What I Want From Movies -- Part 1

(picture from letterboxd, movie social media)

Princess Mononoke. Terminator 2. The Dark Crystal. Mad Max: Fury Road.

Why are the four movies on my profile my "favourites"? For starters, there are a few elements that I love in movies more than all the craft in the world (though 'course, it always helps that the craft is good too):

-- Grand stories with relatable themes
-- Larger-than-life characters and epic drama
-- Fascinating worlds and beautiful visual composition

Lucky for me, there are a lot of movies that can offer at least one of these. Occasionally, it is why I'd rather watch a gangster picture than an actual science-fiction or fantasy movie -- I'll nearly always choose epic scope and dramatic story over cheap thrills. 

Sometimes it's even why I'll admit that a movie isn't perfect and still enjoy the heck out of it: see 2012 or 9.

... okay, it's a little weird that both examples I picked weren't really titles so much as numbers.

Moving on.

The point is that the movies I've said are my "favourites" have all three bullet points and more. If I could choose the movies that I'd make, or pick the movies that other people make -- these four would be the gold standard. "Make more like this," I say.

Oh and, before I get stuck into each of these points for today's movie: let it not be forgotten that there's a fourth, subsidiary element that I love in movies and that's a good score. Princess Mononoke certainly has that one down. While I've liked movies with bad musical scores, they never reach the top of the heap¹.

Princess Mononoke is a classic little-w "western" in the sense that it has a drifter-type character coming to a new town/city/land and (intentionally or unintentionally) becoming wrapped up in the local conflict just as it builds to a head. This conflict is, in all-but-a-few examples, between an upstart group of greedy and/or technologically superior humans and the incumbent culture -- aliens, first peoples, elves, you name it. 

Over the course of the story, the wandering knight, or gunslinger, or samurai, or former Confederate captain, or martial arts master in question will pick a side, or none at all, and change the conflict for good (though not always for the side he joined in the first place). This also makes Princess Mononoke a spiritual predecessor to Avatar, but as we will see, I think it does a much better job of exploring the nature of conflict and human relationships.

Okay, so the movie probably already has your attention with its basic plot setup: after all, it's rare that one of these never builds to an epic showdown -- sometimes over land, sometimes over ideologies, often over both. This pretty much guarantees that the first two elements I mentioned at the top are covered. 

Our wandering hero this evening will be played by Ashitaka, the last prince of a persecuted Japanese people, the Emishi. He is cursed and must leave his home to find a cure before it kills him -- and just for fun, I'll point out that the soundtrack for the first leg of his journey is actually titled "The Journey to the West", in case you weren't already sure what genre this epic story was going to be. 

Other larger-than-life characters include the spirits of the forest (which, despite the English translation, you must understand are not "gods" as the anglosphere thinks of them); Jigo, a shrewd merchant with very few morals; and the leader of the local humans, Lady Eboshi, who is not the kind of antagonist you might think she would be in a western story (this time also meaning European stories as opposed to eastern ones). 

Above all, San, the titular "Princess Mononoke" (aka. Beast Princess) is the most important character in the story, having been raised among the wolves of the forest and practically forsaken humanity. Her relationship to Ashitaka is more tense and passionate than any Pocahontas wannabe and doesn't go the direction you're expecting, either.

Ashitaka is unusual in this mix as he does not automatically side with the humans of Irontown, who the spirits of the forest are so keen to get rid of. Rather, as he says, he wants to see "with eyes unclouded by hate", and come to a mutually beneficial cease of hostilities. 

As one might imagine, this is particularly difficult when (most) men and beasts have viewed each other as enemies since the beginning of time. The unfolding of this story I will leave unspoiled, but suffice it to say that Princess Mononoke treats all of these ideas with due gravitas and even manages to show the shades of grey that Avatar forgot about around the time that Stephen Lang was cast as the big bad military villain.

The last element I mentioned up top might be even more prominent than the first two in this movie: Princess Mononoke creates an absolutely gorgeous world through the use of traditional animation and computer-enhanced multiple planes. Even the touch of mid-90s CGI is used deftly, leaving no elements dated by today's standards. The forest is mysterious, full of power but also danger, and Irontown as a new settlement has the nostalgic feel from stories of settlers in far-flung reaches of the world. Both primary settings are treated with a combination of heightened reality and down-to-earth empathy, meaning as the audience we don't want to see either of them destroyed.

Again, this is in contrast to the modern, American western where the colonists are always automatically seen as an unsightly blot on the landscape and the forest is depicted as blameless and nice.

Princess Mononoke is, additionally, an example of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki in their prime, and one of the few cinematic fantasy/western films that is spoken of in the same breath as Star Wars. Everything about it is absorbing and strange, combining wondrous movie magic with thoughtful commentary on humanity's relationship with the natural environment. The only possible complaint I might have is that, from a perspective as a Christian, there is little-to-no discussion of the creator of this natural environment.

Hopefully this has given some insight into why I want more movies to be like the four I have picked to be my "favourites". Next time, we'll discuss what I think might be the greatest action movie of all time, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. What's that? I think Die Hard is trying to bash down my door, better go sort this out ...

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1 For instance, Once Upon a Time in China is an exciting and well-told movie from a certain point of view, but the music is far from the best that Chinese or Hong Kong films have offered.