Princess Mononoke: review

wolf-goddess Moro (Gillian Anderson) and San/Mononoke (Claire Danes), wearing the skin of her adopted race

Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese anime film by famed director Miyazaki Hayao (surname first, Japanese style). Like a lot of East Asian films, the movie depicts a bewildering network of interconnected and not entirely symmetrical conflicts revolving around the themes of nature versus industry, the limits of compassion and forgiveness, and of course, peace versus war. The English-dubbed version that I watched features the voice talents of Billy Crudup (sounding remarkably like a young Tom Cruise), Claire Danes, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, John DeMita, John DiMaggio, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gillian Anderson, Debi Derryberry, and Keith David.

Prince Ashitaka (Crudup) of the marginalized Emishi people encounters a cursed boar-god that has become a demon, utterly covered in wormlike tendrils of pure evil and hatred and initially invisible as a pig. The demon comes crashing through the forest near an Emishi village, and Ashitaka, who rides a fleet stag named Yakul, manages to kill the demon with some well-placed shots from his bow. But the demon's writhing covering of wormlike protuberances manages to catch hold of Ashitaka's arm during the fight, and the prince's arm is cursed. A village elder informs Ashitaka that the curse will grow and consume him, and he will die. Ashitaka also learns that inside in the corpse of the boar-god/demon is an iron ball—a round from a rifle and the reason for the demon's pain, suffering, and hatred. If Ashitaka finds the source of this rifle round, a mission that will take him into the forest of the gods, there may be a chance that he will solve the deeper problems of demonic attacks, the withering of the forest, and the deaths of forest creatures. Ashitaka must, at any rate, depart from his home, being cursed, and the Emishi rule is that no one may witness his departure.

As Ashitaka journeys to the forest of the gods, he begins to learn about the wider world and the various conflicts happening around him: another boar god (David) is preparing to lead his boars to war against humans in the region of Iron Town, where metal is collected and smelted, and the smelting fires are supplied through the chopping-down of large swathes of forest. A tribe of apes is also looking to go to war against humanity, and a wolf goddess named Moro (Anderson) has adopted an abandoned human girl named San (Danes), known to the citizens of Iron Town as Princess Mononoke (a mononoke is a general term for a vengeful spirit). San thinks of herself as a wolf, and she shares the forest creatures' grudge against the humans, who have despoiled the land in their lust for metal-smelting. But it is becoming obvious that, as the human industry gathers strength and size, the creatures and spirits of the wood must inevitably lose their conflict with the humans. Ashitaka learns all of this and is alarmed: he wishes for all factions simply to live in peace. Lady Eboshi (Driver), leader of Iron Town, claims to be the one who shot the boar god; she is uninterested in peace with the animals and spirits, but she is also not uncompassionate as she has taken in many lepers and others, whom she cares for and who help with the smelting, tool-making, and gunsmithing. And at the heart of the woods is the mysterious Forest Spirit, which takes both the form of a human-faced deer and the form of the Night Walker, a gigantic, Wendigo-like spirit that wanders the land, presiding over life and death. How will these conflicts play out, and will Ashitaka find a way to remove the curse that's slowly killing him?

I'm not the biggest fan of anime, and I've never been a huge fan of East Asian story structures, either, with their often dizzying and labyrinthine crosscurrents of conflict, shifting alliances, changing motivations, and obscure goals and purposes. That said, it was easy enough to suss out this movie's major themes, which are what I'd laid out at the beginning of this review. Westerners might have a hard time relating to Japanese notions of spirituality and divinity; the gods and spirits in this anime universe possess properties that we don't associate with gods in our own modern, Western concepts of theism. In Princess Mononoke, gods can be shot and killed; they can even be beheaded by shots from rifles, but the act of beheading, instead of killing them, just motivates them to go looking for their heads, sowing destruction in their wake as they search. How much of this comes from actual Japanese mythology and how much is made-up "theology" for this specific film, I have no idea. How satisfying the film might be for a first-time Western viewer is anyone's guess. While the visuals are rough but beautiful (for a 1997 film), it's often hard to know what rules and principles are governing the main characters' behavior. As with many East Asian movies, there's little to no romantic potential between Prince Ashitaka and San, a.k.a. Princess Mononoke. There's a vague hope, at the conclusion, that the two might become friends who visit each other on occasion.

While I think the film tried to convey a good message about the eldritch power of nature and the need for human civilization to strive for greater harmony with it, I found the complex conflicts and sometimes obscure character motivations to be a bit off-putting. I also found it ironic that a major part of San's clothing is what looks a lot like a wolf pelt that she almost always has slung across her shoulders. What does her adoptive mother, the wolf-goddess Moro, think of her adopted daughter wearing a wolf pelt? The issue is never even raised. I also didn't like how San was drawn in general; she comes off looking like a 1700s-era European's generic depiction of overseas "savages."

In conclusion, I don't think Princess Mononoke is for everyone. There's a good message about loving nature buried somewhere in the plot, but the vast constellation of ever-colliding characters (I haven't even mentioned Billy Bob Thornton's faux monk Jigo, who is in league with Lady Eboshi, and who attempts to abscond with the Forest Spirit's severed head) crowds this message out in a tangle of plot-related contrivances. I, for one, am in no hurry to see this movie again, and the story doesn't heighten my appreciation of anime in general.