International Film Critique

1.      Title of film:

Princess Mononoke

2.      Year of release:

July 12, 1997

3.      Language of the original film:

Japanese

4.      Director:

Hayao Miyazaki

5.      Actors:

Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Gillian Anderson, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, Jada Pinkett Smith, Keith David, John DiMaggio, John DeMita, Tara Strong, and Debi Derryberry.

6.      Give a brief plot summary.

The main character Ashitaka was attacked by the great boar spirit Naga. Because of his encounter and fight with Naga Ashitaka was left with a demon mark on his arm. The tribal wise lady told him that he would die no matter what. She then told him it would be best to leave the village and never return. Ashitaka then leaves on a journey in order to find the spirit of the forest. He hopes that the spirit of the forest who takes life and gives life will know what he should do with the rest of his life. On his way to find the forest spirit Ashitaka encounters a town called Iron Town. In this town he meets the leader named Lady Eboshi. Lady Eboshi has created Iron Town when no one else wanted it and turned it into a productive iron smith. By doing this the emperor becomes envious of the iron and sends and attack raid to destroy Iron Town. Lady Eboshi isn’t worried about the empire that wants her iron, she is only worried about the forest gods that are attacking Iron Town. Princess Mononoke (San) has declaired she is going to kill Lady Eboshi for destroying the forest. During this time the Boar tribe decide they are going to attack Iron town in an attempt to stop them from destroying the forest. The residents of Iron town defeat the Boar tribe and use their skins to convince their blind leader to lead them to the forest spirit. One he leads them there Lady Eboshi decapitates the forest spirit that then turns into a black mass that kills anything it touches in an attempt to get its head back. After following Lady Eboshi San and Ashitaka are able to stop her and give the forest spirit its head back. The forest spirit then heals Ashitaka and the forest returns to life.

7.      Analyze the social and philosophical issues the film addresses. Make sure you include the point of view of the movie, the context of the movie, what audience the movie is targeting, and why.

The big issue that the movie addresses is the relationship between nature and humans. The humans of Iron Town want to chop down trees to heat the forges to forge their iron while the spirit gods of the forest are trying to drive them away and rebuild the forest. The Ape tribe wants to eat the humans so they can plant more trees and rebuild the forest. The Wolf tribe wants to kill Lady Eboshi. Also the Boar tribe wants them gone and wants to attack Iron Town in an attempt to drive them away. The humans want to destroy the spirit of the forest so that the spirit gods will become regular animals and leave them alone as they mine their iron. An even bigger problem is that the guns that Lady Eboshi and her town use in order to fight the animals leave the bullets in the spirit gods and turn them into demons. The demons don’t care about anything and have super strength and want to kill everything they come across. It was because of this that Naga was turned into a demon and attacked Ashitaka’s town. This lead to him receiving super demon strength. Ashitaka used this super demon strength to become the mediator between the humans and the spirit gods. When San came to Iron Town to kill Lady Eboshi, he stopped their fight and brought San to safety. Ashitaka came to take the stand where he believes that the humans and the forest gods could live together in harmony. Throughout the course of the movie he is constantly trying to convince both the humans and the spirit gods to live together instead of fighting. This theme of humans and nature living together in harmony is the main theme of the movie. From this we can learn that it is possible to have humans and the land live together if neither tries to destroy the other. There are also other sub themes such as the dangers of greediness. Jigo, who is a monk, is working with Lady Eboshi in order to kill the forest spirit so that he can bring the head to the Emperor. He does this because the Emperor promises a mountain of gold to anyone who can make him live forever. He also believe that the spirit of the forest’s head can make you live forever because it is the god of life and death. For this reason Jigo decides that he is going to help Lady Eboshi kill the spirit of the forest and get its head to receive a mountain of gold from the Emperor. He doesn’t care that taking the spirit of the forest’s head will turn it into a wrathful god that kills everything until it gets its head back and that the forest will die without it. It was only Ashitaka and San who catch him and force him to give the head back that makes him finally see that what he did was wrong. This is important because it teaches us to not be greedy or it could lead to the death of many innocent people and to nature. We have to learn from Jigo’s mistakes and not make them ourselves.

8.      What is your response to the message of the film? Why do you respond this way?

My response the message of this film was that I agreed with it. I think that humans and nature can live together in harmony. They just have to try to get along with each other. The biggest problem in this relationship is the humans.  The biggest problem is that the humans are destroying the forest which is the animal’s home. The animals fight back in order to protect their home but this just makes the humans even angrier and then they retaliate and kill the animals. I think that the animals and nature could give up some land to the humans and in return the humans not destroy the forest and kill the animals. I find that if humans and nature work together they can not only not destroy each other but bring out the best of each other. Humans can use their knowledge in order to help heal plants and animals and make them grow better. Nature and animals can provide good and healthy food sources for humans along with giving them a wonderful place to live, explore, and enjoy. Together humans and nature can live in a mutually beneficial relationship. As for the greed portion of the film I think that no one should be greedy. Greed always makes me think of the capitol in the Hunger Games. It makes me think how they would greedily horde all of the riches and food for themselves and make the districts live in terrible conditions, practically as slaves barely surviving off of their meager earnings.

9.      What cultural differences did you notice about the film?

I noticed that there were a lot of cultural differences from our movies. Even from the beginning the outfits and building that they live in are far different from any American clothing or dwellings. They often wear a lot more layers of clothing than we ever have here. They also use face masks pretty often when I can’t think of any Americans who cover their faces with masks. The buildings were primitive, wooden, and tall. While the movie was set in an old time period the buildings still were far different from any American buildings. As the movie progresses you also saw them eating Japanese food and it is different from any American food. They also used chop sticks which is a very Asian chose of utensil. Another big difference from American films that I noticed was the amount of violence that it had. There was a lot of decapitation and chopping off of limbs in the movie that I don’t think would be allowed in American movies unless there was a higher rating on the movie. Another difference that I found was that women had many positions of leadership in this movie. In an American film this would be very rare or nonexistent because America is a male dominated society. I am not sure if all Japanese movies portray women in a position of power or if it was just that one. I found that the Japanese have a very different set of customs and values that they put into their movies than what we put into our movies.

10.  What techniques did the filmmaker use that were different from what you see in the films you normally watch?

The techniques used in this movie were very different from those of usual American movies especially since it was an anime. Even compared to American cartoons it was very different. In the anime the screen moves a lot different from how I was used to and it took some time to get adjusted to. There would often be sections were the screen would look around like a giant panorama. It would also do these crazy zooms that look weird and took time to get used to. The anime was also very fast and sometimes hard to follow. It was also interesting to see the difference in an anime in comparison to a cartoon. In anime there was a lot more attention to detail. There were complex light patterns that came into play along with shadows of trees that wouldn’t be added in a cartoon because it would have been a lot of work for pretty much nothing. It was interesting to see how all of these details and light patterns were added with such intricacy while in an American cartoon they wouldn’t even be there.

11.  Why do you think I assign a foreign film?

I think that you had us watch foreign films in order to further understand other cultures. By having us watch other cultures movies it exposes us to how they think in their daily lives and they customs that they have. This is probably one of the best ways to study the humanities because it can easily show a people’s beliefs including during different time periods by older or newer movies.