The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 2013)

[Mr Sausage]

DISCUSSION ENDS MONDAY, January 9th

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[Michael Kerpan]

Background

Some (long ago) original artwork depicting the story: https://web.archive.org/web/20031014081 ... t1/13.html

A version of the original folktale:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4018/40 ... htm#chap09

[Mr Sausage]

I thought this was lovely. The equal of the best of Miyazaki and deserving as high a reputation.

It pulled off a naive mode of story-telling without itself being naive, without succumbing to sentimentality, or nostalgia, or a reactionary longing for the pure and the mythical. The film does go in for idealization: because the story moves from innocence to experience, from the rustic wilds of childhood to the elaborate social games of courtly life, rural Japan does become a kind of prelapsarian world the film never effectively diminishes (Kaguya's childhood friend briefly describes its hardships towards the end, but there is no weight in these words next to what we've seen). But the idealization never seems false or cloying. Rather than longing for a rustic ideal that never existed, the film uses it as an analogy for the joys of childhood. Pastoral simplicity stands-in for the simplicity of being a kid, much as court life stands in for the burdens of adult life. The naive mode of story-telling in fables and fairy tales allows the world to play a more symbolic role like this, to represent generalizations about life, existence, and human psychology. This is in many ways a beautiful fable about the stages of life, from childhood to adulthood to death, ending with a protest against Buddhist ideas of heavenly purity. The movie embraces life and the world; it turns away from the idea of transcendence with its implicit condescension. And yet it is clear-eyed: there is no avoiding death. The purity of life lies in its impermanence. But as the movie says again and again, there is always regrowth; life is cyclical. The tragedy of the end is that Kaguya inherits the sterile, colourless permanence of the spiritual realm. The beauty of the end is that life will continue is natural cycles. The wonder of the cherry blossom isn't that it dies, but that it comes back. The movie encourages us not to look beyond, but in front of us.

A small comment about the breathtaking visuals: the two dream/not-dream sequences were astonishing. Not just for the beauty of the images but the sheer amount of emotion they contain. Magical pieces of cinema.

What did you guys think?

[Michael Kerpan]

Mr. Sausage -- I am delighted that you liked this so much. You pretty much capture why I feel this film is my pinnacle of movie animation.

I've only just started re-watching the very beginning -- up to the bamboo cutter's wife's adoption of transformed-to-infant fairy princess. And I marveled at pretty much every second.

[therewillbeblus]

I liked this too, though not as much as you both did (or maybe I just love Miyazaki more? Who's to say). The reference point that came to mind for me throughout the first hour was Citizen Kane, but mostly as a source of contrast, which then informed my appreciation for the film’s respectful approach to the complexities of growth in the resuming runtime. Like Welles’ film, this begins as a tale of a child who is forced to leave the familiarity of her humble milieu, and shed her 'innocence' in favor of an assumed higher calling that segregates her from others. However, the key difference is that this film doesn’t presume that this childhood state of innocence was something possible to hold onto, nor does it judge the parents for taking the action they feel is in their child’s best interest, or destiny. I don’t really think Welles’ film is presuming that either - rather, it’s identifying a source that Kane holds onto to define the state of being he yearns for, marking the irreparable journey into increasingly amoral adulthood he was coerced into. But this story doesn’t even try to locate or stall on a source of the ignition of non-consensual development, instead meditating on the fluidity of this ongoing process. Choices are made for and by us based on ideas, culture, emotions, limited perspectives at a certain point of life, and this course of life is inherently emotionally-labile and uncomfortable. We often develop skills and conceptions of what we want and who we are through going through significant events we aren’t entirely prepared for, and this film has empathy rather than pity for that overall experience and the specific activity therein.

