NOT DISNEY, BUT INTERESTING:

-PROFILE: Spiritual calling: Hiyao Miyazaki created the two most successful Japanese films ever. As the second is released here, Stephen Phelan celebrates an animator of Oscar-winning genius (Stephen Phelan, 9/06/03, Sunday Herald)

Miyazaki joined the Toei Douga animation studio in the early 1960s, one of the idealistic young artists annoyed by the forced smiles, stupid songs and simple morality of Disney “classics”. Fired up by the Marxism that was setting Japanese trade unions and universities alight, and by the potential of this art form to shake hearts and brains, he helped make magnificent cartoons about class struggles between mythical heroes, gods and beasts, including Prince Of The Sun and Panda! Go Panda! At the time, Miyazaki was convinced these films would “transform the way people saw life”. But very few people went to see them, and big business transformed Japan instead. Miyazaki became more realistic in his expectations, and more imaginative in his job. “I run from reality,” he once said. “Animation is my only form of expression.”

He established Studio Ghibli, his own production house, and created a phenomenal body of work from his own fabric of wonderful ideas, vivid details and deep feelings, culminating in these last two cosmic blockbusters. Now 62, Miyazaki had intended to retire after making 1997’s Princess Mononoke, the mournful ecological war story that made his name in the UK and US (the English-language version employed the voices of Minnie Driver and Billy Bob Thornton). He said his hands were now too shaky and his eyes too weak to draw and check every single frame of animation and ensure that the characters are “acting right”. But he was inspired by certain anxious little girls he knows – the daughters of friends – to tell them a story in the same language as their dreams and nightmares.

“What I wanted to communicate to these 10-year old girls,” said Miyazaki, “is that they’ll be OK.”

The result is a weird, gripping, heartfelt fairy tale to replace all the old ones that Disney declawed, feeding and feeding on your imagination. But Spirited Away may not yet be Miyazaki’s masterpiece – he’s retired from his retirement again to adapt the mind-bending comic book Howl’s Moving Castle, and he’s been holding seminars with Japanese schoolkids to ask what delights and frightens them the most.

You might want to start with Kiki's Delivery Service, which is more coherent than most of his work. 

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 7, 2003 10:59 AM