0:04

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast

0:06

from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.

0:08

I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Vincent Cunningham,

0:10

and we are all staff writers at The New

0:12

Yorker. The show is

0:15

a place for us to make sense of what's happening in

0:17

the culture right now and how we got here. Hey, guys.

0:20

Hi. Hello. So,

0:24

I don't know about you guys, but when

0:26

I think of some big themes that might

0:28

help us to better understand contemporary life, I

0:31

come up with a list like this, the relationship

0:34

between nature and society, the

0:36

dangers, the attractions of technology,

0:40

the power of the imagination, the consciousnesses

0:42

of children. Each

0:45

one of these themes actually makes me think of

0:48

a great artist, Hayao

0:51

Miyazaki. He's a master

0:53

storyteller and the undisputed

0:55

master of animated film. He's

0:57

made movies like My Neighbor Totoro,

1:00

Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and along

1:02

the way he's become beloved

1:05

in Japan where he works, of course, but also

1:07

here in the States. For

1:09

me, the rare magic in his work

1:11

comes from how every single idea in

1:13

one of Miyazaki's films, a plot point,

1:16

a dream, a moment of horror,

1:19

is expressed visually. Before any word

1:21

is spoken, you understand what's happening because

1:23

some terrifying or wonderful

1:25

image will grab you by the throat.

1:33

Miyazaki is now 82 years old and he

1:35

spent the last seven years making a new film.

1:40

It's called The Boy and the Heron.

1:42

It's a film about a young boy

1:44

named Mahito who's grieving the loss of

1:47

his mother. As he's getting

1:49

used to a new life, a new

1:51

home, a new stepmother, he's visited by

1:53

this kind of deranged, increasingly deranged, I

1:55

should say. Gray

1:57

Heron. He's

2:00

awake and he arrests you. Who

2:03

taps on his window, makes

2:05

these weird visitations, and coaxes

2:07

him into this dangerous magical

2:09

realm. What is this place called?

2:14

This world is filled with the dead. It

2:18

came out in Japan earlier this year, and it's in

2:20

theaters in the US right now. So

2:23

today on Critics at Large, we're talking about

2:25

the lasting mark that Miyazaki has made on

2:27

the life of the imagination really everywhere across

2:29

the globe. And how his legacy

2:31

is taking shape. This is where this film is

2:33

going. Don't let me,

2:36

no matter what. Ready? We'll

2:43

get into it. Let's do it. Let's do it. So

2:47

to start out, Miyazaki as a director

2:50

can be a little bit hard to place.

2:52

What are your first encounters with Miyazaki? I

2:54

can tell you, I studied

2:56

Japanese in high school and our teacher- Shout

2:59

out to you, Fujisaki sensei. She

3:03

introduced us to these films as a sort of

3:05

language learning tool. I have lost the Japanese, I

3:08

have kept the Miyazaki. Do you

3:10

remember the first one? The first one was

3:12

Totoro. Oh yeah, okay. And

3:14

was your mind blown? My mind and

3:17

my linguistic capacities were

3:19

both blown. You

3:21

decided that you would never become fluent, you just knew

3:23

in that moment. That's what I knew. I

3:27

would never know Japanese. How

3:29

about you guys? For me,

3:31

I remember hearing about Miyazaki when

3:34

Spirited Away came out in 2001.

3:37

And I remember not seeing it

3:39

because I was like, oh,

3:42

this is anime, this is

3:44

fantasy stuff. But then

3:46

cut to 10 years later when

3:49

my daughter was young when she was

3:52

a toddler and

3:54

people were like, oh, you should show her

3:57

Miyazaki movies. And

3:59

I was like, I was like, okay, I

4:01

guess you're so desperate as a

4:04

young mother for any children's entertainment

4:08

that's not horrible, and not some

4:10

horrible YouTube video or something. I

4:13

was like, oh, okay, I'll show her Miyazaki, whatever.

4:15

I probably won't like it because it's kind of

4:17

not my thing, but we watch

4:19

Totoro, my neighbor Totoro, we watch Kiki's

4:21

Delivery Service, and I just

4:23

totally fell in love. And have

4:26

watched especially these two

4:28

movies, and Totoro and Kiki like a

4:30

million times. That's amazing. Alex,

4:32

this podcast has

4:35

become the occasion for your first impression.