It’s a very different approach than Citizen Kane- where dispassionate strangers are motivated to mine for tangible meaning about a man they don’t care about (ironically without being able to possibly crack it even if they discovered the sled’s name since that would only serve as a superficial connection), and the answer is a tangible signifier of meaning that our enigmatic titular character must cling to because he’s also a stranger to himself and has nothing else to define himself or comprehend his existential path. The answer is a mirage encased in self-pity, a feeling Kane can’t get from anyone else so he must do so himself- and we don’t even have a front-row seat to that subjective pain. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is wholly committed to indulging that subjectivity but also refuses to co-sign any ‘turning point’ to diffuse responsibility, endorse resentment, or delusionally simplify dysphoria. We do get to know Kaguya to some degree, but mostly through documented experience, shifting from one instant to the next- the complete opposite of our distance from Kane that's longer than any dinner table in that film. We feel Kaguya's ever-evolving identity and emotional responses as she is compelled to participate in the world. She wants to understand what her suitors feel for her in their heart- which is of course impossible- and does the best she can do: establish tangible tasks to facilitate this demonstration, which is an understandable if futile gesture. She’s also trying to achieve power where she can by issuing impossible tasks, as people often do when feeling trapped in unsolicited situations, but regardless, she’s attempting to get a grasp on her surroundings like Kane did. Only this film shows her pivot, grow, and alter approaches, rather than focus on one final sober attempt at the end. It’s far more optimistic about our potential to peel back onion layers and resiliently traverse the assigned responsibility of living an unstable life with glee, embracing the powerlessness on our terms when we can.

I love when she goes out into nature after sending the suitors away. It’s a happiness- while scripted and animated and manipulated via the medium- that cannot be forged. The creators clearly understand this feeling, appreciate its supreme meaning and also its impermanence, as they then transition into a tragedy without undercutting the value of that moment of bliss. I loved Kaguya's crisis after her games of trust with her suitors yield unexpectedly tragic outcomes, because it addresses the evolution of how we wrestle with our inappropriate expectations over time without overstating it; seeing expectations as broadly useful and important, but often a self-imposed handicap we often don't realize we're concocting and rigidly confining ourselves to when wielded in specifics. Kane certainly didn't escape his myopia in this domain, not even in his last breath. Kaguya does her best to work at it, imperfectly, like the rest of us. She eventually recognizes her impotence to control certain events and people and her biology and destiny, and the film doesn't offer a false notion of anchored acceptance and serenity to cheapen this emotional state of being. Self-actualization isn't synonymous with a misperceived kind of euphoric nirvana (the Buddhist iconography helps reinforce the correct tone here in this respect), but a nonlinear condition of self-awareness that can sometimes look like accepting that we're struggling to accept our circumstances, and other times letting go of the rebellion against the flow of transient nature. The depiction of fading memories at the end doesn't position this loss cynically, because the very act of validating the losses with the compassion the filmmakers do (for the parents, the would-be-lover, Kaguya herself) gives them meaning intrinsic to the experience. Even if it all felt like a dream to her or to Sutemaru, it happened. Those experiences were real and have unconditional merit, and so do each of our lives despite them all having a shelf life, as well as memory and bodies and other corporeal measurements containing focal points of depreciation, and so on and so forth.

Like some of the best anime, this is a fairy tale with strong roots in reality, and I identified a lot with the film's ethos, even if I didn't find myself consistently captivated at every narrative stage.

[RIP Film]

Is it strange that I found this thematically rich, expertly structured and conceived, and yet wasn’t super engaged by it? I’ll be the first to say the visuals were a mixed bag, with it at times looking like a beautiful sumi e painting, and others looking like rough storyboarding. The commitment to a style befitting the story is commendable, but as a viewing experience (particularly in this medium), I felt its sparseness at times fatiguing— not in the least because you are looking at white for the majority of its 137 minute runtime. I think this is partly the reason I prefer Miyazaki, because he’s so good at communicating story through visuals alone. Takahata seems to me, more intellectual and can get into the heads of his characters and live in that space, but with Miyazaki everything is external.

It is probably Takahata’s best film (that I’ve seen), but I think it is bound to be one that respect but would not necessarily rewatch, unlike the beautifully subtle Only Yesterday. What an ending though; there were times where the animation, voicework and story all came together to achieve moments of authenticity that I rarely see in animation.

[therewillbeblus]

Is it strange that I found this thematically rich, expertly structured and conceived, and yet wasn’t super engaged by it?

Nope, I had a very similar experience (as mentioned above!) and agree on Miyazaki's visual storytelling aiding a lot of the power of his films (and also probably allowing me to look past some of the issues others have taken with his work)

[Michael Kerpan]

I finally got to finish my re-watch. While I'm typically averse to talk about "greatests", I guess I make an exception for this. For me, at least, this is "the greatest animated movie ever". While purely sentimentally I may love Only Yesterday a bit more, this is definitely the anime movie I find most visually beautiful and meaningful.

