My Cultural Diet

After seeing so many AI-generated rip-offs of Studio Ghibli’s aesthetic, I thought I’d get reacquainted with one of my favorite Hayao Miyazaki films and see the real deal. Princess Mononoke features the usual Miyazaki-isms — e.g., highly detailed animation, a sense of natural wonder, strong female characters — but it’s arguably his darkest and most despairing film. Miyazaki is a devout pessimist concerning human nature, and that shines through quite clearly in this “man vs. nature” epic. At the same time, however, his film possesses a moral complexity that makes it all the more intriguing. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, Lady Eboshi and Irontown would be clearcut villains and the forces of nature would be entirely in the right. But because Miyazaki is a master storyteller, he weaves in just enough ambiguity to challenge your assumptions, along with a melancholy that haunts you after the credits stop rolling. And of course, the film is absolutely gorgeous to behold, with a suitably sweeping score from Joe Hisaishi.

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