4:37

Thank you, Pod. Thank you, Pod. I

4:40

am a Miyazaki newbie. And

4:42

when I first said this, welcome. Thank you,

4:44

thank you, that's so fun of you to welcome me.

4:47

And I have never really

4:50

watched Miyazaki before, certainly I've been aware of

4:52

him, but now I have stepped a foot

4:54

into this crazy, wonderful, magical,

4:56

weird universe. And

4:59

so many thoughts

5:03

about it, but one that just sticks out

5:05

right away is how

5:07

very true to dream world

5:10

these movies are. One thing

5:12

that happens in dream life is very

5:14

specific things happen without logical connection.

5:18

And I feel like this is often missed

5:20

when people try to make movies about dreams.

5:24

Famously, I'm no huge fan of Inception. And one

5:26

reason- I hated that movie. And one reason, I'm

5:28

not trying to go out of my way

5:30

to run over Christopher Nolan here, but one reason

5:32

is that in

5:34

Inception, there is a kind of framework that

5:37

dreams can operate in. And

5:39

that's not true. What happens in dream life

5:41

is that bits and pieces of the normal

5:43

world and bits and pieces of worlds that

5:45

we've never experienced or known emerge and

5:47

start to mesh together. And if you

5:50

enter a movie like Sphearted Away or The Boy

5:52

and the Heron, that is what is immediately gonna

5:54

happen to you. You are in a kind of

5:57

lucid dream where things

5:59

make- sense and then don't and then do but that

6:02

was one thing that I that I really loved and

6:04

also found true to childhood where of course things

6:07

happen for reasons that don't

6:09

make sense we see their effects but

6:11

we don't really understand their causes and

6:14

kids who have you know

6:17

all together pretty little agency of their lives

6:19

are often left wondering what what is

6:21

happening in the world that they're in right what's

6:23

real what's not yeah it strikes me like thinking

6:25

about animation right we sometimes we just think about

6:27

it as a marker of a childhood thing or

6:29

something like that this is for children something

6:31

like that it strikes me that these

6:34

films need to be animated because

6:36

you need the flexibility visually to

6:38

capture some of this like strange

6:41

irreducible non realistic

6:44

logic of dreams like it has to

6:47

these images over which he labors for you

6:49

know famously seven years in the newest case

6:52

have to be sort of made in this

6:55

way so we've talked

6:57

about how amazing these films are

6:59

visually but we are going to

7:01

try to relate them to you

7:03

our listeners we thought we'd choose

7:05

some clips from the films that

7:07

we like a couple favorites let's

7:09

start with you know me okay

7:12

yes so as I said two of my favorites are

7:14

my neighbor Totoro from 1988 and Kiki's delivery service from

7:16

1989 both of the movies are about childhood

7:22

and growing up I would say and

7:26

Kiki's delivery service specifically is about

7:31

a girl Kiki who is

7:33

13 and she's kind of

7:35

an intern witch her mom is her

7:39

mom is a witch the

7:42

way it works is that when you're around 13 years old as an aspirant

7:46

witch you are meant to

7:48

leave your home and go off seeking

7:50

your fortune and go to another town

7:52

and become that town's resident witch and you

7:54

do that by flying on a broom and

7:57

so as this traditional as it's traditional and so

7:59

Kiki has been

8:01

struggling with growing up,

8:04

basically. And she goes

8:06

to visit a friend, an older girl,

8:08

which also the relationship between them is

8:12

a beautiful encapsulation of what it's like as like

8:14

a 13 year old girl to like meet like

8:16

an 18 year old girl and

8:18

sort of like, you know, learn

8:20

what it's like to be a little bit more

8:22

sophisticated and so on. And this

8:24

older girl is an artist named Ursula, who

8:27

is giving Kiki a kind

8:30

of pep talk, I guess, about

8:33

how she'll be able

8:35

to regain her powers as a witch,

8:39

but it's also about growing up,

8:41

about maturing. So I'm

8:43

gonna just stop play this. Why

8:46

don't you go inside and I'll go get some water? Okay.