While Miyazaki may indeed be a master of making a certain type of movie, I vastly prefer the look (and feel) of Takahata's work overall. I see the relative "sparseness" as a plus rather than a minus. I see Kaguyahime as the culmination of an alternative visual style first hinted at in the flashback segments of Only Yesterday and further explored in the Yamadas. And frankly, I even find Takahata's handling of motion here preferable (by a wide margin) to that of Miyazaki (including the flying sequence near the end).

One thing I noticed particularly on the re-watch was the richness of the aural environment. While I didn't dislike Hisaishi's music at all, I found that the sounds of nature and even the human world were often even more compelling. sometimes I felt you could virtually see this world even with one's eyes closed.

Two "non-sensual" observations.

First, I was struck by just how deeply Buddhist thought was embedded in this re-telling of an old (probably religious) folk tale. While the iconography at the end seemed to evoke Amida (and his pure land), the philosophy called to mind both early Buddhist thought and Thich Nhat Hanh's writings. The underlying notion is that, of all the realms of existence (beasts, hungry ghosts, heavenly, etc), it is actually the human realm that is most precious. It is only here that one experience both true sorrow and true joy. And (paradoxically) it is these experiences that are essential to attaining "enlightenment". In the end, it is hinted that Kaguya has (in fact) retained her own trace of memory of human experience, even as she "returns to the moon".

Second, rather like Naoko Yamada's recent adaptation of another Japanese classic -- the Heike Monogatari -- Takahata (and script writer, Riko Sakaguchi) has re-envisioned this story in a very female-centric fashion. The original title of the story was "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" -- and while it certainly described what happened with Kaguyahime, her actions are seen strictly from the outside. Here we are much more in tune with Kaguyahimes's thoughts and feelings -- and with her mother's sympathy (and reflection and endorsement) of those feelings.

[Mr Sausage]

Poor Takahata, always being compared to Miyazaki.

I don't know, people are going on about Miyazaki's visual storytelling, but I think more specifically he had a great way of conjuring enchantment and wonder. I wouldn't say his ability to communicate a narrative visually is more ample than Takahata's. His strength was in marshaling his visuals to create a sense of the childlike, where awe and adventure and secrets are thrilling, and you can be carried along through brightly coloured plots as tho' being told a bed-time story. What helps is that his themes are always simple and direct. They don't need much time or effort to unspool, which allows Miyazaki to focus on creating all the life and colour. Miyazaki is so good at conjuring this enchanted atmosphere that you can sometimes forget what you're watching is, for instance, Dickensian London if Dickens were a big supporter of child labour. And I love Castle in the Sky, don't get me wrong. But it's sentimental mush. Miyazaki's unexamined fondness for good/bad dichotomies and traditional concepts like family means he ends up turning child exploiters and pirates into sweethearts and caregivers and such. It's daft. But you hardly notice, because the film is such a wonderful experience while it's on. It perfects that childlike sense of making magical new friends and heading off on wild adventures where the sky is literally the limit. Where Miyazaki's style falters is when it tries to grapple with more complex themes, eg. The Wind Rises. One reason that movie falls apart is the style is always trying to drag the material towards that sense of wonder and enchantment, but the material demands a complex, multifaceted approach that Miyazaki is just not adept at. So the characters ends up flattened, the history undercooked, with the atmosphere of wonder sitting uncomfortably overtop.

And this is where Takahata comes in: he is adept at what Miyazaki isn't, the complex and multifaceted. Princess Kaguya is a perfect example, a fairy tale that addresses everything from concepts of life, death, and rebirth, to Buddhist philosophy, to the repressions and hypocrisies of human society, and yet does it all without ever losing that naive storybook tone. He doesn't attempt the sheer pitch of emotion Miyazaki typically aims for, but he shows himself an adept hand at it, saving it for concentrated bursts of aesthetic beauty that are all the more astonishing for arising out of more subdued moments. Maybe (and this is only a guess) some of the distance you guys are feeling is that Takahata wishes to create an atmosphere of wonder and enchantment, and for the audience to feel it, but unlike with Miyazaki not be transported completely into it. Takahata doesn't want to create a sense of the childlike in the viewer. So, yeah, you won't get the intense rush of sound and colour like MIyazaki, but there is a rich and wonderful experience here that's comparable to Spirited Away. And one that doesn't require you to be caught up in a magic spell so as not to see the cracks.

