- An essay by Daniel Thomas of the Ghibli Blog -
PART 1:
Okay, I'm going to try to be as quick as possible, since I have the use of the Dunn Bros. Coffee shop computer for 15 minutes. I wanted to get into this topic last month before getting sidetracked (yet again), but it's a pretty beefy topic, and will probably require multiple posts.
One of the essential texts that should be in the hands of all visual artists - painters, cartoonists, animators, filmmakers, what have you - is ScottMcCloud's "Understanding Comics." It's also crucial for anyone who wants to understand the visual arts, and appreciate how the modern-day mediums of cartooning and animation stem back to the roots of our written language. In short, you need this book, or graphic novel, if you will. I personally place it alongside Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga and Art Spiegelman's Maus as the crowning masterpieces of the graphic novel.
Now, one important point Scott McCloud teaches is the reason why the cartoon character has such a universal appeal. In short - and this really is the short, short version of this - it is the iconic nature of the cartoon that creates its subjective appeal. We identify with Bugs Bunny. We identify with Mickey Mouse. We pour ourselves into the characters, and the more iconic, the more abstract - think of a smiley face - the more universal. So goes the theory. As a drawn character becomes more realistic, it becomes more distant, more objective. We aren't called upon to identify with it as much.
The best cartoonists have tried to strike a balance, depending on what they wanted to communicate. From Sunday morning comics, to Jack Kirby's superheroes, to theavant garde of underground and foreign comics. This is the general rule.
Now, animation, by its nature - that is to say, the technical means it is made - requires characters to be somewhat iconic and abstract. It's partly because this is easier to create, and this is also very largely because of Walt Disney's early experiments in the early days of cartoons. He and his animators learned, through trial and error, how to effectively create characters that audiences could identify with and connect to.
This touches upon another crucial subject that I need to really get into, the issue of movement and character being defined through action. It's arguably the most significant break between the animation style in America, and what evolved in Japan during its evolution (1950's and 1960's) into modern anime.
Anyway, the key thing here to pay attention to is that American animation is built upon the notion of subjective storytelling. You have a central character, or a small collection of characters, that you are called upon to identify with and connect to. This is pretty much how we do things here.
However, the Japanese master Isao Takahata, the leader of the Horus Rebellion in 1968, has always staked a different view. His philosophy has been largely built around the rejection of the subjective model. Instead, he embraced a notion of objective animation storytelling. It's very different from the Western notion of "objectivity" and it carries its own traits. And I believe, personally, that this is absolutely essential for us to understand if we are ever to understand Takahata, as well as his peers like Miyazaki.
Oh, look! Time's up! I've gotta go! Sorry. We'll have to continue this, hopefully tomorrow, and go into greater detail. For now, here's your homework assignment - watch the last episode of Anne of Green Gables again. Take note to how the characters are portrayed. Ask yourself, how is this different, structurally, from American animation. How is this version of Anne different from the Canadian television series?
PART 2:
Alright, now for another (hopefully) quick installment of our little Takahata chat. Another 15-20 minutes at Dunn Bros in Uptown Minneapolis.
Anyway, I was highlighting the subjective narration that dominates Western animation. It's dependent to a great extent on what Scott McCloud describes as the icon, that simple, abstract figure that becomes a black hole into which we pour ourselves into. We identify with Bugs Bunny, we want to be just like Bugs, and to an extent, we are. We are inhabiting the cartoon and comic character.
This is especially prevalent in animation, which mixes iconic characters with detailed backgrounds. There are a variety of artistic styles to choose from, ranging from naturalistic (Bambi) to stylized (Chuck Jones) to the surreal and psychedelic (all those cartoon shorts from the '70s on Sesame Street). Then, most cynically, there are the cartoons which are little more than overt toy commercials and propaganda for a whole line of cheesy merchandise. Into this circle of hell we will throw most afternoon cartoon shows, and, sadly, most of today's feature-film animation.
