is handled like no earthquake I've ever seen before on film, but is immediately recognizable as more realistic in terms of tone), but it's also the event which causes him to meet his future wife.  It's like this throughout the film.  By the final quarter of the film, I felt myself on the verge of tears almost all the time; not because it was sad but because I was feeling so much, and those feelings were frequently conflicting, that I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty and richness of it all. 

They don't hold your hand.  They don't tell you what you should feel.  They don't manipulate the audience with cheap and transparent ploys.  They create places with potency, and allow you to extrapolate the appropriate feeling for yourself.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they should still be niche works of art.  Forget about animated films.  There are very few people making ANY kind of films with this emotional richness today.  Fewer still among Americans, and almost none at all with significant budgets behind them.  For all that Miyazaki and his collaborators at Studio Ghibli have accomplished visually over the years, their greatest works of art may be the rich and varied emotional hues with which they have brought their worlds to life.

The "Best" Movies of 2013

2013 was a year of great change in the "film" and "television" "industry."  Traditional definitions of "film" and "television" became blurrier and the "industry"struggled to keep up with the changes.  Sadly, few of those changes applied to improving the state of story craft.  Growing pains abound.

My standard caveats apply here -- This is a collection of the films I liked best and I make no claim to scientific procedure, objectivity or non-bias.  It's a myth that they exist in Art.  Nevertheless, I call my annual revue a "Best of" because my perspectives are at least as valid as most, and because no one Googles for "Movies Tim Liked."  I can only include the movies I've seen, and I mostly see the movies that interest me.  So that's how that works.

This article may be amended as results filter in.

(Updated 1/30/2014 to include Dallas Buyers Club)


Drama

Dallas Buyers Club - 2013
Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée


The theme of transformation runs deep in Dallas Buyers Club.  The three primary actors (Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto & Jennifer Garner) all transform themselves into their roles, certainly as far as our established expectations of them are concerned.  The men both lost a lot of weight for their roles as sufferers of HIV in the early (and particularly ignorant) days of the AIDS epidemic.  Leto further transformed himself into a man endeavoring to transform himself into a woman.  Garner transformed herself into a woman whose beauty and charm are not defining characteristics.  But the central story is the way that McConaughey's character, Ron Woodroof is transformed from a bird-doggin' cowboy & hustler (rife with bigotry and narrow definitions) into a man who discovers a passion for his own life and the lives of others.  He's made a life & lifestyle of being unattached and undependable, and through the process of forming, running and defending a medicinal buyers club for other HIV patients, he becomes attached to the lives of many, depended upon for their lives.  The acting here is simply extraordinary.  Their transformations are earned through the lives that they've led and the ways that they've been affected by others.  This is, bar none, the best, most honest character development of the year.  Bravo. 

The Wolf of Wall Street - 2013
Written by Terrence Winter
Directed by Martin Scorcese

I am surprised to find myself including this here, because I fully expected to hate spending 3 hours with such aggro asshole characters.  I'm also somewhat surprised to be classifying it as a Drama.  It's easily one of the funniest movies of the year, but I don't necessarily consider that comedy.  The laughs come from the stupidity and excess indulged by the characters, but in their proper context, these things should appall us.  It's a testament to Scorcese's abilities as a filmmaker that we can find such irredeemable scumbags so likeable.  In ways, it's even a horror movie where characters lose their minds and self-destruct, only to spread their zombie virus to a greater, unsuspecting population.  Whatever it is, it's deeply engaging, constantly entertaining and eventually leaves you with something to think about. 


Captain Phillips - 2013
Written by Billy Ray
Directed by Paul Greengrass

Greengrass' direction gives the film a constant sense of momentum that overcomes the viewer's foreknowledge of this recent event from the news.  He's the ideal director for what is essentially a 2 hour chase scene.  Even if WE know what happens, Tom Hanks portrays a Phillips who does not.



 


Dramedy

Her... - 2013
Written & Directed by Spike Jonze

If you have not yet made your peace with Joaquin Phoenix's face, Spike Jonze has made it his business to see that you do.  The reward for spending so much time with his face is that you also get to spend a lot of time with Scarlet Johansson's voice.  Jonze takes a simple idea -- a sad and lonely guy falls in love with the artificial intelligence in his computer's operating system -- and uses that to explore much more human themes.  If you start asking all kinds of stupid geek questions about the sci-fi, you've already missed the point.

Her... isn't about technology.  It's about humanity.