Unlike most of Miyazaki's work, Takahata's is thematically rich. He doesn't take traditional values for granted; he questions them. There are few more pointed examples of the ugly flaws of the forward-looking social attitude in Japan immediately following WWII than the opening of Grave of the Fireflies. That film goes on to question traditional Japanese notions of family and community and self-sacrifice, showing in numerous ways, loud and quiet, how petty self-interest can undermine basic humanity. Princess Kaguya isn't that heavy, but it shares the same spirit of questioning. This movie is, in part, about the unintended damage of other people deciding what's best for you, something true across all realms: familial, social, and even heavenly. Takahata is clear-eyed about costs. The working of the land also strips the land; the movement into adulthood is also a loss of identity; staying true to the past is a rejection of the present; the ascent to heaven is a loss of earth. This is all richly worked out, with no loss of complexity, in a manner typically thought capable only of the simplistic. That's wonderful, and something Miyazaki was largely unable to do (the closest he came was Princess Mononoke, a brilliant film and probably his most solid).

What I get in Takahata is a keener sense of the world. I get someone looking at things just a bit more carefully. And then working that up into movies of great emotional power (at least in the two that I've seen). I can't say which of the two filmmakers I prefer, but what I get from Takahata is what I've always felt I was missing in Miyazaki. There's nothing that needs to be overlooked or excused.

[Mr Sausage]

In the end, it is hinted that Kaguya has (in fact) retained her own trace of memory of human experience, even as she "returns to the moon".

This is one of the most beautiful aspects of the movie. Like the woman who sung the song of earth and imbued Kaguya with the spirit of longing, Kaguya herself will doubtless become the singer of a beautiful song whose context has long been lost, but whose kernel of emotion continues unabated.

This is a beautiful reversal: the world doesn't carry the spark of the divine, it's heaven that carries the spark of the earthly. A humanistic film through and through.

[Michael Kerpan]

I find Takahata more "intellectual" than Miyazaki but also far more grounded in the fundamentals of lived experience. And that is even more true in this than in any of his previous films. And it is this groundedness that gives his movies so much more emotional impact (for me) than (most of) Miyazaki's.

[RIP Film]

In defense of Miyazaki, I think the impulse that allows him to conjure up these incredible adventures is the same one that makes him overlook things like child exploitation, bonding with criminals, etc., the same childlike heedlessness. It’s true it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but as remarked it’s almost silly to stop and take issue with it. He’s using real world concepts like toys and stripping them of morality just as a kid playing with soldiers and tanks does, giving them new allegiances, principles and meaning as he sees fit. It’s not always intellectually stimulating, but by golly, it fits the visual medium like a glove. I think we’re all in agreement on this; but just as Takahata may be unfairly compared to Miyazaki, the reverse is also true. It’s fascinating to me that what one may think of as deficiencies in an artist is often the same force that is channeled into their greatest work. This is true of someone like Neil Young, whose gift is capturing a single moment with a song, writing it completely off the cuff and then leaving it alone. That gift is less evident into his latter years, when he’s writing numerous songs about his cars or politics, and is in serious need of editorial discipline. Or take WKW, who edits his films a hundred times in search of their kinetic signature, but can’t stop fucking with them even into the present. This is all just an observation, the yin and yang within artists, and is not meant to excuse when they go off track— but it makes them more sympathetic when they do.

What I’m getting at in very roundabout way is, with animation I’d rather be transfixed by the visual language than prompted toward contemplation, if given the choice— and I think Miyazaki and Takahata by nature fall on opposite sides of that coin, though frequently meet in the middle. Princess Mononoke is Miyazaki at his finest, and Only Yesterday is probably Takahata’s most visually appealing in the sense of how it relaxes you into its themes so effortlessly. Admittedly, I’m rarely captivated by Takahata’s visuals, but do respect his versatility of style and appending that style to the material in a thoughtful way. This is all just taste though.

[Mr Sausage]

In defense of Miyazaki, I think the impulse that allows him to conjure up these incredible adventures is the same one that makes him overlook things like child exploitation, bonding with criminals, etc., the same childlike heedlessness. It’s true it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but as remarked it’s almost silly to stop and take issue with it. He’s using real world concepts like toys and stripping them of morality just as a kid playing with soldiers and tanks does, giving them new allegiances, principles and meaning as he sees fit. It’s not always intellectually stimulating, but by golly, it fits the visual medium like a glove.

