It was in some ways ironic, the fact he (supposedly) wasted his own life in an effort to prolong it indefinitely. Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty was just one of the many rulers who though the Son of Heaven could choose when it was time for his last curtain call. He was a ruthless, solitary leader who, despite enjoying one of the longest reigns in Ming history (over 40 years), helped put the finishing touches on the path that led to the Ming's decline. He promoted and lauded self-aggrandizing symbols of corruption like Yan Song, and eventually moved righteous subjects like Ha Rui to impeach him. It's perhaps poetic justice, then, that Jiajing's life ended with a measly mercury overdose, quite unbecoming of his status and very likely dealing with Sun Ssu Miao's alchemy work and its sulfur and mercury-based dreams about elixirs of long life. It would make for a great, almost Shakespearean drama you'd think - well, it actually did, in Zhang Li's masterful 大明王朝 1566 (The Great Ming Dynasty 1566). But that's another story.
What's really interesting is how films can sometime become their makers' own elixir of immortality, and that's not simply dealing with the legacy of their work. La Strada certainly made Fellini immortal in our 1.85:1 sized, 24 frames per second memories, just like it did for Kim Ki-Young and his insanely good 하녀 (The Housemaid). But I was thinking more of people like Manoel de Oliveira, still as energetic as he was 40 years ago, hitting his 100th birthday right this year; I was thinking of Im Kwon-Taek, past his 70s and sticking to the bare minimum in lovely trips of energy like 천년학 (Beyond the Years).
If we move to the TV drama canon, I was thinking of Kim Jae-Hyung, the man who jump started sageuk on TV in 1964, and was still as commanding a general in his latest work 왕과 나 (The King and I) as he was thirty years earlier; I was thinking of Jung Ha-Yeon, who after a 40 years career, fame and the endless respect of his peers decided to write a show spreading love for his country's culture, shot on a ultra low-budget for an educational channel that records ratings lower than the National Hymn at 2 in the morning - the wonderful 명동백작 (The Count of Myeongdong). Ask those masters what moves them to forget about rheumatisms and wake up early to turn in their 8-10 hours of magic, and they'd mostly tell you the same thing. It makes them feel alive. It's exactly those vibes that you'll walk with, watching animation legend Miyazaki Hayao's latest work, 崖の上のポニョ (Ponyo on the Cliff).
Well past his 60s, what does Miyazaki have left to prove, at this stage of his career? He moved the Academy, so conservative it would make Dubya's cabinet look like a pack of molotov-throwing "pinkos," to accept him into the circle, and even give him that golden statuette (albeit, I guess, it was more an automatic mea culpa for not granting it to him earlier); he repeatedly beat himself at the box office, sending away hordes of pocket monsters and pocket idols with monstrous haircuts in shame; he made Studio Ghibli an International powerhouse, and helped a good portion of the world wake up to find warm, running water and that the Earth wasn't flat -- in the form of animation for the child inside you, in contrast with the one-digit IQ, politically correct "for kids only" template of doom which afflicted Uncle Walt's empire for way too long. He even had time to argue with young Goro, and make all the hoopla surrounding ゲド戦記 (Tales from Earthsea) a much more interesting soap opera than the film itself. There are countless stories of bad retirements and even worse come backs, but Miyazaki's possibly (but not likely to be) final game smells more of that night in June, about 10 years ago. The Bulls were down 86-85 with less than 10 seconds to go, and that man decided Bryon Russell wasn't going to stop him. The rest was history. His name? I think it started with "His Airness."
Call me an idiosyncratic Miyazaki fan, but while you can appreciate the art and tapestry at play in ハウルの動く城 (Howl's Moving Castle) and particularly 千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away), they lacked the energy and soul of some of his earlier works, particularly his two real gems となりのトトロ (My Neighbor Totoro) and 紅の豚 (Porco Rosso). Then again, his body of work is so astoundingly good, it'd be like choosing the best Ferrari, or singling out The Beatles' worst work. Possibly fun, but essentially futile. Spunky twelve year old heroines, environmentalist undertones, trips of fantasy mixed with insane attention to detail... anyone who took a trip on the Ghibli Rollercoaster knows those themes all too well, and predictably they come back with Ponyo. The issue here, though, is how Miyazaki approached everything. Every single one of his works is certainly a labor of love, but something tells me the 170,000 hand-drawn cells and complete lack of CG enveloping this little goldfish will end up meaning much more to the veteran director. Because, call me crazy, but Ponyo is the most delirious fun a Miyazaki work has been since we saw a pig fighting off pirates in 1920s Fascist Italy.
