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Mar 26 – Site Update - Posted By Adam
Review: Two Short Films By Hayao Miyazaki
On Saturday, March 26th, the famed venue of Carnegie Hall in New York City screened two short films by Hayao Miyazaki: "House Hunting" and "Water Spider." Both films had never before been shown outside of Japan.
In total, Miyazaki has directed eight short films. He normally produces these films during the 3-4 year gap between his feature films and uses them as an opportunity to experiment and tell smaller stories.
If you're interested in seeing all eight: tough luck. The Ghibli Museum in Japan only screens one of Miyazaki's shorts per month. So even if you could attend every single screening, it would take you eight months to see them all. Even this Carnegie Hall showing was a one-time exception.
After watching both shorts, it is criminal that they are inaccessible to so many otaku around the world. If the other six shorts are as good as these two and a DVD compilation were made of them all, it would immediately be one of the best anime DVDs to ever see the light of day. Ugh, maybe some day.
House Hunting
The first film screened was produced in 2006. It is by far the more experimental of the two. Clocking in at 12 minutes, "House Hunting" is about a young girl who goes on a journey, greeting many spirits along the way, until she finds an abandoned house where she takes refuge.
The most powerful thing about "House Hunting" is the fact that all the music and sound effects are literally pronounced by two voice actors. Try to imitate the sound of a car ("vrooom, vroom"), the eating of an apple ("omnomnom") or the sound of the wind ("swoosh, swoosh") and you'll quickly see how joyful and silly the effect is.
But the madness doesn't just stop there: Sound and music and certain actions are also depicted by a flurry of related Japanese letters that are constantly appearing on screen. So for example the "vroom vroom" noise would be accompanied by text that said "vroom vroom" literally and would flow out of the car. Because the noises and text are nonstop, you can't help but feel joy at it all.
The film itself, beyond this colorful structure, is Miyazaki at his best. Charming, funny, and thought-provoking. My favorite involves the young girl's friendly interactions with the hundreds of bugs that occupy her new residence. While she's very generous with the bugs, she does make sure to draw a circle around her sleeping bag to denote her "territory." It's small actions like that that make you wonder what Miyazaki's trying to say beneath the surface.
Water Spider
"Water Spider," also released in 2006 and at 15 minutes long, is less experimental and focuses on the life of a wonderful insect protagonist. The titular water spider gathers bubbles of air on the surface of water and stores them for use both as a nest and as an air supply. This is a journey fraught with danger though, nearly everything else in the water wants to eat it.
On a day like any other, the water spider sees a female water strider bug (note: I wrote STRIDER not SPIDER), which can quickly skate across the surface of water. The water strider is one of the greatest non-human anime characters I've ever seen. It reminds me slightly of the roadrunner and you find out, at the very end, that it has an extra ability to boot.
The movie is a love story at its essence. The water spider falls in love with the water strider, and while they can never really be together (one lives underwater, the other lives above), they can for a moment...dance.
One feature of the movie I loved, which is also a common feature of other Miyazaki movies, is that while the two main characters are cute and loveable, every other insect/fish/animal in the film is depicted as a kind of brainless, machine-like monster. This contrast shows both sides of the animal kingdom and also raises the threat level to our lovey-dovey heroes.
(Oh, and I was stunned to learn, both the water spider and water strider are real bugs too! Just not nearly so cute...use Google Image Search to see what I mean.)