About Time - 2013
Written & Directed by Richard Curtis


About Time is the "Her" you haven't heard of.  Like Her, it uses a simple science-fiction conceit as a conduit for exploring themes of life, love and loss in a gently-paced, contemplative way.  In this case, the conceit is time travel.  Once they turn 21, the men in Tim's family are able to travel back in time, within their own lives.  There are no Terminators here, no slingshots around the sun -- no special effects at all, in fact.  It's not even about time travel, but about savoring life and cherishing what matters.  Posters tout the film as coming from "Love Actually" director Richard Curtis, but jaded skeptics can be encouraged that this is also Black Adder co-creator Richard Curtis.  It's a thoughtful and tender look at the lessons that Tim's special perspective affords him as he navigates through his young life.  Really, just a beautiful little motion picture.










Comedy

In A World... - 2013
Written & Directed by Lake Bell

Oh wow, I just loved the crap out of this movie.  Lake Bell plays a woman with aspirations of making it as a voiceover actor in movie trailers like her industry-legend father, despite a male stranglehold on the business.  Why did I like it so much?  Well, it had a story with a beginning, middle and ending.  It's filled with endearing characters.  Even the unlikeable characters are likeable.  It's really the characters that make it.  I found that I didn't only care about the central plot, but the little subplots and side characters.  Heck, I hoped they'd all get lucky.  I would gladly spend more time in a world... written and directed by Lake Bell.



The Brass Teapot - 2013
Written by Tim Macy
Directed by Ramaa Mosley


Now I don't know about you, but I kind of thought that Juno Temple stole every scene in which che appeared in Killer Joe, which is how I found my way to The Brass Teapot.  A young couple that just can't seem to get it together discovers an ancient teapot that rewards its possessor when they cause themselves pain.  Hilarity ensues.  The story gets a little silly and the screenplay doesn't always follow the threads of logic, but it does so in service to its emotional themes and the laffs, of course.  It's like a really good game of "What Would You Do?"  Juno Temple steals the teapot, and the show.



The To Do List - 2013
Written & Directed by Maggie Carey


The To Do List is an early 90s teen comedy made by the people who grew up on them.  Aubrey Plaza finished high school as the expert in everything but irresponsible teen sex, so in characteristic form, she makes a list to address her personal enrichment.  This leads, as one might suspect, to many disastrous and painfully funny situations and all appropriate tripping over emotions.  Plaza is adorable, hilarious and fearless.










Animated

The Croods - 2013
Written & Directed by Chris Sanders & Kirk DeMicco


I tend to be a skeptic about Dreamworks Animation.  They don't aim as high as Disney and Pixar and as a result they hit the mark anywhere from marginally to drastically lower.  The Croods is one of their absolute best.  The simple concept of following the adventures of a caveman family as they seek a new home open the door for themes of family, love, fear and growth... as well as some pretty relentless hi-jinks.  It's kind of a wonder that the film  got past whatever department it is at the studios that worry what the Bible Belt thinks.  Beyond the obvious evolutionary themes, the metaphors about paranoia and ignorance run deep.  Extra points for a husky female protagonist without the slightest of royal leanings.



Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 - 2013
Directed by Kris Pearn & Cody Cameron
See link for writing team


The first movie turned a 30 page picture book with no actual plot into a surprisingly funny feature length adventure.  The sequel picks up immediately after and keeps the party going.  Flint and the gang are back, and out of their elements the regular world following the megafood destruction of Swallow Falls.  When the megafood goes wild - literally - Flint teams up with his childhood science hero, Professor V, to get to the bottom of things.  But is the threat what he thinks it is?  Dunt dun DUN!  Just as zany, just as funny as the original.  No princesses.

Frozen - 2013
Written & Directed by Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck


Bring on the princesses!

Disney's CG animation has really hit its stride.  The art quality (GORGEOUS) is second to none -- even Pixar -- and the content is all Disney.  Gender roles notwithstanding, Frozen's princesses Anna and Elsa each face their own unique struggles with loss, loneliness and sadness.  Much of this can be blamed on their STUPID, STUPID PARENTS who make one choice out of fear that very nearly destroys both their daughters -- but (ahem), that's not what the movie is about.  I found the story to be one the the most emotionally resonant in Disney's catalog.  While I, personally, do not need musical numbers in my animation, I understand and accept them as characteristic of a Disney production.  That said, the songs in Frozen SUH-HUCK  These are THE WORST songs in any Disney film that I am aware of.  Like, Top 40 radio bad... TODAY'S Top 40 radio.  At least the upshot of that is that they're forgettable.





