Revisiting the Cursed Dreams of Hayao Miyazaki

For the most recent issue of the kottke.org weekly newsletter, Tim wrote about watching almost all of legendary director Hayao Miyazaki’s films, from Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind to The Wind Rises.

The unsurprising verdict: these movies are amazing works of art, each and every one. I was especially charmed by two movies I’ve always mentally skimmed over: Laputa — Castle in the Sky and Whisper of the Heart. They’re insanely different movies. Laputa is maybe as close as Miyazaki gets to a good guy vs. bad guy epic (although even the pirates who start the film as antagonists end up being comrades by the end of it), and Whisper of the Heart, despite a couple of fantasy sequences, is even closer to straight realism than Miyazaki’s last film, The Wind Rises.

Also probably unsurprising: for allaying anxiety, the movies are a mixed bag, to say the least. There’s an escapism factor to each of them, or rather, an absorption factor, that’s extremely welcome. But they’re also emotionally complex fables about self-destruction, the need for love, and the brutality of the future.

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• Hayao Miyazaki
• movies
• Tim Carmody