8:58

Okay, so I think we should say that what we're

9:00

seeing is Kiki standing

9:03

stunned much as we are, yeah,

9:05

by a beautiful mural

9:07

that Ursula has painted.

9:11

I've been waiting for you to come back so I can try again.

9:13

You mean that's me? Sure is. You

9:16

know, you'd make my life a lot easier if you'd model for me.

9:18

But I'm not very beautiful. What do you want me to

9:20

do that for? Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.

9:25

Come on, Kiki, you have got a great face. You're

9:28

very pretty. My God, Ursula's so cool. I know.

9:30

Don't you be nervous, sit down over here. And

9:33

now Ursula's drawing Kiki. Yes. Raise

9:36

your chin up a little. Can we say that

9:39

Kiki is being seen by Ursula? She's being seen

9:41

by Ursula. Yeah. In

9:43

a deep way. In a deep way, yeah. Without even thinking

9:45

about it, I used to be able to fly. Now

9:48

I'm trying to look inside myself to find out

9:50

how I did it. But I

9:52

just can't figure it out. You know,

9:54

could be you're working at it too hard. Maybe

9:57

you should just take a break. Yeah,

9:59

but. Still, if I can't fly, then stop

10:02

trying. Take long walks, look at the

10:04

scenery, does off at noon, don't even

10:07

think about flying. And then,

10:09

pretty soon you'll be flying again. This is

10:11

so beautiful. You need that how this will

10:13

go away? That's right, it's gonna be fine,

10:15

I promise. I'm just

10:18

like literally tearing up. Nomi is gonna watch the

10:20

entire rest of the film. Yeah. I've

10:22

quite seen so many times. And

10:24

then she's gonna start from the beginning and... Listeners,

10:27

Nomi is in a fact tearing up. Nomi,

10:32

what's getting you about the scene? I

10:34

don't know, I just think it's such

10:36

a beautiful scene of connection and reassurance

10:39

between these two girls and

10:43

the older one who has more experience is telling

10:45

the younger one, it's gonna

10:48

be okay, you know? But

10:51

then I saw you. It's like growing up is hard, learning

10:53

how to be a person is hard, learning how to be

10:55

an artist is hard. But

10:57

it's gonna happen. Encouragement

10:59

we all need. Spirit, yes, yes,

11:02

exactly where I'm at. It's wonderful. Alex.

11:04

Yes, hello. Do you have something that you'd

11:06

like to show the class? Yes, so I'm

11:09

gonna try to describe in words, in pitiful

11:12

words, a scene that Miyazaki has

11:14

rendered an

11:16

exquisite drawing and animation.