The key to subjective narration is the primary focus on the main character. Because we inhabit the hero, in a sense, they can become our tour guide, our archetype, through the dream worlds within. We are being taken through the lands of Middle Earth, or Bambi's forest, or inside the belly of a whale. And there's little doubt who we are supposed to root for. The world of the story literally revolves around the hero.
An excellent example for us - and this is perfect because it stretches outside animation - is the Canadian television productions of Anne of Green Gables. I'm thinking of the live-action version from the '80s, and not that animated cartoon that slogged its way onto PBS (why couldn't PBS instead carry, say, Heidi?) that we're all best to forget. This Anne is rooted very firmly in subjective storytelling. In this production, Anne Shirley is our heroine. She's the one we can most identify with.
It's not a matter of choosing whom to identify with; by subjectifying the main character, this simple isn't possible. Everything is perceived from her point-of-view. All of the adults are seen from her eyes, from her perspective. This is probably the easiest path to take when adapting Maude Mongomery's novel, since it's mostly comprised of Anne's chatty dialog. You could probably do a one-woman play about Anne without missing much.
For me, I think this was the secret reason I never liked the Canadian Anne. I saw it in 8th Grade English class, which was around the time that Anne first aired. The girls in the classroom, naturally, loved it. They cheered with Anne, their own personal savior. The boys were mostly bored. For me, the reason I couldn't enjoy it was because of the way all the adult characters were portrayed. Marilla Cuthbert, most ofall, was an ogre, a menacing, frightening figure that towered over your head. I could never relate to her as an actual person. I still cannot.
Marilla was depicted the way that Anne would see, or, more precisely, theway the filmmakers want you to see her as you identify with Anne's point-of-view. Marilla and everyone else could never be seen as anything else than emotional sketches to boo or cheer in tune with Anne's fortunes. This is all too often the way these kinds of stories are told, and to be perfectly honest, I find it opressive. It's not honest, and it's not fair. This is an easier way to write, so I cannot fault anyone for choosing this path, but it is ultimately less rewarding.
In the hands of the worst offenders - hell, everything that hit theatres last year - this is beyond patronizing. It is manipulation.
As is so happens, Isao Takahata holds nearly the same view. He's devoted his career to moving in the opposite direction, into the realm of objective storytelling. When you consider the iconic nature of animation, this is a radical break. Perhaps it's merely an extension of the cinema that strongly influenced him - Renoir, Fellini, French New Wave, and of course Ozu. But I think there's more at play here.
Next time, I'll go into greater detail, and I'll explain how Takahata uses objective storytelling to create the definitive Anne. Time's up! Gotta go!
PART 3:
Alright, it's time for part three of our Takahata Isao discussion. I think by now I've given you a clear indication of the Western subjective storytelling style, and just what I have in mind when I use the term. This is pretty much the dominant method of telling stories, both in live-action and animation, but especially in animation. Now let's take a look at the alternative.
Takahata is the great champion of objective storytelling. By this I mean a number of things. First and foremost, objectivism rejects the notion of a central character as a void, a black hole into which we pour ourselves. It rejects the notion of the tour-guide hero, with whom we are meant to almost solely identify with.
I guess a better way to think of objectivism is to think of distance. We do not inhabit the inner minds and souls of the hero. We take a step back, and observe them from a distance. We are not so completely detached that we lose all emotional connection. On the contrary, by becoming objective we can embrace characters and stories that are far more emotionally involving and intimate than the subjective style can achieve.
The subjective hero charges at the screen, at us, desperately screaming, "Hey! Love me! Pay some attention to me!" It is a cry of desperation. "I can tell jokes and stories! I'll sing and dance for you! We can learn...(cue violins)...valuable mowal wessons!! Love me! I used to do standup!! I used to be famous!!"
Subjective cartoon characters is where overripe comics go when they die. Remember when Robin Williams was funny? Remember when Eddie Murphy was dangerous? Remember when Carrot Top got more attention than Bill Hicks?
Oops, sorry 'bout that last one. It's always been a thorn in my side. Now that I think about it, Carrot Top should do animated cartoons. He's been a desperate cartoon character all his life.
