Hayao Miyazaki is considered by many to be not only best Japanese director working today, but one of the best Japanese directors to have ever lived. He belongs in the pantheon of great Japanese directors alongside other masters such as Yasjiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa. Within the sphere of his own genre, animated feature length films, only the great Walt Disney and the more recent John Lasseter can come close to challenging the mantle Miyazaki currently holds. Miyazaki’s list of credits speak for themselves, he has one of the strongest bodies of work in cinematic history. Stand-outs includes the much revered Spirited Away, the film which finally broke Miyazaki in the West for mainstream audiences, Princess Monoke and one of the greatest films of the 1980s the masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro. However, any film with the Studio Ghibli seal of approval is certainly worth watching. The most underrated film from the Studio Ghibli catalogue is the beautifully realised comedy drama Porco Rosso. The plot described simply, and reductively, could be ‘’Casablanca with a Pig’’. If that sentence does not make you smile then perhaps this is not the film for you. Porco Rosso is about an Italian World War One fighter pilot who now makes his living as a bounty hunter, he chases air pirates over the Adriatic Sea. Once called Macro, he was cursed and turned into a pig, taking the new name Porco Rosso (red pig in Italian). The film takes this premise and weaves in a number of subsidiary plotlines, Porco’s friendship with a girl named Fio who becomes his engineer; a hotshot idiotic American fighter pilot called Curtis and most interestingly unrequited love between Porco and Gia, a hotel owner and singer. These characters and storylines allow Miyazaki a number of opportunities to focus on his own animated pre-occupation of flying. Never before has a directed elicited so much joy and excitement from the art of aviation. Flying, in one form or another, is a major part of almost every Miyazaki film, from the fantasy world swooping of Princess Monoke and the air pirates in Laputa to the young witch flying on her broomstick in Kiki’s Delivery Service. However Porco Rosso is something special within the Miyazaki canon because it focuses on the ‘real world’ and the birth of aviation. A number of characters within the film reference the earliest days of aviation, which shows how deep Miyazaki’s love for flight goes. The animation of the flying sequences is nothing less than miraculous, they make scenes of a flying pig challenging air pirates some of the most exciting action scenes in cinema. This is where Miyazaki proves he is a master of the animated genre, he takes what is essentially something lifeless, still drawings, and fills them with motion and excitement.
Do not be mistaken though this film has plenty of magic that would appeal to even the youngest of audience members. The main character is a fighter pilot pig, there is a bunch of comedy air pirates and the film ends with one of the most amusing fist fights in cinema history. However, it is the adult themes of the film which make it the most unique of Miyazaki’s work so far. Porco is a tragic character, whose emotional scars of WWI still haunt him; the realistic and unrequited love between Gia and Porco is beautifully realised and easily matches that of Bergman and Bogart’s in Casablanca. Perhaps it is these adult themes which takes the film away from being classified as a children’s picture and it is possibly this is what has hurt the film most of all in revisionists eyes. Yet it is this dichotomy of tone between adult realisation and fear and a child’s exuberance of flying and fighting, that mixes beautifully for an audience of all ages, which makes Porco Rosso an unique and unforgettable film. Porco Rosso is both a good starting point to explore the weird and wonderful world of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli as a whole; and a perfect film to savour for the end of the marathon if you are intent on watching all of their films. It is one of the greatest films from one the most singular filmmakers who has ever graced this earth. Porco Rosso: I'd rather be a pig than a fascist. Wilson McLachlan |
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Perhaps the most interesting facet of film revisionism is what films by celebrated directors get lost in the mix. For example, Martin Scorsese’s filmography is highly acclaimed particularly the period from Mean Streets in 1973 until 1980’s Raging Bull, however very few people when discussing this great body of work ever discuss Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. It was critically acclaimed upon release and went a long way to establish Scorsese as new force in American cinema. It was celebrated at awards including Ellen Burstyn Oscar win for Best Actress in the 1975 Academy Awards. Yet the film is practically ignored by almost everyone, including the most devoted cinephiles. Why does this revisionism occur is it the need to neatly stack directors in easy to understand boxes as promoted by Auteur Theory? One of Scorsese best films forgotten because it is not Italian American, Religious nor Gangster orientated. Other directors have similar gems in their back-catalogues which can be brought to the fore with a little bit of digging: Red Beard by Akira Kurosawa, Amistad by Steven Spielberg, I, Confess by Alfred Hitchcock or She Wore a Yellow Ribbon by John Ford. While these director’s body of work stands as a testament of the quality of both their work and cinema as a whole, it is a shame that a film which would light up any other biography is confined to second rung status. One such film which has suffered this ignominy is Porco Rosso directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
One of the more interesting facets of the film, in relation to the rest of Miyazaki’s body of work, is the real world setting. Within this real world setting of between the World Wars in Italy Miyazaki fills the film with a myriad of small details recognisible to anyone familiar with history, it covers the rise of Fascism in Italy, a flashback shows the pre-pig Macro flying fighters against those from the Austro-Hungary empire in WWI, the female fashion comes right out of the 1920s and it mentions the economic crisis which swept the globe in 1929. Perhaps it is this real world setting which makes the film the easiest forgotten of Miyazaki’s masterpieces, perhaps the real world setting does not alight the imagination of the audience like the fantasy world’s depicted in Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle. However, to make this judgement call without the seeing the film would be a huge error, this film may have a real world setting but it is as magical and enchanting as any set in distant realms which humans can only dream of.
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