GeekReads

The (large) cast of Summer Wars

How many movies do you remember seeing where the audience clapped at the end? Not many, right? It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by Summer Wars, an ambitious movie that presents a rich tapestry of themes, rather than the loosely connected string of ideas going from start to finish that I’ve become accustomed to expect lately. I’m not quite sure what I would say is the main theme of the movie, but it could easily be any or all of these (and more):

• the dangers of the receding boundary between digital and analogue;
• the role of families and communities in modern society
• a restoration of pride in Japanese identity, history and culture

All this is told through the eyes of the Jinnouchi family, as they come together to celebrate the 90th birthday of their matriarch. There’s a a grab-bag of stereotypes: the wise-old grandmother, the quiet kid, the black sheep (an adopted son), the loud uncle, the gossiping aunts, and the uncontrollable kids, but because they each play a critical role in the story, and the very real and warm way in which they’re portrayed, made them seem to me like the most compellingly realistic fictional family in recent memory. This is one of the things that I love most about anime – how they often depict “humanity” even better than live action dramas.

This, of course, is set up against the virtual world of OZ – an idealised representation of the Internet. A lot of geeks might cringe and groan at some of the representations, but the makers did a good job of ensuring that things never gets so technical that ordinary people wouldn’t be able to follow. My measure of this as usual, is my wife Jenny. She had no difficulty understanding the comments that the story was making about issues that we face as the digital world continues to encroach into the real world.

Being anime, there were still some unfortunate genre conventions that were sadly obeyed, one of which is the obligatory nudity of a young female character – I really don’t see why when every other character’s digital presence was some kind of cartoon animal, the girl’s avatar turns out to be … a girl. Who gets (partly) naked.

Be that as it may, it’s a minor quibble to an otherwise excellent movie. If you enjoyed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – or less likely, the Digimon movie – by the same director (Mamoru Hosoda), then you’ll love Summer Wars.

Now if only I could get a round of applause at the end of my reviews :-)

It says "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" in case you're thinking that there are way too many characters for the movie's two syllable title

Last night Jenny and I went to see Ponyo. Dunno know what’s up with the session times, but Dendy was the only cinema that was showing it outside of business hours. Lucky for us, it meant that we got the subtitled original Japanese version instead of the English dubbed Disney one.

I’m sure much is lost in translation, but Ponyo‘s writers didn’t overly concern themselves with fleshing out the plot, leaving a lot for the audience to guess at. This is my take on it: a man (wizard?) becomes disenchanted by the contempt with which humans treat nature and the environment, so he retreats into the sea where he meets Gran Mamae, a sea goddess. They fall in love and have a daughter named Brunhilde who’s supposed to be a goldfish, but looks like a fat tadpole wearing a red dress over white petticoats. There are thousands more of these creatures, presumably her siblings, but for some unknown reason Brunhilde is larger, more intelligent and has more magical capability than them.

This is where the movie starts, with Brunhilde sneaking out of home, falling asleep while drifting around relaxing, getting stuck in a glass bottle, and being discovered by a little boy called Sosuke, who gives her the name Ponyo.

Hayao Miyazaki is, above all else, an astute observer of human nature. Unlike most regular movies where the viewer is taken on an emotional journey through a structured narrative, Miyazaki films are a bit like laboratory experiments: characters are placed in unusual predicaments, and through it, we learn about our own humanity through observing them.

And therein lies the beauty. Sure the plot doesn’t make sense and it can even be a bit preachy at times with the criticism of how people treat the environment, but the organic animation style oozes humanity in every frame. Miyazaki is not afraid to let those awkward moments between two characters linger, allowing us to watch their thoughts and emotions evolve on their faces rather than through the dialogue.

Still, there’s never a dull moment, with every scene containing a lot of movement to give the sense that the characters aren’t just sprites on a static background, but exist in a living, breathing environment. That’s another wonderful thing about Studio Ghibli movies – the background is often just as significant a character as the ones that actually have dialogue.

Ponyo is a great work of art by a master animator, but I don’t know about the rave reviews. To me, the triumph of this movie is how in watching it, we may see little glimpses of ourselves as if in a mirror. But a tightly written, compelling story it isn’t, especially considering that (warning, spoilers! ROT13‘d for your convenience) gur 3eq npg bs gur zbivr qvffbyirf vagb n pbzcyrgryl enaqbz ybir pbadhref nyy fpranevb. Gurl’er 5 lrnef byq… frevbhfyl?