Takahata's objective hero is not any of those. They are complex, fully fleshed-out human beings, full of the qualities, gifts and foibles that we all possess. They are the characters from literature, the characters from Shakespeare. They do not rush to meet us, desperate for our approval. They live their lives completely and fully, just as we live as seperate beings.
We meet the objective hero on his terms. Not ours. That's probably the key statement.
Takahata has keenly noted that the best literary characters are beloved because of this, because they exist at a slight distance from us. We identify with them because they remind us of ourselves. They are not a black hole that we inhabit. This hero is a person that we befriend.
I'm pretty thouroughly convinced that this is the most important trait of Takahata's works. This is the most important lesson that we can learn. I've written and raged many times about the current state of Western movies, and American animation in particular. We've all been doing this, most of all the many skilled writers, artists, and filmmakers who work in the animation industry. We're not happy with the current arrangement. Nobody's needs are being met - neither the audience nor the artists. And, eventually, as the marketplace becomes saturated with a sea of cheap imitators, the needs of the businessmen will be unmet. We need to change the current course if we are to have any kind of a future.
Employing the objective style just may be that key.
Let's take a quick look at some of the advantages of objectivism, and I'll have to go into detail on the next posts this weekend. But here's the short-short version:
- Better defined characters that portray greater depth. Characters with a wider dramatic range, with more complexity.
- A greater attention to realism, both through characters and through the dramatic form. Needless to say, cheesy melodrama will have to go by the wayside. We're going to have to produce better scripts.
- Stories that demonstrate greater respect for the audience. Films that demand the audience's attention and their intelligence. These are not escapist amusement park rides. If you want cheap thrills, then play Nintendo (and even Nintendo's giving you a real workout these days).
- Multiple points-of-view. Freed from the need to place the hero at the center of the universe, we can now present the world through more eyes. We can see everything in greater detail, with more complexity and luminosity this way.
- The hero can be shown to possess faults. They can say or do things that earn our criticism. They can be flawed human beings. They can make mistakes. We can disagree with their choices, and understand just why the mistakes were made. In fact, objectivism requires central characters to possess faults and failings.
These are the short bullet points I wanted to highlight this time. We'll go into detail on each one, giving examples from Takahata's work. I also want to touch on his other main characteristics, from his documentary realism, attention to human drama, emotion, and psychology. Time's up, once again! Gotta go!
PART 4:
Time for part four of the never-ending lecture on Isao Takahata's objectivist filmmaking. I think the theme of this installment will be, "The Paradox."
When trying to describe the idea of objective narration in animation, I'm beset by a rather complex paradox. It's a great challenge to successfully pull it off, and yet I still feel as though I'm working my way through to understanding it. It's the central paradox of those exercise.
Perhaps your first experience with a Takahata film was much like mine, seeing Grave of the Fireflies on video, years before any of his other works were available here in the States. Watching that movie for the first time was emotionally overwhelming, nearly devestating. I had to actually pause the movie halfway through in order to build up the strength to sit through the rest of it.
My first thoughts after finally reaching the end of Fireflies were a mixture of tears, sorrow, and confusion. The sadness I'm sure you all know. The confusion came later, after my brain started asserting itself again. "Just what the hell happened here?" I thought. "How is this possible?" And the clincher - "What else do ya got?"
The very idea that an animated cartoon could pull such strong emotions out of me was baffling. Certainly, Walt Disney treaded on the waters of pathos with Bambi and Dumbo, but this was a quantum leap forward. This was the full immersion, the suicide leap into the river. Butch Cassidy would be proud. That basic question is at the heart of the mystery.
Remember that Scott McCloud writes to us about the iconic power of the cartoon. It's strength comes from its abstraction, its subjective ability to draw in the readers (and viewers). Iconic characters are employed for viewer identification. This is one of the cornerstones of animation, almost by necessity.
There are various degrees as you go from pure realism to pure abstraction. You start with a photograph, working your way steadily down to the most basic face of all, the smiley face. Thanks to evolution, our brains are hard-wired to recognize faces, and even with a circle, two dots, and a small line, you can make out a face. You cannot see anything else. It's really a miracle, one ofthe many tricks of the brain.