It's probably one single scene that cemented that thought, albeit you can find the same energy all throughout the film. With Maestro Hisaishi perhaps getting too close to Die Walküre for his own good, you can see our diminutive heroine riding a gigantic tsunami made of sea creatures, enveloping a mountain road like an anaconda, while young Sosuke and his mother try to escape from the incoming waves at insane speeds with their minuscule car, a "chase" scene oozing all the vibe and charisma of Miyazaki's brilliant 1978 caper ルパン三世 カリオストロの城, (The Castle of Cagliostro). From start to finish, Ponyo simply explodes with those little touches of energy, of Miyazaki's unadulterated, insanely creative fluids. In terms of story, it's stripped to the bones to an almost excessive degree, even more so than his late 80s work like My Neighbor Totoro and 魔女の宅急便 (Kiki's Delivery Service), as the script doesn't leave much to the viewer to be scrutinized. A goldfish wants to become human even at the cost of breaking the balance of nature. She befriends a young boy, and then the world of magic she used to make her change starts roaring its ugly (well, really pretty, actually) head. Before the "and they lived happily thereafter, until Goro-sama screws up the next film" finale. That''s..... about it.
It's hard to explain what you can only feel, but Ponyo would be like a dream at 24 frames per second, with an old sage taking Andersen's The Little Mermaid, mixing it with memories of his childhood, and painting it with crayon pastels inside the flowing river that is his mind. It's impressive how Miyazaki tends to obsess over the minuscule, and then go completely free flow on the majesty of everything else, including waves and those gigantic sea creatures. Many of those images have the unpolished creativity of a child's drawing, while others put to shame Ghibli's CG work for how alive and realistic they feel (something Miyazaki himself must have felt while going through the CG revolution).
The veteran director was surprised at how lukewarm the kids' initial reaction to the film seemed to be (during test screenings), despite the usual onslaught at the box office that was waiting to happen. But, despite being inevitably targeted at very young viewers, there's a good chance older viewers growing increasingly tired with the visual chicanery of the current animation world might find Ponyo even more charming, and it doesn't just boil down to the extreme simplicity of its story, the pastel-toned mise en scene and the delirious, in your face cuteness of it all. It's more of a gut feeling, a back-to-basics, story-is-all-it-counts mantra which didn't seem to bear the flag in most of Studio Ghibli's recent work. It's analog Miyazaki all right, but sometimes vinyl has more soul than those 120mm optical shenanigans.
Directing young children is extremely hard already - see the difference in performances little Eun Seo-Woo showed between 폰 (Phone) and the Steven Seagal/Lee Dong-Joon stinker 클레멘타인 (Clementine) -- but voice acting is even harder. Even with the monumental talent roster Japan can boast in the voice acting world, there aren't many children who really do sound like children, with their spontaneity and energy left intact, not perturbed by what they're forced to say. For instance, back in the days in Korea they used actresses to do the job, with veteran Kim Young-Ok even dubbing the male protagonist of 로보트 태권V (Robot Taekwon V). This also happened for live action films, so it was something you'd have to get accustomed to, but it still feels quite annoying, and is a technical detail which partially hurts many Korean films up to the late 70s-early 80s. Nowadays things have improved dramatically, and Ponyo might have just about the best child voice acting of recent memory.
Doi Hiroki and particularly Nara Yuria as the titular Ponyo excel, bringing an energetic and spunky flair to the film which elevates everything else in the process. It's a top notch ensemble cast, from comedian Tokoro Joji playing Ponyo's troubled father Fujimoto to Amami Yuki playing the elegant and Guanyin-like Gran Manmare with suitable panache, and it's always a pleasure to listen to Naraoka Tomoko's voice, currently busy narrating taiga dorama 篤姫 (Atsuhime). From the quirky trio of grannies at the daycare center to Sosuke's spunky and intrepid mother, from the explosion of colors as Ponyo tries to escape from the empire undersea to the silly arguing between Sosuke's parents, done via morse-code. It's just a joy of colors, energy, and metric loads of fun.
People say the older you get, the closer you resemble your child state. In this business dominated by technology and first quarter earnings, accountants prostituting productions and governments playing diplomacy with cultural quotas, the idea of stripping it all, lying on the grass and looking at the sky, dreaming, sounds pretty badass to me. Miyazaki had absolutely nothing to prove nor gain, but he just went back to the top of the cliff, drinking some of that elixir of immortality, and showing who can really master the tsunami. With the energy of a child, the controlled hand of a surgeon, that wisdom and charisma, the confidence and playfulness only decades on the job can give you, the master did it again. It won't be the last, I'm sure, but even if it ends up becoming so, well. Hats off, and thank you, once again.
RATING: 8.5
崖の上のポニョ (Ponyo on the Cliff)
Director: 宮崎駿 (Miyazaki Hayao)
Screenplay: 宮崎駿 (Miyazaki Hayao)
Music: 久石 譲 (Hisaishi Jo)
Produced by: Studio Ghibli
101 Minutes, 35mm 1.85:1 Color
Release: 7/19/2008
CAST: 奈良柚莉愛 (Nara Yuria) as Ponyo, 土井洋輝 (Doi Hiroki) as Sosuke, 山口智子 (Yamaguchi Tomoko) as Lisa, 天海祐希 (Amami Yuki) as Gran Manmare, 所ジョージ (Tokoro Joji) as Fujimoto, 長嶋一茂 (Nagashima Kazushige) as Koichi, 奈良岡朋子 (Naraoka Tomoko) as Yoshie