My Neighbor Totoro (1988) 86m
Stow this one away for a future pick-me-up should you ever be bedridden, nostalgic, isolated, or feel yourself deserving of a treat. It took consecutive hits PRINCESS MONONOKE and SPIRITED AWAY to bring animator Hayao Miyazaki to the attention of English-speaking audiences outside his native Japan, and it's a measure of respect for his films that they screen in festivals with the choice of dubbed or subtitled versions. Normally I wouldn't stand for watching an animated film with subs, but MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO has such assured naturalism and incidental detail that it seems we are watching animated actors, not just cartoon characters. The opening title sequence doesn't promise much - it preps us to expect some kind of unwatchable preschooler fare - and the beginning of the film is downplayed and simple, but as any previous viewer of TOTORO knows, this is the essence of the film's charm. Miyazaki gives us a break from the usual frantic adventures associated with animation and presents us with an animated representation of the real world, in which fantastical elements are introduced with rational explanations, so that when the real business of fantasy begins they seem part and parcel of the way of things. Miyazaki likes this sort of fusion: he would slip fantasy into reality even more gently in his following feature, the enchanting KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE, and then reverse the idea in SPIRITED AWAY by introducing elements of the real world to a supernatural one.
As TOTORO begins we see Satsuki and her younger sister Mei moving to a family house in the country. Escaping presumably from Tokyo, where their father works, they joyously regard the weathered buildings, dusty attics, wild garden and forest as a world new and magical enough in its own right. Their father also is sympathetic to the natural spirits that pervade their home and surroundings. Into this environment is introduced a large, benevolent creature given the name 'Totoro' by Mei. Totoro is a clumsy-looking (yet graceful) cross between a rabbit, an owl and the Cheshire Cat (he's upstaged Catwise by an creature even more wondrous as the story unfolds). The presence of Totoro is used sparingly, and thus very effectively: we do not really know much about him beyond the experiences of the two girls and their own knowledge of him is secondary to their intuitive understanding. They accept him; we accept him.
I'm sure that what makes TOTORO such a warm film for many viewers is its co-existence of the natural and preternatural worlds. As we have come to expect animated films to indulge themselves in the impossible, it comes as a pleasant diversion to watch Miyazaki's characters spending 'animated' time doing ordinary things - I love TOTORO's fantasy landscape but also get absorbed in simple scenes such as when the girls eat fresh vegetables or wait patiently at a bus stop. TOTORO is observant without showing off how much effort it is putting into its detail (look at the difference between the way Satsuki and Mei run for example): at one instant its characters may appear cartoonish while in the next they are grounded by the same laws of physics that apply to all of us (I find those huge, rubbery, screaming maws irritating, which is why it was nice to see Satsuki's one genuinely emotional reaction - when she cries over her mother's illness - animated realistically with a normally-proportioned mouth). There's no gratuitous slapstick; there are no corny dramatics; there's no 'message'; there are, thankfully, no songs other than those diegetically necessary to the action; and, despite the paradox, the characters are not two-dimensional. The new millennium may have ushered in CGI as the animation tool of choice, but as Miyazaki's legacy shows, it will never replicate the human touch that defines cel animation. It takes a huge effort to produce a film like TOTORO, yet it looks effortless. That's an admirable achievement.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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