Now, I think there must be a distinction between subjective characters, in terms of the visual design, and subjective narration. Perhaps the two have always been assumed to be one, perhaps they were merely joined together for ease's sake. I'm really not sure, and I've yet to come to a satisfactory answer.
But, in any case, you can utilize subjective, iconic characters in the service of objective narration. This is what Takahata achieved. He's proved it again and again, going all the way back to Horus, Prince of the Sun. I'm watching Heidi episodes right now, and this is probably the best example of this paradox at play. And a paradox it is, at least to my mind.
How can iconic characters, which are designed to serve as black holes for the audience, serve effectively in objective narration. Objectivism requires a measure of distance from the audience. The characters are not avatars, they are not the tour guides. We can identify with them, but it must be purely on their terms. It must be because of the qualities they possess as people.
Yoichi Kotabe was the character designer on Heidi, Girl of the Alps - in fact, this is the first time the term "character design" is used in anime, named by Takahata - and he employs a very iconic, cartoony style. This isn't cartoonish in the American, "stretch and squash" notion, but iconic in that smiley face sort of way. There's simplicity in the design that's still flexible with a large cast of characters.
I think the Japanese are influenced far more strongly by comics than we are, especially the French comic artists. There's something akin to the Rintin style in the designs, with the iconic characters over the highly detailed watercolor backgrounds. This is what Scott McCloud calls the "masking" effect. Again, this is method to bring the audience into the world; a technique in the service of viewer identification.
To me, this is a mystery. Again, using Heidi as an example (although you can look at 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother for the same thing), we see that a visual style that is used for one effect is countered by a dramatic narration that buttresses against it. We are called upon to look into Heidi's world, but we are not of her world. We are not Heidi. We are not the Grandfather. We are not Clara. We are not Peter.
I suppose this is really the true nature of the icon. McCloud highlights this as a significant point. This is really the key to understanding the visual arts. The painting of the Mona Lisa is not the Mona Lisa herself.
Perhaps the paradox lies within ourselves. The West seem trapped by the notion of literalism, by taking everything they see at face value. This is why so many Americans remain puzzled and baffled at the sight of Marco, the Porco Rosso. Why is he a pig? Hey, he's a pig! What's with that? Did he bump his head? Was there a magic spell? Was there a fairy godmother?
Because we are trapped by our literal acceptance of Marco as a pig, we lose sight of the crucial truth - we are not seeing Marco the Pig, but the notion of Marco as a pig. We are seeing the icon, the symbol, the archetype - we are seeing what the image of Marco as a pig represents.
The Japanese understand this crucial point, and Hayao Miyazaki has terrific fun playing with this imagery in Porco Rosso. He really lets it loose in Howl's Moving Castle, playing with the symbolism and his famous archetypes (Romantic Hero and The Heroine), and this is where Americans really get themselves lost. They're expecting The Wizard of Oz, or Harry Potter. They didn't expect Juliet of the Spirits.
So perhaps this is something that we need to work on. Political cartoonists have effectively used icons as symbols, but it's lacking somewhat in animation. Here's something we can really work on.
In the end, there's this tension between the visual style and the narration, one subjective and the other objective, with the narration driving the whole train. Visual style is the servant. Back to Heidi, we see moments of joy and happiness and the discovery of youth, but there is also a tremendous amount of complex human drama. Tragedy, sorrow, complicated emotions, and deep psychological states all play themselves out, and it's not very easy to read. You aren't being handed the key to everyone's emotions. Unlike stretch and squash, these characters move with restraint, yet gracefully and lifelike. There is no real exaggeration. We must piece together the scenes for ourselves, try to understand these people from the outside, and choose for ourselves who fits into those childish cubbyholes, "good guy,""bad guy."
I don't think anyone in Heidi - or the rest of Isao Takahata's work - fits neatly into any one category. Even Heidi has her darker side, her weaker side, that pops out every once in a while. She's nowhere in the league of, say, Hilda or Marco or even Anne (remember Anne's imaginary friend in the cupboard from episode 4?), but there are still shades of grey.