This is an incredible defense. It swings from claiming Miyazaki is essentially an unthinking child to attacking his critics for being so gauche as to point out he gives positive representations to things like child exploitation. I don't know what you were going for here, but all I can take away from this is that you, personally, don't give a shit, and somehow think we shouldn't either.

There is stuff in Miyazaki worth taking seriously. His feminist themes are rich and welcome; and his anti-war and environmentalist stances, if not especially deep, are admirable and sincerely felt. But there is also a strain of sentimental and traditionalist values that you have to put up with in even his very best films, and which makes it hard for me to like his work unreservedly. Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky, my two favourites, are magical films, wonderful experiences, but no adult sensibility should be able to watch them and not notice there is a certain amount of material in them that's just false. The movies are good enough to survive that falseness, but it's still there.

What I’m getting at in very roundabout way is, with animation I’d rather be transfixed by the visual language than prompted toward contemplation, if given the choice—

This is so shallow. 'I like pretty pictures and I don't want to be made to think about them.' I...think you're doing yourself a disservice by adopting the attitude of your average Marvel blockbuster fan, who goes to see something bright, fun, and exciting that they don't have to think about too much.

[Michael Kerpan]

I would say that when Takahata makes me feel uncomfortable it is almost always because he wanted his viewers to feel uncomfortable (and had a good reason for doing so). I would say that when Miyazaki makes me feel uncomfortable it is because he was doing something he found irresistibly fun/exciting to show and he simply didn't seem to have considered much beyond this. (Miyazaki isn't the only director that causes me to feel this way).

[Mr Sausage]

Takahata gets irony. So you can see where the limits are. Miyazaki is always sincere. That runs him into problems.

[Michael Kerpan]

An interesting interview with Takahata regarding Kaguyahime: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/isao-takahata-interview

[therewillbeblus]

I still think the film is most interesting when seen as a challenge to The Greatest Movie of All Time with early intervention rather than retroactive gander; approaching the beginning of that familiar story intimately, with genuine interest and without a power differential in positioning. In staying close with its protagonist, not letting her go even when she rebels against the fairy tale, the filmmakers create a sense of protection and safety through their humanist energy (as well as documenting those characters in the film as more dimensional and well-intentioned elements of a support network) and leaves her in a place that's harmonic and perceptive rather than isolated and blind

[Michael Kerpan]

TWBB -- If you ever get a chance to check out Yamada's Heike Monogatari you might find she does something quite similar (albeit following a somewhat different sort of strategy). I think she is interesting as someone who has taken Takahata's legacy very much to heart -- and used it to pursue her own unique vision.

[RIP Film]

This is an incredible defense. It swings from claiming Miyazaki is essentially an unthinking child to attacking his critics for being so gauche as to point out he gives positive representations to things like child exploitation. I don't know what you were going for here, but all I can take away from this is that you, personally, don't give a shit, and somehow think we shouldn't either.

I’m not sure what prompted this fly off the handle response. I thought I was making a nuanced point contextualizing Miyazaki’s flaws rather than dismissing them; that his exuberant imagination is responsible for his best and worst qualities, and that the two are not necessarily severable— like Michael Kerpan said, he finds such situations irresistibly fun/exciting. He can’t help himself. I think all the criticisms against him are valid, even the ones I don’t necessarily understand. His sentimentality is 100% a problem, but do I look at Laputa and see an endorsement of child labor? No, not anymore than I see Cronenberg’s Crash as condoning vehicular manslaughter. I look at his films through the lens of their intended audience, whom he’s notorious for having in mind when conceiving a project. Will children raise their eyebrows at such things, or will they see them as exaggerated but relatable hardships? As you have said, Miyazaki ams to create a sense of the childlike in the viewer.

But I certainly don’t view him as an “unthinking child”, rather instead in the approbatory sense of the famous Picasso quote “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

This is so shallow. 'I like pretty pictures and I don't want to be made to think about them.' I...think you're doing yourself a disservice by adopting the attitude of your average Marvel blockbuster fan, who goes to see something bright, fun, and exciting that they don't have to think about too much.

