To Bathe in Filmic Waters

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea | Hayao Miyazaki, 2008

Hayao Miyazaki’s tenth film in his lengthy, Ghiblian reign over the world of animated cinema, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, is a disappointment. It pains me to utter such words, or even to type them out in front of me, for it is a return to the screen that I have anticipated for three long years now and one that has been made all the more difficult by the film’s sluggish journey across the world from Asia to Europe. Perhaps this is the problem. Miyazaki’s consistence as a director and slow, methodical mastering of a genre that he has regularly redefined means that any new material of his is now treated as an event rather than a mere release. His conquering of western audiences with the outstanding back-to-back features Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away at the beginning of the decade means that Miyazaki is now almost a household name outside Japan, and that the level of worldwide anticipation for his work is now as high as it has ever been in the man’s 40-year career – but can such hype ever really be lived up to? Ponyo, which centers around a young boy named Sosuke (based on Miyazaki’s son Goro at five years old) and his blossoming friendship with  a goldfish that later becomes a girl, suits its international distributor, Disney, down to the ground and even borrows a few narrative traits from The Little Mermaid – one of Disney’s most successful titles. The film, with its clear message of environmentalism and the importance of nature, is clearly aimed at a younger audience and this, coupled with an all-star Disneyfied dub should mean that Ponyo (note the shortened title) does fairly well when it is released stateside this August.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea sees an entirely new approach to animation by Ghibli, who do away with the crisp, almost cel-shaded look that Howl’s Moving Castle boasted and instead move onto something decidedly more natural. Considering the content that Ponyo purveys, this natural look – used to give the whimsical feeling of watercolours or pastels – is much better suited to the film. Miyazaki himself was intimately involved with much of this side of production, and it is certainly the film’s most redeeming quality – the sequences featuring the sea itself are positively breathtaking, and manage to capture the nature of the ocean in a way that Finding Nemo, with all its  research and precision and attention to detail, could never manage. Many critics have underlined Miyazaki’s younger target audience here as if it were some deep-seated flaw in the film but this is entirely beside the point. It’s a film for children, and if this isn’t obvious enough from the outset it’s almost spelled out by Miyazaki himself through a handful of oddly-placed references to his own My Neighbour Totoro. No, the flaws here exist instead in the lazy yet often downright contrived narrative that – just as with Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart – crudely meshes real life with some fantastical dreamland and expects that to suffice. Then there is the heavy-handed approach to environmentalism which, while an honest and always prevailing feature in Miyazaki’s work, is as tactless as can be here. Still, the premise itself is an effective one, and if we can take this lesser Miyazaki at face value – that is, an old-fashioned adventure story designed to snare the imagination of today’s youth  – then it works, despite its shallow nature.

Our Rating: