Studio Ghibli has done a lot of good work over the years, but if you’re not all that familiar with it, where do you start? HBO Max has a number of their films included, but there’s still the question of where to go to fill in the blanks. Well, I’d heard a lot of good about My Neighbor Totoro, so that seemed as good a place as any to start, particularly just after finishing the short The Trial of Joan of Arc.
OK, that’s a bit of tonal whiplash to be sure, but it was good enough for me for one night’s worth of film. Not everything has to be deep and dark.
Sisters Satsuki and Mei (voiced, in the version I saw, by sister Dakota and Elle Fanning) are moving out to a new house in the country with their father (Tim Daly). Their mother, we eventually learn, is in a nearby hospital recovering from a long term illness of some kind. As soon as the girls arrive in their new home, they spot spirits dropping acorns and disappearing into various openings around the house. It isn’t long before first Mei and then both sisters have encounters with the large, fluffy Totoro (Frank Welker), a playful fellow who lives in the woods…well, playful when he isn’t taking a long nap. Given the girls’ general apprehension over their mother’s long confinement in the hospital, Totoro and the wonder that comes with him, such as the Catbus and trees that sprout large and tall after strange rituals, his appearance is just what both girls need in a very trying time in their lives.
This was, all told, a rather delightful movie without a lot of stakes. There’s one moment where it looks like Satsuki and Mei’s mother may have taken a turn for the worse and Mei runs off, but it turns out their mother is just experiencing a minor cold just like the doctors said she was. The tension is in the girls’ minds, particularly younger sister Mei. Considering Tortoro and the other spirits are only really visible to the girls, it could be everything is just a figment of their collective imagination, but that seems unlikely given how some events turn out. It’s a movie that mostly seems content to be about the awe and wonder of a child’s view of the world.
Plus, it was nice that none of the adults in the movie ever doubted that Totoro or the other spirits were in fact real. Their father and a neighbior they call “Granny” not only supports their fantasies, but they take time to explain what the spirits the girls see actually are. Maybe that’s an aspect of Japanese culture I am generally unaware of, but it certainly was a nice change of pace considering most movies and TV shows I see where kids interact with friendly supernatural creatures that only they can see are generally dismissed by adults at best. Here, not only is it neither humored nor disbelieved in any way, it is arguably encouraged by many of the adults in the know.
Really, this was a sweet movie with a lot of creative, high-quality animation. You know, like Studio Ghibli is generally known for.
Grade: A
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