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have that than tapdancing penguins any day. And I'm the sort of hippie that likes penguins.
PART 5:
I think this installment of the Takahata lecture will be a bit brief. At least, that's what I'm aiming for. I'll need to chop this part up into smaller bits, because I want to go into specific examples without writing a 10,000-word article. Ah, who am I kidding? Let's talk 'bout Hilda.
I want to continue on the idea of objective narration and how you can create better, more complete characters as a result. The one thing that sorely needs improvement in American animation is the depth of the main characters. All too often, the either fit into generic melodramatic stereotypes - the good guy in the white hat, the bad guy in the black hat - or they are little more than ciphers for the audience. Your buddy on the roller coaster ride. And always with the preachy moral lessons. Oy vey! Stop with the preaching, don't hit my knuckles with the ruler, Mother Superior Nice Laaydyyy!!
Ahem.
Takahata's characters are infinitely more complex, often carrying a darker side to their personality. I think this is necessary for objective narration, since, remember, we cannot have simple cut-outs but fully realized people. To achieve that, we need to be honest about the darker sides of human nature. We need to face the tears and the sorrow, and sometimes we simply cannot be allowed to relate.
The quintessential Takahata character, in this regard, is the tragic heroine from Horus, Prince of the Sun, Hilda. She's the genesis of it all, the real breakthrough in the filmmaker's new theories of creating characters. Here is a person we can relate to, a person who has qualities we admire and respect. When we meet Hilda, the sad girl sitting alone on a masthead, singing her heartbreaking songs, we accept her and give her our confidence. And when she follows Horus back to the village, everyone grows to like her.
Then Takahata grabs the rug and rips it out from under our feet. He does that a lot in this movie, especially when dealing with those cutsey cartoon characters imposed upon him by the studio. But we're not talking about revenge; Takahata doesn't aim to make Hilda bad to get back at the suits, the way he beats down Coro the bear and Flip the child. This is much more methodical. We're meant to see a character who is figuratively torn in several directions at once.
One of the reasons for making Horus was to tell the political allegory of the times. This movie was meant to be a running commentary on the Vietnam War, the antiwar movement, the global youth movement, and the various civil rights and equal rights struggles around the world. It was also a commentary on the battles between Toei Doga and its labor union, led by such young firebrands like Yasuo Otsuka and Hayao Miyazaki. If The Beatles' animated picture, Yellow Submarine, released the same year as Horus, was meant to capture the peace and love of the late '60s, Takahata aimed to capture its darker side. Yellow Submarine is hippie love and acceptance, the moon landing, All You Need is Love. Horus, Prince of the Sun is the assissination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, war, unrest, Street Fighting Man. Yellow Submarine is Woodstock. Horus is Altamont.
Hilda stands at the center of this hurricane. She's the soul of the movie. Cautious, uncertain, wounded by trauma, and yet fiercely defiant. Tell her to accept the domestic life of a housewife, and she'll likely ransack your village with rats as one enormously emotional fuck-you. And yet, she desperately wants to belong.
One of the great paradoxes about Hilda is her singing. She is at her happiest when she sings, sitting on a tree like Joan Baez with a harp, and this is when the people love her. But have you ever listened to the words? They're terrifying, an endless whirlwind of trauma, sadness, isolation, pain and death.
When you look at the allegorical side of things, Hilda plays the role of the shellshocked refugee whose defining event - the violent destruction of her hometown - completely overwhelms her. It swallows her whole. Consider the dialog from her first scene with Horus as she explains her story. Imagine that the movie's villain, Grunwald, represents the United States (he also represents, among other things, the Toei studio itself, but we'll get to that later), and the iconic nature of the characters takes on a new layer of meaning.
"I live alone. No village will accept me. My home village was destroyed by the Americans. I am the only survivor. The Americans have cursed me; now no one will take me in."
This, again, illustrates the symbolic power of animation; we're working in symbolism. Nothing you see on the screen is real. Everything is an icon, a symbol of something else. You are not a tree. You are not a girl. You are not an owl.
