In this column, we at the Screengrab discuss movies fit for children.
If you are vaguely aware of the state of children's movies, you know
that most of them are animated affairs involving rapid-fire references
to pop culture that, strangely enough, few under the age of 31 could
possibly understand. Only rarely do filmmakers decide to make movies
that appeal to anything deeper than a child's love of a sugar rush.
Despite the odds, some brave souls still manage to create great kid
movies, and this column will seek to weed wheat from chaff. This being
the first edition, we'll start with some low-hanging fruit: my
3-year-old son's all-time favorite movie, My Neighbor Totoro.
My Neighbor Totoro is the flagship movie for the Japanese
Studio Ghibli, which is known for the animated works of Hayao Miyazaki
and Isao Takahata. Totoro is a Miyazaki movie throughout, built on a
deep reverence for nature, characters who are well-observed and
nuanced, and a ton of empathy for the viewpoint of each character, no
matter how child-like (as opposed to childish) that viewpoint may be.
The
plot revolves around two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, who move with their
father, a university professor, to a rural house to be closer to their
mother, who is sick in a nearby hospital. One day, while Satsuki (the
older sister) is at school, Mei sees a little bunny-eared critter that
can make itself invisible nosing around their house. Being too young
to know how unusual such a creature is, Mei follows it into the woods
and lands on the belly of a giant, fuzzy version of the same creature,
Totoro. In translation, Totoro is identified as a various points of
the story as a troll or a forest spirit. He helps plants grow, summons
a catbus (yep, part cat/part bus) that, incidentally, creates the wind,
and takes the kids for a ride on a spinning top. One of Miyazaki's
nice touches is that Totoro is clearly inhuman, often shown with the
dull staring eyes and blank face of an animal, but he still has an
obvious affection for the girls.
(The clip above is from the scene where Satsuki first meets Totoro in the undubbed Japanese version. I should tell you that the international distributor is Disney, and the English dub is excellent, so don't think I'm advising you to show a subtitled movie to your pre-schooler. I'm dense, but not that dense.)
It's one of two Miyazaki movies that's almost completely devoid of
conflict, which makes it ideal for the pre-K set. The tension of the
story comes when Mei wanders off through the Japanese countryside,
desperate to get to her mother in the hospital. My son finds this part
thrilling. It plays to pre-K fears -- the lost child, the coming dark
-- without getting too violent or confusing. It's good for adults,
too, who may at this point be lulled into a zen stupor. Not in a bad
way, I mean, but in the way of someone staring contemplatively at the
wind rippling along the water, head somewhere between fond memories and
meditative no-thought. The dreaminess of Totoro is a positive, but
when Mei wanders off, she breaks the calm in a naturalistic way that
propels the story to its conclusion. Or semi-conclusion. There's a
few loose ends that are resolved in stills over the end credits (which
has an incredibly annoying song, I believe written by Miyazaki himself,
that my kids adore), but even without their resolution in the narrative
itself, it feels like a good place to end the story. Good enough, at
least. It's not like life is full of clear endings, and the trueness
to life is perhaps the most wonderful and magical selling point in this
story of little girls who meet an anthropomorphic forest spirit.
The other Miyazaki movie that my son loves is Kiki's Delivery
Service, which is similarly low on conflict. Most of Miyazaki's movies
have moments of violence, which although only the first few have
unambiguously evil characters (the first two, actually, if you don't
count his Lupin III movie, and I generally don't). Miyazaki's humanism
comes bounding to the fore in Totoro, with its insistence that evil and
good are mostly beside the point, and it holds sway even through his
more conflicted movies. This is one reason why he is not simply a
great animator, but a great filmmaker.
His more recent movies have been too violent for my kids as of yet. We
have let him watch some parts of Spirited Away, but much of that movie
is geared for kids who are a bit more mature, I think. Princess
Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle are not even on the table because
little kids don't want to see people hacked up and bombs falling. I'm pretty sure that was the message of a Mr. Roger's Neighorhood we watched the other day, at least. I understand that Miyazaki's
2008 movie Ponyo On the Cliff By The Sea has been compared to Totoro by
those who've seen it, but it is not due for an international release
until next year. Until then, we'll stick with Totoro.
Links: The Screengrab Salutes The Top Twenty Animated Feature Films.
