Loving Miyazaki | The Old Man Who Is Always On the Go

(Portrait of Hayao Miyazaki)

Following its Oscar win for Best Animated Feature with "The Boy and the Heron", Studio Ghibli was honored with its first-ever Palme d'Or. With a majority of its successful works being credited to Hayao Miyazaki, this award cleverly recognizes his significant contributions to global animation.

It seems that its Cannes and Oscar wins have concurrently signaled one thing: Miyazaki's works are a must-watch for movie fans all over the world.

However, many people have questioned his achievements, most of which are aimed at his new film：

"Is it so hard to admit that it is a bad film?"

"It's like listening to a person with aphasia telling a story."

"The story is not well told. Miyazaki is no longer Miyazaki."

As his number one fan, I feel indignant about these doubts, but I'm unable to provide satisfactory refutations because I can't say that I understand this movie myself. I can talk at length about his previous works, but this one makes me feel that any interpretation seems far-fetched.

But! As someone who has been deeply healed by Miyazaki, I can't just let this slide!

With a feeling of injustice, I re-watched his works and viewed a documentary (during a period spanning 10 years) by NHK about his life.

After that, I developed a new perspective of this lovely old man.

Defeating the Muse

In the documentary, I saw a Miyazaki who is always on the edge of anxiety and irritability. He is not a genius blessed by the Muse. Instead, he is an ordinary man who is inspired by life but is often at his wit's end due to the limits of men.

Miyazaki's animation creations invariably stem from some emotions that he can't let go of. Although he has never said so directly, that's what I've observed. It may be about him refusing to wake up from a dream, forgetting to get down to business, or lamenting about being unable to catch the beautiful sunset after his demise. He is first deeply moved by his own uniqueness, then tries to convey it using animation. Hence, Miyazaki has always disliked writing business proposals, but prefers to first come up with a few storyboards that deeply touch him. For example, when making "Ponyo", he first completed a drawing of Ponyo riding the waves before thinking about what kind of story led to this occurrence.

Therefore, it is impossible to understand Miyazaki with traditional narrative logic. His expressions primarily serve emotional impulses, not rational choices. This is why we can always feel a strong sense of innocence and loss in his movies - in a society dominated by rationality, innocent emotions always seem out of place.

I think, Miyazaki has a spectrum of works that cannot be described using words. On one end of the spectrum are piles of drafts that reach the height of Mount Everest, and on the other end are a scarce number of drawings smudged by his tears.

How does such a man like Miyazaki complete his works in such solitude? Being moved by oneself is a disaster for those in love, and even more so a curse for creators. On the one hand, Miyazaki must exhaust all his skills to faithfully depict a scene that moves him. On the other hand, he must transcend himself to ensure that he is not boringly repeating some old conventional story plots.

He must face questioning by others, and by himself, in order to strip his works off superficiality and extravagance, and deliver the purest emotions to the audience.

We are unable to trace back to the exact day when Miyazaki was inspired. Perhaps it was the day he discovered that animation could make up for the regrets of reality; or the day when the disintegration of the Soviet Union severely challenged his leftist mindsets; or the day when he decided to retire for the first time and found that he was nothing without animation. No matter which day it was, what we can be sure of is that since that very day, he has been determined to live well and can no longer find any reason to yield to man’s limits.

Amid the challenge of transcending oneself, the probability of failure is often much greater than that of success. Therefore, most of the time, Miyazaki is constantly teetering between uneasiness and irascibility. One second, he is excited about coming up with a fresh idea, and the next second, he may feel doubly lost because he cannot express it clearly. The deadly thing is that because he was too excited before, he cannot retreat calmly.

Regardless of the reason, a person who follows their passion and ends up quitting is but telling a cheap lie.

15 months of dedication for a 4-second scene

(This four-second shot comes from "The Wind Rises". In order to make it into a style that Miyazaki is satisfied with, the entire Ghibli Studio took 15 months to complete it.)

I think, apart from me, any normal-minded person would be puzzled by this. This scene which lasts for four seconds can probably be explained with just a background introduction:

"The earthquake not only destroyed most parts of Tokyo, but also brought about an unquenchable fire. People on the streets were packed like sardines as they chaotically scurried to escape, resembling horses without reins."

This alone would do the job. For something that can be simply accounted for with a few lines of narration, why mobilize all of the studio's manpower, and even spend a full 15 months?

