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| Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds | | (And Miyazaki's Accidental Stroke of Genius) | | 01 October 2006 | | FairgroundTown was entranced by Film4's recent Ghibli Season, showcasing the finest work of the Japanese animation studio. Ghibli are best-known in the west for the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, but director Hayao Miyazaki has been making beautiful movies for more than twenty years, and Nausicaa - made in 1984 - was his first masterpiece.
Set thousands of years into an apocalyptic future, Nausicaa is the tale of a princess whose peaceful community is caught in the cross-fire of a war between humans and the Ohmu - giant insect-like creatures, who dominate the hostile ecosystem of the surviving earth.
Not only does it look fantastic, but the complex and engaging story draws the viewer in to share Nausicaa's sense of wonder and respect for her world. Our only criticism might be that some of the music sounds rather dated twenty years on.
However, for us, Miyazaki's real stroke of genius was something both more fundamental and more subtle - to present the movie in Japanese! And yes, we are quite aware that he is Japanese, and that he created the film for the Japanese market; but to a westerner like FairgroundTown, this is what really gives it its unique edge - its haunting sense of other-worldliness. Not only are the words different, but the cadences and meter of Japanese are utterly alien to the untutored western ear, creating a very real sense of a world so far removed from our own that we felt completely in awe of it as we watched.
FairgroundTown is not a dub-fascist when it comes to anime - in the same genre we have recently enjoyed Howl's Moving Castle and Porco Roso in English - and we are sure that Nausicaa is a great movie in Spanish too. But in Japanese it is really something special, and if we were you, we'd not miss it for the world. |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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