That’s hardly it, though I admit I walked into this by offering a binary example to illustrate Miyazaki’s visual genius vs Takahata’s more literary talent. Let me put it this way: each animated film begins life as a blank slate since they are all works of imagination (with no corporeality), so it is up to the artist to create a baseline of honesty— otherwise nothing is relatable. Takahata’s honesty is in the emotional presence of his characters, but Miyazaki’s is in the honesty of the visual form itself, as a blank canvas ripe for any sort of idea. This was the basis for my preference. Perfectly captured in this scene from Never Ending Man:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VrAxPD4A6Iw

[Mr Sausage]

I’m not sure what prompted this fly off the handle response. I thought I was making a nuanced point contextualizing Miyazaki’s flaws rather than dismissing them; that his exuberant imagination is responsible for his best and worst qualities, and that the two are not necessarily severable— like Michael Kerpan said, he finds such situations irresistibly fun/exciting. He can’t help himself. I think all the criticisms against him are valid, even the ones I don’t necessarily understand. His sentimentality is 100% a problem, but do I look at Laputa and see an endorsement of child labor? No, not anymore than I see Cronenberg’s Crash as condoning vehicular manslaughter. I look at his films through the lens of their intended audience, whom he’s notorious for having in mind when conceiving a project. Will children raise their eyebrows at such things, or will they see them as exaggerated but relatable hardships? As you have said, Miyazaki ams to create a sense of the childlike in the viewer.

But I certainly don’t view him as an “unthinking child”, rather instead in the approbatory sense of the famous Picasso quote “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

The vigour of my response came from the perceived dismissiveness in your post. How else to read a line like this: " It’s true it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but as remarked it’s almost silly to stop and take issue with it." Even your quoted post goes in for it, implying that because the film doesn't "condone" child labour then, well, no reason to be bothered by it. Nevermind that the film romanticizes it and turns the exploiters into one of the film's two surrogate families.

I don't see the nuance or contextualizing of what you wrote. Pointing out Miyazaki's sensibility is responsible for both his best and worst aspects is something you can find in my own post. All you did was to phrase it in a less flattering way. Nuance is being able to hold all these values in mind; your response insists that the bad, tho' unquestioningly there, should be ignored. This is not watching a movie in a childlike way, let me tell you. Children aren't dumb. They were and are very capable of seeing the point of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. So I guess I also don't like what you imply about children.

That’s hardly it, though I admit I walked into this by offering a binary example to illustrate Miyazaki’s visual genius vs Takahata’s more literary talent. Let me put it this way: each animated film begins life as a blank slate since they are all works of imagination (with no corporeality), so it is up to the artist to create a baseline of honesty— otherwise nothing is relatable. Takahata’s honesty is in the emotional presence of his characters, but Miyazaki’s is in the honesty of the visual form itself, as a blank canvas ripe for any sort of idea. This was the basis for my preference. Perfectly captured in this scene from Never Ending Man:

Don't forget an attraction to binaries: visual vs. intellectual; filmic vs literary; emotional presence vs visual form, etc. I don't much go in for that. Takahata's so-called literary or intellectual values are also straight artistic and filmic ones. Attention to character and theme what any good narrative film needs to be successful, animated or otherwise.

Also, you imply Takahata is dishonest in the visual sphere, which is incredible, and all the more so since, again, Miyazaki uses his visuals to create a romantic idea of all the worst excesses of Victorian industrialism. You cannot maintain that Miyazaki's sensibility runs him into falseness while also claiming he was a genius of visual truth.

[RIP Film]

"It’s true it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but as remarked it’s almost silly to stop and take issue with it." Even your quoted post goes in for it, implying that because the film doesn't "condone" child labour then, well, no reason to be bothered by it. Nevermind that the film romanticizes it and turns the exploiters into one of the film's two surrogate families.

I’m not sure why you’re going after me when I was basically paraphrashing you: “Miyazaki's unexamined fondness for good/bad dichotomies and traditional concepts like family means he ends up turning child exploiters and pirates into sweethearts and caregivers and such. It's daft. But you hardly notice, because the film is such a wonderful experience while it's on.”

Moreover I’d really like to know how Miyazaki’s use of pirates and child exploiters in a clear realm of fiction has some sort of real world consequence or influence that you can detail? You keep describing it with such import and I’m over here scratching my head.

