Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo on the Cliff:" A Huffington Post Review

Much has been written about the Japanese "cult of the cute". Large dish-plate eyes and button noses in comics and cartoons are ubiquitous, and whether or not that's good or bad isn't here nor there. But the great animation director Hayao Miyazaki has used this cult to create one of the more disturbing monsters in cinematic history.

The monster is a fish-goddess named Brunhilde, who is being held prisoner by her father Fujimoto, who is the estranged husband of the goddess of the sea, and goes around in his submarine from where he pours his magic elixirs into the sea and creates more in order to so something horrible that it will destroy humanity and bring the world back into it's pre-civilized balance. He know about B-h's potential power, so he keeps her in the form of a "goldfish" in a "bowl" located within the submarine, something she and her many sister/servants aren't to happy about.

So when Dad isn't looking, B-h sneaks out of the sub and hijacks the nearest jellyfish, where she starts lolling around the seven seas before coming close to shore, where she gets stuck in a bottle, and gets rescued by a five-year-old boy named Sosuke, who lives with his parents somewhere on the Japanese coast.

Now presumably, Miyazaki has made a study of the behavior of five-year old children, but that doesn't seem evident. A real Sosuke wouldn't act in the way he does. The little tyke puts B-h in a bucket and fills it with FRESH water. Now, a little kid on vacation at the beach might to that if they had never been to the sea before, but our Sosuke lives there. Mommy and Daddy would have told him that doing so would kill the creature. But this doesn't matter, because what he has isn't any ordinary fish, but as little goddess, who has tasted his blood and fallen deeply in lust.

Now here's where we get into the Japanese Cult of the Cute, B-h, whom Sosuke names Ponyo, accidently escapes, gets caught by Daddy, escapes again, and in doing so cracks the entire space-time continuum and thus causes hundreds of trillions of Yen's worth of damage to the coast of Japan, We see the supernatural waves crashing on the shore, turning into fish and trying deliberately to drown Sosuke and his mother's car. Our hero sees B-h/Ponyo in the form of a little girl, running on top of the water with a happy-go-lucky grin trying to say hello. Isn't that SWEET? When I saw this for the first time at Comic-Con in San Diego last month, the reaction was mostly "isn't that special? Isn't that Charming?" Miyazaki's design is perfect, and that's what's so scary here. If Ponyo wasn't cute, we would all be screaming " bang her on the head with that shovel!!!!" at the screen.

Of course the whole thing ends happily ever after. It has to. What we have is total deus ex machina in what has to be the most random of Miyazaki's films to date.

The character of Ponyo is closest to the main character in the famous Twilight Zone episode, It's a Good Life, in which a child, played by Billy Mumy, terrorizes a small town because of his god-like powers. The recently released horror film Orphan, likewise has a little girl as the villain (spoiler: she's a 35-year old midget), but in that case we know that she's evil. Miyazaki, on the other hand, wants us to love little Ponyo, because she's happy and adorable. It's the anime style that overcomes the astoundingly insipid plot. The question is that why didn't Miyazaki, who has in the past been a master of plotting, fall so flat here. His previous fantasies all have well though out stories and deep characters. This time, it's idiot plotting cardboard figurines. Its sad to see a great man jump the shark like that.

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Comments

[MPsai]

It sounds to me like the author just wanted to brandish about the term "cult of cute" to sound intelligent and ended up putting his foot in his mouth.

Miyzaki's work is fairly atypical as far as anime goes. And it is his work, he co-founded Studio Ghibli and the films he directs are also rendered closely to his own drawing style. Miyazaki's films are never sickenly saccharine, often utilize a muted color palette, and tend to be very down to earth and slice of life even at their most supernatural. Granted this particular film is different aethestically than the usual Ghibli formula but I think that's because it was intended for very young children. This of course is why the movie seems flat as Miyazaki's generally aims his film at a more pre-teen, teenaged audience.

At any rate, claiming Miyzaki's films fall into the "cult of cute" is painting a wide, condescending, ethnocentric brush over Japanese media. You'll know the obnoxious "cult of cute" when you see it, believe me, it's a big part of otaku culture and little else. Miyazaki's films definitely don't have otaku appeal. And you know what, just look at the characters in Ponyo, I've seen Disney Princesses with bigger eyes than that.

[lgrillo]

It was my understanding that the movie is an adaptation based loosely on the original Hans Christian Anderson fable, The Little Mermaid. It's very different, but it's still about a fish that wants to become human because she loves a boy, and a father who doesn't want her to stay a fish.

I saw it tonight with my son and found it absolutely enchanting. It was wonderful.

[TakeSake]

This review is similar enough to this previous one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/huffpost-review-iponyoi_b_256244.html

that I suspect the disconnect between the movie and the review is one of translation. I have not seen the movie - in English. The trailer provided the clue about the disconnect: a Disney splash at the beginning, followed by Aspartame-laced voices in English.

Cultural references and reference points are at best poorly translated; the transliteration would have required hours of commentary.

I suggest to watch it in the original Japanese version, even if you can't understand the language.

[Cuchanu]

Well I was a little disappointed with the movie (mostly the first half), but my baby loved it and I suppose that's more important. That being said, I'm having a hard time figuring out what in the hell you are talking about!

[tungolnb]

I'm amazed at how negative and off-base some of your interpretations of the film are.

"Fujimoto [...] goes around in his submarine from where he pours his magic elixirs into the sea and creates more in order to so something horrible that it will destroy humanity and bring the world back into it's pre-civilized balance."

Where did you get the idea that he was going to do something horrible to destroy humanity? Fujimoto was horrified at what had happened after Ponyo accidentally released the elixirs in the well.

"We see the supernatural waves crashing on the shore, turning into fish and trying deliberately to drown Sosuke and his mother's car."

I don't see how you interpreted the waves, caused by Ponyo in an attempt to reunite with Sosuke, as a deliberate attempt to drown Sosuke and his mother. This is just sensationalism to prove a point that otherwise has no basis.

It just seems like your review comes out of a desire to be a nay-sayer and interpret a children's film as a sinister horror film for sensationalism's sake.

[Mark Frost]

Well let's assume Ponyo didn't escape from her father, find Sosuke, and want to become human. Her father would have potentially destroyed humanity as you stated. Instead, Ponyo and Sosuke teach Ponyo's father that despite humanity's flaws, there's still goodness. So technically, Ponyo is the savior of humanity and should not compared to the "girl" in Orphan in any way, share, or form.

I suggest you think about a movie from different points of view before publishing your words and calling it "A Huffington Post Review" as if that's supposed to carry weight in moviegoers' minds or something.

[nkrdl]

How do you glean such a sinister, negative interpretation from a simple family film? As much as the "critic" so handily dismisses the simpleness ("insipid") of the plot, his linking of the lead character to an evil child in a Twilight Zone episode is Palin-esque in its leap of faith!

[messy]

Well, at least I"ve seen the film.

[southwindow]

Wow- no one proofread this garbage.
You need to watch this movie again after taking remedial English.