Action

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - 2013
Written by Simon Beaufoy & Michael Arndt
Directed by Francis Lawrence


Catching Fire succeeds in all the places where the first Hunger Games frustrated and disappointed me, and it does most of the things that the first did well even better.  Purely in terms of story, we get more and deeper from both the characters, and the bleak world in which they live.  I had a hard time enjoying the first because I simply couldn't get caught up in rooting for one victim over another.  I was frustrated by the lack of address to the problems of their society.  Catching Fire goes all-in.  The political landscape becomes central to everything that takes place.  There's much more context and meaning, and it makes the entire movie better.  This is one of the few occasions in which less Stanley Tucci is a good thing.  Further, the replacement of Gary Ross with Francis Lawrence is a great boon.  Ross' annoying-as-all-hell shaky cam is gone, giving us a camera that respects the epic nature of the tale.  It's a shame that Hunger Games didn't shoot with this team, but better late than never.  Catching Fire establishes the feverish momentum to propel the series into its 2-part conclusion.



The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 2013
Directed by Peter Jackson
See link for writing team


Bigger, wilder, and more apocryphal than the first!  Chapter 2 sees the company of dwarves through Mirkwood to Mount Doom, setting the stage for the Battle of the Five Armies.  More than any of the Tolkien films before, this one feels like Peter Jackson has learned how to play with all his tools a good deal more.  What am I telling you for?  This is Jackson's 5th Tolkien film.  As a viewer, you know if you're in or out by now... but if you haven't gotten to this one yet, just know that it's more and better.



Elysium - 2013
Written & Directed by Neill Blomkamp


Blomkamp is back with his style of believable, near-future sci-fi.  Elysium is the name of a space station where the world's richest people have fled to escape the poverty, overpopulation and environmental crises from which they have profited for so long.  Meanwhile, back on Earth, things are pretty desperate and dismal for Matt Damon and the rest of the humans living under the robotically enforced thumb of Elysium's plutocratic leaders.  This is one of the most believable futures we've seen in years.  It is, in many ways, a horrific manifestation of our fears.  We know that we're on a path to a future like this, but we feel powerless to stop it.  I think that sensation gives Elysium a unique dynamic.  We're not merely concerned about the characters' futures; we're concerned about our own.

The corniness of the villains threatens some of the verisimilitude, but by mercy's grace, they make up a small percentage of the film.  Jodie Foster should be stopped from doing foreign accents henceforth.  It's like they really wanted Cate Blanchett or Tilda Swinton and told Jodie just to go with that.  She gnawed the digital scenery.  As did Sharlto Copley as the psychotic unfrozen caveman mercenary.  They both could have dialed it back about 50% and we'd still hate them just as much; just for the right reasons.




Horror

Warm Bodies - 2013
Written & Directed by Jonathan Levine




This is sure to keep me out of the Hardcore Zombie Lovers' Club, but then I never sent in my application.  Told from the perspective of a teenage zombie, Warm Bodies twists and violates several of the conventions of the traditional zombie movie, including the most unforgivable; having the gall to end with... hope.  It's been unfairly lumped in with the likes of Twilight for blending a classic monster with a teenage romance, but heart, humor and characters with more depth than Twilight's paper dolls make all the difference.  This is a strong contender for my favorite zombie movie ever, simply because it so refuses to be a "zombie movie."



The Conjuring - 2013
Written by Chad & Carey Hayes
Directed by James Wan


The Conjuring is a good, old-fashioned, crap-your-pants haunted house and possession story, told for modern audiences by James "SAW" Wan.  As such, it benefits in terms of some deep, bone-chilling frights, but it also suffers from a slightly overblown Act 3.  Most people won't care; the intended audience in particular.

Insidious: Chapter 2 - 2013
Written by Leigh Whannel
Directed by James Wan


Jennifer Lawrence and Matthew McConaughey are probably the only people in Hollywood to have had a bigger year than James Wan.  Not only did he have The Conjuring in theaters, but he also released Insidious: Chapter 2 (while filming the next Fast & Furious).  This sequel accomplishes the never-before-imagined feat of not only being as-good-if-not-better than its predecessor, but actually makes the first film BETTER by making more sense of its mysteries.

Unless Chapter 3 completely bones it, the Insidious films are on track to becoming future classics of horror.







Observations:

A lot of these picks happen to have the same writer and director.  One suspects that that's no coincidence.

Rob Corddry is in both In A World... and Warm Bodies, and he gave really surprising performances in both.  It's really nice seeing him display tenderness and vulnerability for a change.

Yes, it's true that my own tastes tend to favor a certain kindness in the film's content.  I believe that this isn't JUST because I'm such an inveterate softy, but because so many of our films have become more crass and cruel.