Ponyo

When we are children our hearts are wise, and we have a great empathy for living things.  Some people don't remember, but it's true.  I remember keeping goldfish; frogs; and salamanders, and while things never got very deep I loved them as a child loves other creatures.

Miyazaki said once you can't inflict your views onto children.  You can't give them your impression of the world, but they are perfectly capable of having their own impressions.  His respect for kids shows in Ponyo.  The themes are simple but mature, magic is possible but reality is still central. The major protagonists are children, and the film is unashamed to have a childlike perspective.

The film is a moving children's book.  And if it opens stronger than it concludes, it is only because by that point we are so used to being amazed.  From the films opening I was mesmerized.  After decades to get used to it, and new technologies to compete with, old school animation still has the power to leave me transfixed.  I was not watching a cartoon, I was viewing a painting of the sea coming gloriously to life.  I was watching sea creatures, the opening shot took me up on a jellyfish ride.  This is where American animation would have gone if Fantasia had been a hit in 1940. 

On land everything is penciled in with colored pencils.  A young boy finds a fish that got stuck in a jar.  But it's a magic fish that turns humanoid after a drop of human blood.  It speaks, and eventually gets legs, and is very cute.  She gets away and comes back, but not without the boy realizing how much he cares for the fish.  On land he lives with his mother, visits the senior home, sends light signals to his father who is out  at sea.  The boats and peirs are realistically rendered. The sea is dangerous, and beautiful, but so is the food and the paper boats.  There is beauty in simplicity.  I remember watching Spirited Away with some friends at the Avalon.  One of my friends,  a seasoned Anime veteran, remarked that there wasn't enough cool stuff , just a bubble and a scene where she was attacked by paper....huh?   I said, yeah, a dragon made of paper...pretty cool, huh?  He didn't seem to agree.

If I say a lot about how the film looks it's because that is what I am most impressed by.  You could say a lot for the films mythology, but I almost don't want to see it from an adult perspective.  Boy gets fish, but they're kids.  The lesson is simple, it doesn't need to go all Hans Christian Anderson on us.  The plot is for kids, if that is unpalatable for you, there is always the artwork to focus on.

The Miyazaki elements are there;  the slow mannered pace that finds interest in the slightest of contrivances; the heavy life lessons offered with motivational gusto; the extreme reverence for nature and it's inhabitants.   You may say it's not as cool as some of his past films, and maybe it's not, but iat least young kids can enjoy the artistry too.  I was wondering if the deliberated pacing would bore some kids, but the ones in the theater remained as transfixed as I.  There is enough spectacle to amaze without any frenetic action or explosions.  Sure, it's for kids

But did you ever look at the ocean when you were a kid, and while looking did it ever seem like the ocean and its waves were alive?