So…Marianne and I have been enjoying a Studio Ghibli marathon over the past few weeks. For me the standout so far is the film alternatively referred to as Whispers of the Heart and/or You Listen Closely . It has the elements that I'm coming to realize are typical of Miyazaki, the most obvious being the female lead, Suzuku; she's smart and resourceful but thinks of herself as exceedingly plain and ordinary. What really appealed to me is the atypical elements- it’s a consciously and enthusiastically urban love story- don’t expect romantic sequences set amid falling cherry blossoms in landscaped gardens, it all takes place in a locale crowded with cars, trucks, apartment buildings, electrical towers, street lamps, highway overpasses and culverts. I imagine people who grew up, say, along Eglinton Avenue would probably feel at home. After following up on the fantastic nausicaa.net I learned that it's actually a section of West Tokyo where Miyazaki once worked. The setting is not a stereotypically beautiful, but it is beautiful in it’s own way, which is kind of the point I guess, and I why I like it so much.

I like what this Japan Times reviewer had to say:

The animators delineate Suzuku's character and tell us the story of her discovery of love and life though an accretion of small, vivid details, including the way she fumbles for the alarm clock and keeps forgetting her things. There are also moments, such as Suzuku's pensive walk down a shaded street, with the light and shadow playing on her slender form, that are poignant in their celebration of her youth, with all its promise, hope and uncertainty.

A Disney film, forever hurrying on to the next plot point, would usually spare little time for such seemingly extraneous details and moments, but they are the very soul of "Mimi o Sumaseba."

There's a good ‘Disney diss’ from Miyazaki himself elsewhere on the site: "When I look at 'Beauty and the Beast,' it reminds me of a psychiatric patient and his counselor," It can't be by accident that Miyazaki chose level his criticism at a contemporary Hollywood film with a similarly bookish female lead. It’s seems like a strange turn of events that Disney are actually releasing most of these films in the West. It’s even stranger that given Disney’s decision to stop producing classically animated films and all the hand drawn features that North Americans are likely to see for the next who-knows-how-many years will have been created by a small studio in Japan as much as twenty years ago.

As many of the other reviews on nausicaa.net point out the plot of Whispers is extremely simple; so simple that by the end of the movie I was wondering at the fact it had even got made. I can’t imagine Miyazaki getting beyond the pitch stage in Hollywood: "I’m thinking of making a slow, quiet movie about a plain high school girl named Suzuku who realizes that a boy named Sejji is taking out all of the same books as her from the library. She meets him and he turns out to be a Violinmaker, and her initial dislike of him develops into love. Unfortunately, he has to leave for Italy in order to pursue his craft. The End." (I’m exaggerating for effect here, there’s a bunch of fantastic sequences, too.)

If you don't like the John Denver song Country Roadyou might be advised to stay away from Whispers, because you're going to hear it a lot. I like (I don’t think Marianne does) but I thought that it really gives the film a lot of focus and richness; about halfway through the film a bunch of Sejji's musician buddies and start an impromptu jam, with Suzuku singing; I was taken aback by the genuineness of the sequence; you feel nervous for her; her only previous audience has been her best friend, but you also share in her excitement and growing confidence as she realizes that she, and the song actually sounds pretty good. It felt real, like a jam session with a between a bunch of really good musicians where everything’s clicking.

The director of Whispers, Yoshifumi Kondou, was a supervising animator on many Ghibli films including Princess Monoke and was evidently being groomed as Miyazaki's successor. He was obviously a great choice and I was searching around trying to find other films he'd been involved with, only to discover that he'd passed away of an aneurysm shortly after the release of Whispers of the Heart. There’s this eulogy by Miyazaki, which I have to say I found kind of odd, but it could be the translation.

Other Ghibli Movies I’ve been watching:

Grave of the Fireflies: Actually forgot that I’d watched this movie before until very near the end, and I probably wouldn’t have remembered at all if it wasn’t for Marianne’s prompting. I’m not sure exactly what this means, because I usually have a really good memory (or think I do) but it may have something to with the fact that the original viewing was of the dubbed version. I think that just listening to the tone of the characters voice along with subtitles has more emotional power- so much so that listening to it with different voice actors can seem like a totally different experience. Part of the charm of Whispers was the Japanese Version of a very American song- this is one example of something that I suspect would be lost in the dubbed version.

The down point of the subtitled version is that if the you have a cat sitting on top of you while you’re laying in bed you can’t read them. ..

Princess Monoke: I watched this when it was released a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. Again, I think I preffered the subbed version.

My Neighbour Totoro: The dubbed version is a little too shrill (ala Fables of The Green Forest), for us to get beyond the opening scenes but quite mysterious and interesting. I’ll probably give the subtitled version a try.

Only Yesterday: Another by the director of 'Grave'. Another animated movie that I have trouble imagining getting made over here . It's understated, true to life and quite moving; a really beautiful film.

