The golden lessons of Princess Mononoke, my animation cinema heroine

"It's your eyes that have changed, darling. The film is the same."

A couple years ago, this quote from Pedro Almódovar's latest masterpiece, Pain and Glory, stuck in my unconscious mind. This is one way to remind—and also gradually convince—myself how much power cinema, a transforming art, has by constantly presenting relatable content. Princess Mononoke, which belongs to Hayao Miyazaki's vast magical Japanese universe, is one of the movies that changed over time in my unconscious mind since the first time I watched it.

This movie is set in medieval Japan, but has touches of magical realism inspired by Japanese mythology and some urban legends. Through this adventure, we witness Prince Ashitaka's story, who was to abandon his community due to its sacred laws after being surprisingly attacked and cursed by a weird forest demon that possesses and consumes animals. His mission is to find the forest's soul, cure himself and avoid this curse from spreading across every town. To achieve this, he must unite two sides that are in a constant fight over the territory. On the one hand, there are the workers who follow Lady Eboshi, a totalitarian figure that creates arms to deforest and destroy the forest. On the other hand, there are several animal packs that, together with Mononoke and her wolf gods, want absolute freedom.

Instead of focusing on the shocking, painful and also beautiful overcoming story, I would rather focus on Mononoke's figure and environmental philosophy. This topic reminds me why I consider this quiet, mysterious and relentless young lady an overwhelming force of nature and my absolute animation cinema heroine. Around 10 years ago, I would have never confessed this nor guessed I would be saying it.

Even though human beings possess an almost incorrigible signature essence, it's interesting that we can change our perspective and start a deconstruction process, which may be either necessary or almost unexpected. We start to see everything we once believed in a different way, which makes us believe our whole existence is a lie, a sort of generalized pantomime. In a prior article in which I got completely "naked" in my own narrative and sort of explained how I've been looking after my mental health for a while now, I showed a side I've only had the courage to show to some people. But, in this case, I want to debate about collective ethics and morality since I can assert that, in this movie, the depth regarding social terms—and the real message—lies in places that not a lot of people dare to—nor want to—decipher.

A representation of human nature's duality, the film doesn't demonize any of the conflicting sides. Actually, it shows us that both humanity in its worst facet and the cherished nature can have a dark and clear side simultaneously. Even though Lady Eboshi destroys things in her "search of progress," she's also seen as a compassionate figure that helps lepers and marginalized women, which brings up the following inevitable questions: Can humanity coexist with nature without destroying it? Can the destruction of the environment be covered with this "concept" of being kind to others of our species?

Yes, this is a complex topic, but also relevant in the current global context, in which we face problems such as climate change, excessive deforestation and biodiversity loss in many places of the world due to economic and political interests that, if we think twice about them, don't make any sense. What's the impact of our daily minimal decisions? Who, whether humans or not, bears the consequences of you buying that notebook you needed? As someone who makes every daily decision consciously, I recognize that industrialization and development aren't inherently negative for society, but they must be balanced by an environmental awareness that most of us don't have.

Who is San, the Princess Mononoke, and what's her role in Miyazaki's movie metaphor?

San, raised by wolf gods and marked by her connection with the sacred forest's nature, symbolizes the environment's resistance to human exploitation. Her simple forest life and her fierce defense of animals—especially of the Deer God Moro—are similar to activists' current environmental fight. Greenpeace, Health Save and many other organizations, to a greater or lesser extent, collaborate to create a planet where animals aren't exploited. For both San and me, nature isn't a resource that can be used as one prefers, but a living entity that deserves respect and protection. Nonetheless, the parallel between her opinion and mine wasn't immediate since I was too young to "see" what Miyazaki was actually trying to convey through his work.

In 2013, on a day like any other while staring at my phone, I saw an almost two-hour video on Youtube in which a famous activist called Gary Yourofsky gave a talk about veganism in a United States university. I was in such shock that, next morning, I woke up and told my mom: "I decided not to consume anything that comes from an animal ever again." From that moment on, I started to see everything I believed in as one of the biggest collective lies humankind experienced. San, or Princess Mononoke, represents all the values I learned in the process of seeing animals as "someone" and not "something."

Therefore, like in our reality, in Miyazaki's film, the forest spirits, the Deer God and the Boar Clan represent the ecosystem's strength and fragility. This uncanny masterpiece reminds us that nature has its own life and voice and that destroying it is not only an act of violence against the environment but also entails denying its essence... and, even though we refuse to accept it, is also an act of violence against ourselves.

Everyone should read this message, as the one in Princess Mononoke.

BY JERÓNIMO CASCO

Posted on NOVEMBER 1st, 2024, 16:29 pM | UTC-GMT -3

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