Don't forget an attraction to binaries: visual vs. intellectual; filmic vs literary; emotional presence vs visual form, etc. I don't much go in for that. Takahata's so-called literary or intellectual values are also straight artistic and filmic ones. Attention to character and theme what any good narrative film needs to be successful, animated or otherwise.

Ok well, I have no interest in going through an atomized dissection of why I prefer one great artist to another. Or why I now believe Takahata is “dishonest in the visual sphere”, just because I was trying to offer a little subjective reasoning for not being engaged by the film we’re supposed to be talking about and preferring Miyazaki. I’ll also note you were the first one to bring up Miyazaki as a point of comparison.

[Mr Sausage]

Moreover I’d really like to know how Miyazaki’s use of pirates and child exploiters in a clear realm of fiction has some sort of real world consequence or influence that you can detail? You keep describing it with such import and I’m over here scratching my head.

I…I don’t even know what to say to you, this is so wrongheaded. Why am I pointing out obviously false ideas to bolster my point that Miyazaki often presents obviously false ideas? I’m going to guess your confusion is entirely rhetorical and that the best you can do with the arguments against you is diminish or dismiss them. You evidently cannot answer them.

Anyway, I like Miyazaki’s films, but there is material in them I find false and even objectionable. So far that has not been true of Takahata.

[Michael Kerpan]

Re: Miyazaki and the pirates. It seems to me his treatment of things like this is very juvenile (and not necessarily in a good way) compared to R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, which was itself aimed at a young audience.

In a lot of ways, Miyazaki reminds me of Kurosawa -- for good and for bad, while Takahata seems far more akin to Ozu and Naruse. Because Miyazaki and Kurosawa invest so much effort on sheer visual impact, it tends to make one overlook the real, but much subtler (and less ostentatious) visual beauty of Takahata, Ozu and Naruse. But I don't think it is that Takahata (or the others) are more "intellectual", rather they have a fundamentally different notion of how they wish to convey beauty. And some (like me) much prefer this more "subdued" manner. Others prefer Miyazaki's.

It seems to me that where Miyazaki sometimes/often drags/pushes one into emotional (and sensual) responses, Takahata instead invites one. One has a considerable measure of choice on whether or not to accept the invitation. I (for one) instinctually resist feeling forced into a response. Lots of people like being swept away by a cinematic tidal wave -- and that's okay too.

[Mr Sausage]

Leave it to Michael Kerpan to say things far better (and more gently) than me. I want to get away from this argufying and back to praising Kaguya.

Your word choice is impeccable, Michael. I’d agree Miyazaki can be juvenile in the pejorative sense. And you perfectly capture what I’d been trying to articulate, that Takahata is an excellent visual storyteller, just one who’s more subdued. I love Miyazaki’s opulence, but I’m aware of its limits and not fond of how it’s used to diminish Takahata. Preferring Miyazaki’s grand style is well understandable. Claiming it makes him a better visual storyteller…not from what I’ve seen. Takahata can go for opulence when he wants—the run from the castle is one of the most thrilling moments in animated films, I thought; the visit to the cherry blossoms is suffused with beauty and loss; the flying sequence equals the joys of Castle in the Sky. But in general Takahata weaves a gentler magic. He doesn’t envelop you, but there is much that’s poignant. Then there’s that fact I’ve hammered on about, that this is a kid’s story in style and manner and yet never juvenile. The movie treats its story with care and sophistication. It trusts its audience, children included. I love that about it. I was charmed and sometimes enchanted while watching, and stirred and provoked while contemplating it afterwards. I can return to the movie to appreciate both its visual beauties but also its ideas. I think it’s a bit underrated even by those here who like it, but I guess I can’t cudgel anyone into greater enthusiasm.

[RIP Film]

It seems to me that where Miyazaki sometimes/often drags/pushes one into emotional (and sensual) responses, Takahata instead invites one. One has a considerable measure of choice on whether or not to accept the invitation. I (for one) instinctually resist feeling forced into a response. Lots of people like being swept away by a cinematic tidal wave -- and that's okay too.

Here is an argument I can understand, and one I agree with, rather than “false ideas”. To me Miyazaki’s greatest sins are his tonal anomalies, I re-watched Porco Rosso not long ago and was put off by its ostentatious championing of women while the script is, at the same time, making repeated refrains about the 17 year old girl’s “big butt”. Innuendo isn’t unexpected given the title character is literally a pig, but everything else stands in contrast.