Kiki's Delivery Service: A fun and suprisingly suspenseful kids moview. Phil Hartman does the voice of the Cat in the american version.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: I think I 'll save this until after I'm done reading the new edition of the comic that is currently being published by Viz.

10:25 AM

Things That Never Were

Here are my excuses for not posting in over a month:

1. We just moved into a new house that we’ve been fixing up.
2. We just got two kittens.
3. I’m on holiday right now and I’m being lazy.
4. I don’t like to post things until I’m really, really happy with them and very sure that they won’t make me look stupid. Rarely being completely happy with my work + often looking stupid = no updates

My original intention with this blog was that I wouldn’t get hung up with considerations of quality in it the same way I do with my comics. I thought it would be all easy going, "Here's what I'm thinking today" kind of a thing, but it hasn't worked out that way in practice. In an effort to rectify this, I will be revisiting some of the unfinished posts that have been gathering dust in my hard drive for the past several months, starting with:

A couple of months ago I was intending to post some sarcastic commentary on a comic story that I’d come across via a Yahoo Group I belong to called Comic Spotlight. The story comic was called The Green Lama (sorry the link is no longer current) My plan was to make fun of this Golden Age comic hero named after a woolly beast with a long snout and point how amusingly lame the story was. I was also planning on pointing out that the art was actually sort of good.

I came this close to posting it, but decided to wait until after I found out more about the comic. I really don’t enjoy listening to people dismissing or making fun of things that I love based on a superficial and/or largely ignorant understanding of ABBA... *cough* ...Sorry, I mean THE TOPIC... I figured that I owed it to Green Lama fans to know what I was talking about before making fun of him.

I was immediately glad that I’d decided to hold off- First off, the Green Lama the comic was referring to wasn’t that kind of Lama at all. A Llama is a quadruped that lives in Peru, a Lama is a Buddhist Holy Man who lives in Tibet.

I still think the story is lame, but not for my original reasons. In spite of the fact that the website hosting the story is called "Golden Age Greats" I was pretty positive that the story was from the 1960s- mainly because of the style of the art, which I found more modern looking than than a lot of the other comics that I'd seen from the same period (not a lot, really). When I realized that the magic words 'OM MANI PADME HUM!' , spoken by wealthy playboy Jethro Dumont in order to transform him into the Green Lama, was actually a Bhuddist Mantra I altered my position somewhat:

The Green Lama was a superhero obviously intended for the blooming Age of Aquarius. I imagine the writer as a 'West Coast Drop-Out Type' who somehow found himself cranking out hack work for a third rate comic book company to make ends meet. At parties, he’d tell people, "I work in comics, but not the normal type superhero’s schtick that you’re probably used to; not at all. It may look like that on the surface, but I’m underneath it all there'll be this subversive element, letting the kids know where it's reallyat. He’s called the Green Llama, see, and he’s all mysterious and weird looking, kind of like that guy, , you remember him? Yeah that’s right, The Spectre! He’ll be kind of like a mix of that guy and Captain Marvel. He’s a total square that transforms into a superhero, but, (this is the part that’s going to blow the kids brains!) instead of just saying an imaginary magic word like "Shazam" this cat’s going to use this real magic word that I’ve been tripping out to during my transcendental meditation sessions."

After sending an email to the curator of Golden Age Greats, it quickly became apparent that this other take I had on the character was also wrong. The art that I was convinced was 'Silver-Age' was the work of one of the quintessential 'Golden Age' artists,Mac Raboy, who worked on Captain Marvel Jr for Fawcett Publications until the mid-forties when he left for Spark Publications, home of The Green Lama. The character had originated in the Pulps in 1940 and the took up flight in Prize Comics later the same year and eventually landed his own title. He even was popular enough to inspire a Radio Show in 1949 (listen to The Last Dinosaur).

Raboy went on to draw the Flash Gordon strip that Dark Horse reprinted a couple of years ago. He had a flair for page layout and cover design, and the drawings of his that I've seen so far imbue grace to even the most heavy-handed war propaganda and wooden writing. He was a slow worker who didn't talk about his work much, at least according to the comments of a cousin that I came across on a comics community message board: "I remember Mac as a quiet, sort of "odd" fellow to our young minds.Rather reclusive. His wife Lulu, was very outgoing and was always involved in our family. They used to visit my mom and dad's home, the Marx's, in Westchester New York now and then, until they moved to Florida. Mac and Lulu never mentioned his work, although the older generation knew who he was and what he did. We regret never really being able to talk about his work to him or Lulu. We have, in recent years, seen some sketches and ink drawings he did, unrelated to the comic strips. He was good. "

See, it's hard to make fun of that. Would it have been better if I'd just gone with my original snarky post without a second thought?

posted by Alan
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7:12 PM

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