With Ponyo, Miyazaki is a Little Less Magical
Film Review
Perhaps the general absence of wonder is because the film looks through Ponyo’s eyes, and the mysterious world is our own and mundane to us if not to her.
At the beginning of Ponyo on the Cliff, the titular character rises slowly up to the surface of the sea, surrounded by luminescent jellyfish. The scene is silent, because the purpose is to induce a quiet reverence in the viewer, who like Ponyo watches in awe as the beauty of the natural world unfolds. Director Hayao Miyazaki has shown time and again that he can create entirely new worlds of wonder. Nausicaä in the Valley of the Winds developed a unique post-apocalyptic world in which humanity lived on the edge of a terrifying and powerful natural world, an inversion of contemporary life. Princess Mononoke syncretized a very tangible kind of nature magic with medieval Japan. And Spirited Away plunged a modern-day girl into a world of mythological spirits and monsters.
Unfortunately, Ponyo only regains the magic of the opening in one other scene. That scene, the centerpiece of the film, involves Ponyo running along the back of giant fish she has magicked from the deeps. It engages so many emotions at once – beauty, wonder, terror, laughter at the incongruity of it all. The rest of the film becomes miniscule in scope by comparison.
Perhaps the general absence of wonder is because the film looks through Ponyo’s eyes, and the mysterious world is our own and mundane to us if not to her. Ponyo (Noah Cyrus) is a goldfish, the child of an evil human wizard (Liam Neeson) and a merciful sea goddess (Cate Blanchett), a yin yang pairing. When Ponyo reaches the surface, she falls in love with a boy named Sasuke (Frankie Jonas) and becomes determined to change into a human girl. Her father is equally determined that Ponyo not join the human world that he has rejected because of its reckless disregard of the natural world, a common Miyazaki theme. In fact, the wizard is determined to use his powerful magical elixirs to destroy the human world, a plotline that is entirely confusing in the film but does allow Liam Neeson to voice silly lines like “I can feel the power of the ocean in the deepest reaches of my DNA” after quaffing the glittering contents of an ornate bottle.
Overall, the film’s plot is simple yet confusing, with a rushed and anticlimactic ending. There is a nice focus on the importance of the daily family rituals into which Ponyo is inducted, but these clash with the grandness of the alternate undersea plot. In most scenes, the animation is without flaw but uninteresting, although the film is furnished with beautifully drawn pastel backgrounds. And when the film appears to be drawing to a close, move toward the exit; when the last scene fades to black, run for the door. Otherwise, you will have the obnoxious pop lyrics of Noah Cyrus running through your head for days: “Ponyo Ponyo, fishie in the sea…”
As a children’s film, Ponyo on the Cliff is certainly superior to anything not Pixar. Although the children in my showing were often confused by the story, they enjoyed Ponyo’s hijinks on the shore. Still, Ponyo is only a lesser addition to the Miyazaki canon and will not reward the viewer nearly as much as the majority of his other films. Ponyo is cute, wholesome and entertaining, but it is not magical.
Ponyo on the Cliff
Now showing at the Magnolia Theater and AMC Northpark 15.
Great article! I understand your argument, but personally, I thought Ponyo was superior to anything from Pixar! Everyone is too scared to admit it, but Pixar is not the “Cinema God” that most people advertise them as being. Ponyo had more wonder, charm, originality, and awe than anything from John Lasseter’s studio. Pixar’s underwater fish story (”Finding Nemo”) involved endless amounts of action scenes involving big fish with big teeth chasing little fish, where at least one character gets electrocuted. The dialogue was smart-aleck’y from beginning to end. I wanted to call that movie “Mr. Limpet Lost in the X-Box era.” Hayao Miyazaki is not scared to make films from a children’s point of view, even though most adults think they are “boring.” When it all boils down, the “mundane” things in life are often the most interesting, if we only stop to appreciate them.
1 September 2009 at 4:42 pm