Hilda's greatest tragedy is that she cannot make her peace with her past. She has become convinced - largely because of her unwilling use by Grunwald as an assassin - that she can never embrace life again. Death becomes the thing that defines her. She turns her back on everything that represents humanity, since human beings were responsible for reducing her to this. So she wraps herself in her trauma, convinced that this alone will protect and preserve her.
This is the inner meaning of the medallion that Hilda wears around her neck. Again, this is a symbol, and Westerners reared on literal-minded Disney fairy tales will wind up being confused. They're expecting tales about devils and magic spells and magical trinkets. That's missing the whole point. You need to look beyond the icon to the thing the icon represents. We must, in a sense, dissolve all of our notions and concepts.
Hilda still has her kinder side, and it's left for you to decide whether this is the "true" Hilda or not. Remember, we're not being pushed in any one direction. She does many things that earn our sympathy, her suffering most of all. But she is also violent and murderous, given to anger and vengeance. Horus chooses which Hilda is the "true" one only, really, as a matter of faith. Also, of course, he connects with her loneliness. Doggonit, he really likes the girl. They'd make a nice couple if she'd stop lashing out.
There are many scenes that stand out for me, most of the major Hilda scenes, really. Her swordfight against Horus is especially telling. There's a mixture of emotions across her face, and through her movements, as she fights him one last time. Anger, resentment, helplessness. She feels powerless, despite Horus' pleading to embrace her humanity. All of her movements and body language offer us clues to the battle raging within. She runs circles around poor Anakin Skywalker and his descent into Darth Vader. How is that, I wonder?
There's another haunting scene, a few minutes later in the film, the scene where Hilda finds the frozen Koro and Flip (again, Takahata has lashed out in revenge, just like Hilda), and in a moment of true compassion, finally rejects the pain and darkness within. She sends the pendant away, accepting death in order to embrace life.
This scene is Takahtata's triumph, and even his lieutenants Miyazaki and Otsuka didn't really understand just what was going on at the time. But for them, the scene carried an eerie, haunting power. Now anything was possible, it seemed. You could create any kind of character in animation, tell any sort of story from any perspective. You could create Edith Pfaff stories in animation now, Miyazaki later remarked.
Strangely, she becomes an archetype for Miyazaki himself, as Porco Rosso many years later. I do not want to be human! Another story, another time.
PART 6:
Long weekend, but pretty soon everything will be back to normal. So that means another stab at the Takahata lecture.
Whenever the subject of Horus, Prince of the Sun comes up - okay, I'm assuming this subject comes up at all, since I'm practically the only one who's ever seen it - the character discussion will always revolve around Hilda. That's the nature of the film. The bulk of the movie's psychology goes into her.
But then I remind myself that Takahata always presents characters with more than one side to themselves, and even though Hilda is the beginning of it all, we can see some of those complex traits in Horus as well.
I'm not sure about you, but here's the thing about Horus that really strikes me - he's not a traditional hero. He's far too obsessed. He's more like a character you'd expect to see in a Scorcese picture. I think typical Western movies tend to treat the male lead as a saintly figure, a Superman or a Lone Ranger, or maybe a Jimmy Stewart. They're always an ideal figure; again, they fit the role of the avatar for the audience.
Perhaps it was just a product of its era, perhaps it was a result of the movie's long and difficult production, or perhaps this was part of Takahata's master plan after all. In any event, Horus is a darker, more obsessive hero. And just like Hilda, he has a crucial weakness. It's his obsession with the wolves.
Horus is driven half mad by his unrelenting pursuit of the silver wolves. Consider the opening scene again. We are never given any backstory or explanation as to why this fight takes place. We are never told just why Horus is fighting for his life; only that he is far away from home. Just why is that? The film establishes a mood of violence and hardship. This is just a necessary condition of Horus' life.
I think this harsh existence has made Horus more ruthless than an ordinary person would be. I don't believe that he's a dangerous or violent person by nature; he certainly is a compassionate, caring individual who only wants to find his role in the greater society. Remember that it is Hilda's pain of loss and isolation that he relates to. In that regard, they're exactly the same.
