Ponyo

Ponyo

100 Minutes

There’s no need to heap piles of praise upon Hayao Miyazaki. We all already know he’s a master of his craft. His production company, Studio Ghibli, creates cartoons that can make you cry. To call him the Japanese Walt Disney is a misnomer, as Disney was never so intimately involved in his feature-length animated productions as Miyazaki is (the man’s pushing 70 and he still personally hand-draws parts of his films). Besides, we all know Osamu Tezuka is the Japanese Walt Disney. Yes, you should know who that is.

Just when every Miyazaki film seems like his last (he’s been threatening to retire probably since 1979′s Castle of Cagliostro), he comes out with something new and fresh and we’d all really save money if we invested in a few handkerchiefs instead of all those tissues. So here comes Ponyo, about a cute fishy thing that wants to be human because she’s met a precious five-year-old who lives with his mother in a quaint little seaside town. It’s guaranteed gangbusters: people love Miyazaki-styled kids (see: My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) and marine life (see: The Little Mermaid which was inspiration for Ponyo).

With its provincial, slice-of-life trappings and heart-wrenching cuteness, Ponyo is more in line with Miyazaki’s more kid-friendly works like Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service than his more intense, political masterpieces like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Wisely, Miyazaki eschews an identifiable villain for his vague take on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale; unlike Disney’s, which blames the evils of the aquatic world on a fat lady with tentacles. The closest you have to a villain is Ponyo’s father, Fujimoto (strangely resembling a Tezuka character with his big pointy nose), who seems like the bad guy only because he’s worried and overprotective. Rather, the threat comes from the consequences of Ponyo’s actions, which upset the very “fabric of reality” (which sounds like a stumble in the English translation to me). Miyazaki surprisingly fails to convince us of such a grand threat (usually that sort of environmental conflict is his forte), but its manifestation through intense storms and crashing waves is frightening and beautifully rendered.

Typically English dubs of Japanese animation are painful to listen to, voice acting in Japan being a legitimate form of acting rather than what it is here: a job that, at its best, keeps Mark Hamill employed and prevents Mike Myers from manifesting in real life like some kind of comedic Bloody Mary. Prestige has done Studio Ghibli well, as it now affords the benefit of working with Disney, whose chief creative officer is John Lasseter — not only a founder of Pixar, but a rabid Miyazaki fan. As such, Disney was able to rope in major talent like Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Tina Fey and Matt Damon for the English dub of Ponyo. Most surprising is how close the dub sticks to the original with its use of Japanese names and honorifics. In the past, those would have been the first to go.

Hand-drawn animated features are a rarity these days, which is regretful. Computer-generated animation puts too much stress on making elements appear “real” and have substantial, consistent physical presence when the roots of animation were all about literally stretching those physical boundaries. The black & white world of Mickey Mouse was weird and amorphous, and Felix the Cat was able to transform his tail into a question mark with absolutely no reason whatsoever. Ponyo reminds us of that exciting transgression of the physical, with its fishy-thing that transforms into a froggy, chicken-y thing and then a little girly thing. Ponyo’s mother is the epitome of this amorphousness: her vastness fluctuates and her long tendrils of hair flow out into infinity like red smoke.

Soon enough Miyazaki-sensei will retire, and while Studio Ghibli shows no sign of closing up shop, it’d be a true gift to see the master himself bow out with one final sweeping epic — as all masters should. If Ponyo were his last film, however, I wouldn’t complain. Ponyo, while smaller than even his most whimsical productions, is sweet and touching, plucking all the right strings of even the blackest heart. It’s this Miyazaki that people will remember.

Now where are those handkerchiefs…

by Danny Djeljosevic