Movie Review: Princess Mononoke

 Wow! This has been called the "Star Wars" of Japanese animation, and for good reason. Those of you who have seen "Howl's Moving Castle," "Spirited Away," or "Ponyo" know how good Hayao Miyazaki's films are, and this one is a magnum opus.

This is a modern fable of the conflict between people living in harmony with nature and living at odds with it. A young warrior named Ashitaka suffers a curse after slaying a monster threatening his village and goes on a journey to find a cure and learn where the beast came from. Along the way he finds an early example of a Japanese industrial town, Iron Town, and sees how they are destroying nature in the name of profit and technological progress. Opposing the goals of Iron Town and its ruler Lady Eboshi is Princess Mononoke, a teenaged girl raised by wolves with superhuman fighting prowess.

This is a wonderful allegory for the politics of the environment and the debate over issues like global warming and fossil fuels. It is so much better than other attempts at such material because the story and the characters are not two-dimensional. There is ambiguity here. For example: Lady Eboshi, who is clearly wrong in destroying the forest and wanting to kill the spiritual beings that protect it, is charitable towards the less fortunate. She hires reformed prostitutes to work in her foundry and lepers to build her guns. She protects her town and her workers from outside threats. Samurai warriors on all sides of the conflict are seen here as merely armed men with no higher philosophical agenda, no Zen perfection of purpose. Ashitaka himself seems confused as to the right course of action much of the time.

I cannot say enough good things about this movie. From the haunting images of Japanese mythology to the stunning action sequences, it dazzles.