I also think this ruthlessness is the key that enables him to kill the giant fish. A group of the best hunters from the village could not defeat it, but the boy could. He just seems to possess a little more rage, a little more ferocity when needed.
When the village chief and his puppetmaster (both characters seem to hail from Eisenstein's Alexander Nyevsky) assert that Horus is half-crazy, conjuring ghost stories out of thin air, the villagers take some of this to heart. Horus' obsessive pursuit for the death of the silver wolves, and their master, Grunwald, is a little unsettling when you think about it. It doesn't really take much for the town to become convinced that it is he who is the real villain.
Notice, if you will, how the owl (note to self: write a post about owl and squirrel) exploits this weakness in Act III's riot scene. All he needs to do is project an image of the silver wolf, and Horus lunges out with his axe without even thinking. "Hilda, get out of the way!" That's not very encouraging, kids.
Going back to the film's Vietnam angle, Horus seems to play a similar role as Hilda. While Hilda serves the part of the shell-shocked refugee, Horus serves the role of the emotionally-wounded soldier. He's the vet who returns home with post-traumatic stress disorder, experiences violent flashbacks, and winds up in games of Russian Roulette.
Okay, he's not that far gone. Not yet. But he's definitely getting there.
My guess is that Horus' battles with the silver wolves go back a very long time. They're arch-enemies, with longstanding grudges to settle. Add in an isolated, meager existence with a crashed boat for a home, an ailing father, and some stupid cartoon bear, and you've got a molotov cocktail on your hands. True, Horus is ultimately victorious and finally unites the village. But he still has to deal with the scars.
Part 7:
Well, wouldn't ya know it, there's still a few more things I want to enlighten about Horus, Prince of the Sun. Eventually, of course, we'll be moving on to Takahata's more recent works - you know, the ones that you actually own on DVD - but there are still more insights to be gleaned about his storytelling style.
Oh, and just in case you're a new visitor to Conversations on Ghibli, you can download the fansub copy of Horus, which is subtitled in English (that's what a fansub is) and watch it on your computer. I recommend the VLC media player, as that one works the best. Be sure to download and watch the movie so you can get caught back up.
Okay, back to work. Horus remains a deeply compelling movie for me, not only for its technical breakthroughs, not for its innovations, but for all the behind-the-scenes battles waged during its production. The studio, Toei Doga, wanted the latest in a long line of family-friendly animated cartoons, entrenched in the American Disney style. They didn't anticipate a group of young college grads with grand ambitions. They certainly didn't expect something so serious and dark.
So, as I've explained before long ago (note to self: add text link), Isao Takahata and his team were hit with one setback after another. The movie's original title and premise, the setting, the running time. The worst offense was the insertion, at Toei's insistence, of several cartoon characters, in the hopes of appealing to all the little kiddies in the audience. Whatever.
Now here's where I really admire and respect Takahata. This is where the real filmmakers are made, in the trenches and the mud. He is forced to include a cartoon owl and cartoon squirrel into the film. Alright, he concedes. But here's how we're gonna work it.
Much of movie is devoted to the psychology of the heroine, Hilda. One challenge with animation is how to deal with that psychology. It's easier with a live actor, but how do you convey inner states with pencil drawings? Stuck with a couple lousy extras nobody likes? Let's use them to bring out Hilda's mind.
The owl, Toto, and the squirrel, Chiro, become the Id and Superego of the character. They become the angel and devil on Hilda's shoulder. From this, we can see her inner battles made manifest.
This is something you can notice immediately. Observe how these animals appear. It looks as though they arise from within her. They arrive from behind, or above a tree or swing. They never wander around on their own, or really possess any personality themselves. They serve as the conflicting emotions within the girl.
This, really is a masterstroke, a great jujitsu counter-attack. The owl and squirrel become mysterious, even menacing, jousting for supremacy as Hilda struggles to find herself. The key scene - and I'm not just saying that because it's paused on the portable DVD next to me right now - is the scene in the meadow with Hilda and the small girl, Mauni. This is the best moment where the two sides appear and make their claims. It's all so brilliantly dramatic, and ends with the tragic overtones of death.