It was only after I watched this scene over and over again with a disgruntled attitude that I realized my superficiality. If I were fortunate enough to work at Studio Ghibli and had the opportunity to pose this question to Miyazaki, he might respond, "There won't be live coverage of catastrophic disasters like that, you idiot."

Pursuing perfectionism when depicting disasters is not a harsh practice. In that four-second shot, no one's expression is repeated. Although it looks disorderly as a whole, all the characters in it seems to have a clear motive.

The subtle differences in their attires, expressions, and actions not only enhance the sense of reality, but also reveal massive amounts of information. The scene includes local residents who have salvaged essential belongings from their homes, as well as foreign tourists with empty hands; there are women carrying children, and merchants dragging heavy goods.

The reason why these people are in chaos is not because of panic and fear, but because the disaster has forcibly intersected their destinies at that moment. Whether it's a newborn or an elderly person, compared to their previous lives, the occurrence of the disaster is only for a very brief moment. A minute ago, they might have been doing different things, and have different plans for the future, but when the disaster suddenly and violently strikes, they all have to strive for the same goal: survival.

The lives of these completely unacquainted individuals are all disrupted by the same devastating disaster. Such a profound feeling is something that any post-event interview cannot restore. Besides, people often subconsciously avoid recalling painful memories. For Miyazaki, who is often unable to suppress his emotions due to his deep empathy for others' fates, might not be satisfied with just 15 months, but it was the maximum duration allowed by all conditions.

“Warlike” Miyazaki

In the eyes of some audiences, Miyazaki is a thorough warmonger. His animations are filled with an insatiable longing for perfect flying machines, to the extent that it has inspired other directors to imitate him one after another.

Indeed, didn't he pursue perfectionism so obsessively in his early works to make his pen-and-paper drawings of flying machines look more realistic? Then, in his later works, he must have been too old to draw, so he used the sluggish technique of personification to bestow bombs that rain down on innocent civilians with legs and wings. It must have also been a moment of folly for him to blow up the world that took months to build with a seconds-long explosion.

Can cheering with excitement at the ruins cure the old man's cervical spondylosis?

The Japanese octogenarian, who gasps for air after climbing just two steps of stairs, has really put his heart into painstakingly depicting the disastrous war weapons brought to mankind.

To the people who doubts Miyazaki's integrity: if you had the ability to fly, what would you fly for?

In "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind", Princess Nausicaä flies to save her people; in "Castle in the Sky", Pazu flies to meet Sheeta, whom he falls in love with at first sight, again; in "My Neighbor Totoro", the Catbus flies to let two children see their sick mother sooner; in "Spirited Away", Haku, the white dragon, flies to save the drowning Chihiro; in "Howl's Moving Castle", Howl flies to stop a war.

What Miyazaki really strives to depict is the act of flying.

The person who has mastered flying is unconstrained in the sky and can go anywhere he wants to go, but in the end, he returns to the ground because of personal attachments.

Freedom is originally an elusive concept, but Miyazaki gives it shape and weight through the decisions that his characters make.

In "The Boy and the Heron," Miyazaki designed a monster who loses the ability to fly: the Grey Heron. If a detailed analysis of it is required, that would be another long article.

Why Should We Love Miyazaki?

Miyazaki is a bold, selfless author. His most pressing concern is how we can learn to love our lives again. Whether we like him or not does not matter to him. For Miyazaki, passion is about going to the extent of no return, or even self-sacrifice. His stories are suitable for people who have experienced lows in life, or who are in a state of disappointment. However, occasionally there were instances where he tried too hard to design a satisfying ending and ended up being unable to retreat back to the ordinary. In reality, most parts of our lives are ordinary. Fans will be fascinated by the world he has created, but they may also lose themselves more deeply in it. In this regard, Miyazaki himself may not have a good solution.

Although I didn't hear him say it directly, I believe "The Boy and the Heron" is a gift from Miyazaki to all those who admire and respect him. Just like when his son Goro Miyazaki was stuck in a creative bottleneck, he didn't choose to give him a long preaching, but a drawing. The drawing shows the female protagonist rushing ahead with a briefcase, from which the younger Miyazaki understood how to give life to his characters.

I think, Miyazaki himself would laugh out loud if he saw those bad reviews. For a person who is always on the go, everything around him, regardless of whether it's good or bad, is passing scenery.