Am I the only one who's reminded of the famous Lyndon Johnson campaign ad from 1964, the one with the girl in the field picking flowers? That's the image in my mind as the owl torments the poor squirrel as the child sleeps. It's such a sense of doom. And, of course, there's a lot of wailing and crying. It's Takahata.
Oops. Outta time! Dagnabbit! There are other examples of this throughout Horus. Pay close attention when you watch. See what you can observe. Remember, class, we're dealing in symbols, icons. You are not a squirrel. Class dismissed!
PART 8:
Documentary Realism
Titles. Oh, yeah, I suppose that would help out a bit. I'll have to remember to add titles to all the chapters in my Takahata series, just so everyone will be better able to follow along.
That said, let's move along. We've already seen some examples of Isao Takahata's skill in creating complicated central characters in order to fulfill an objective storytelling style. There are piles of more examples, and I'm probably going to try to list as many as I can, going through the entire canon. For now, however, let's take a look at another significant element of the Takahata style - documentary realism.
I think Takahata's early influences were firmly set in Europe's post-war cinema - the Italian Neorealists and the French New Wave - as well as domestic heroes like Yasujiro Ozu and Japan's rich art history. Most of them are already on display on Horus in one form or another, with nods to Eisenstein and Jean Renoir just for kicks. But the final, most crucial piece of the puzzle appeared later.
Heidi, Girl of the Alps premiered on television in 1974, and it ushered the arrival of Takahata's focus on documentary details. One of the great strengths of Heidi is how thouroughly detailed the daily lives of people in the Swiss Alps are recreated. The series became a travelogue for Japanese viewers, an opportunity to see the outside world in greater detail.
Takahata and Miyazaki had been moving toward a more naturalistic style during the early '70s, after the original Lupin III series ended. There are the two Panda Kopanda movies, and the infamous Pipi Longstockings projects, and there are also a couple other projects that never saw the light of day.
There's a short video clip floating around the internet that's taken from an unaired pilot from this period. It's very short, about 20 seconds, but it's very similar to Heidi in many ways. There's a child character playing around with a farm animals in a rural atmosphere, and crowds of people working their jobs in tents.
Then, of course, there was that pilot for Yuki's Sun (was that the name of it? - check up on that.) that Miyazaki directed. It included a fair amount of human melodrama and a young girl in the center role. I posted about it some time ago when I found the video clip online.
Heidi seems to be the end-result of all this practicing and expanding. But it's the documentary details that are new. This is arguably the major focus of the entire series. Perhaps it's necessary in order to adapt a relatively short story like Johanna Spiri's Heidi into a 52-episode television series. Perhaps it's necessary for the sake of drama and building tension. Perhaps this is really just an opportunity to take the home country around the world, in the guise of a famous children's novel.
I'd say it's all three, and they intertwine and become interchangable. The brilliance of Heidi lies in how perfectly its three acts are structured, with episodic adventures building, steadily, slowly, towards the emotional climax. Act one - Heidi is dropped off with her grandfather in the mountains. She learns the ways of daily life, makes friends, grows. Climax - the aunt returns from Frankfurt to take the child away with her.
The pacing of the show is something that would likely turn away many American anime fans, especially those expecting action, action!, ACTION! The pilot episode, really, only involves Heidi's ride up the mountain to her grandfather. In the original story, it is a couple pages. In Takahata's hands, this becomes a welcome into the real world of the mountains.
We see the presence of farming and herding. We see the domestic details of the housewives in the village. And then we see Peter the goat-herd and his flock of goats. Careful observation is rewarded, as things are very often observed but never spoken out loud. In this world, we are the visitors, the tourists, and no one is going to point out everything for us and explain all the local customs. We're going to have to figure it out for ourselves.
It's also in Heidi's pilot episode that we see the emergence of one of my favorite Takahata traits of all, the transitional nature shots. It's one of the defining traits of Ozu's films; Roger Ebert coined the term "pillow shots."
DOH!! Outta time!! Let's continue this later. We'll pick right up! Later!
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