11:19

All right, so, Spirited Away once

11:22

again is the 2001 Miyazaki film

11:24

that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

11:26

In Spirited Away, we have

11:29

Chihiro, who is traveling with her

11:31

parents, she's an only child, relatable

11:33

to some of us, and she's

11:35

traveling with her parents. They

11:38

see a kind of magical spread in front of them, grass,

11:41

beautiful things, it seems to be an

11:43

amusement park with all kinds of eateries

11:45

that has closed, one eateries open, parents

11:48

immediately begin chowing down on

11:50

the food that is in front of them and

11:53

turn into pigs. Oops. Oh no. Oh no,

11:55

I hate when that happens. It's horrible when that

11:57

happens, classic problem, at which point, Chihiro... number

12:00

of things happen, but she enters the

12:02

realm where her parents are being

12:04

kept as pigs and It turns

12:06

out to be this enormous bath

12:08

house. She is told by a

12:11

helpful friend Haku that she must try

12:13

to seek work with the

12:18

Coal master what is what is the

12:20

right with a furnace master furnace

12:22

master something great with a furnace master

12:24

the furnace master Yeah, she has to

12:26

demand Employment with the

12:29

furnace master because humans smell delicious

12:31

to the creatures in this realm and

12:33

otherwise she'll be eaten And so she enters the furnace

12:35

and this is the scene that I'm trying to describe There

12:44

is a man spider An

12:47

anthropomorphized spider. No, it's a man with

12:50

extra Arms extra

12:52

limbs and he's using all

12:54

of these limbs and he is reaching

12:56

behind him with some of his spider limbs

12:59

Opening these drawers these beautiful wooden drawers

13:01

that have bits of herbs

13:03

and essences and wood chips I Think

13:28

that are great at the scene one is

13:30

just spider-man. I mean beautiful. This is my

13:32

spider-man And

13:34

also it contains amazing cuteness in the form

13:36

of these little cold sprites Oh

13:39

are these little little guys little? Cold

13:42

widgets who are just trying to like squeak

13:45

across the floor carrying on their tiny

13:47

back these culprits

13:50

that then get second together You

14:00

take someone else's job. If they don't work,

14:02

the spell wears off. They turn back in

14:04

the sun. There's no work for you here,

14:06

got it? Try somewhere else. So

14:09

many things are great here. But another thing is, it just

14:11

works. Kids are really interested in work and

14:14

what it is to work. And

14:16

I love that in

14:18

order to seek admission to this world,

14:20

Chihiro's entire existence is now premised

14:23

on the fact that she has to work. I mean,

14:25

even as I say this, I understand the analogy to

14:27

the real world in which that is very

14:29

clearly the case for all people. But, you

14:32

know, she has to work. She has to be put to the test. And

14:34

that is something that I do think

14:37

shows up in childhood literature, this kind

14:39

of fantasies of work

14:41

life and also really hard toil,

14:44

which ends up becoming a way for

14:46

her to prove herself as a heroine and redeem herself.

14:50

So that kind of practical and

14:52

fantastical mix. Yeah, it's

14:54

very Little Princess or something. Yeah,

14:56

exactly. Exactly. So, Vincent,

14:58

what are some of your favorites or your

15:00

very favorite if you're ready to go

15:03

that far? Favorite is hard. I

15:05

love Princess Mononoke. I love Spirited

15:07

Away. But something that

15:09

really kind of changed my view and deepened,

15:11

I guess, my view of Miyazaki is

15:14

something I've just watched recently. It's called The Wind Rises,

15:16

which was a film that came out in 2013. And

15:20

it's kind of a historical epic.

15:22

It's about a real life figure,

15:25

Jiro Horikoshi, who was kind

15:27

of the great Japanese engineer

15:30

who created, unfortunately, the

15:33

military aircrafts that were used by

15:35

Japan in World War II. An

15:37

amazing engineer

15:40

and thinker who, when

15:42

he was younger, was

15:44

working for Mitsubishi at

15:47

the time of trying to create these planes.

15:49

And they failed and failed and failed.

15:52

And soon after this in the film,

15:54

he has a dream. And the dream

15:56

is a sort of recurring dream. He's

15:59

obsessed with this Italian-style. Italian designer

16:01

Giovanni Battista Caproni. And

16:04

Caproni is like his hero. He's read

16:06

textbooks in which this name appears. This is a

16:08

real person as well. This is another real person.

16:12

And Giro has a dream with

16:14

Caproni and this time it's about the

16:17

substance of the dream is about

16:19

technological development

16:22

on the one hand and the potential

16:25

negative uses of technology on the other. They're having

16:27

this fairly sophisticated conversation in the dream.

16:29

Can I show you the scene? Oh yes, please. And

16:32

I should say that the dream takes place on

16:34

board one of Caproni's great

16:37

planes. So they're on a plane up

16:40

high in the air, walking out on a wing,

16:43

looking out at the clouds having this conversation. Cute up,

16:45

baby. Beautiful

16:49

Italian river music. Which

16:54

would you choose? A world with

16:56

pyramids or without? What

16:58

do you mean? Humanity

17:01

has always dreamt of flight but

17:03

the dream is cursed. My

17:05

aircraft are destined to become tools

17:08

for slaughter and destruction. I know.

17:11

But still I choose a world

17:14

with pyramids in it. Which

17:17

world will you choose? I

17:19

just want to create beautiful airplanes.

17:22

Look at that. We

17:28

see a beautiful airplane soaring.

17:30

One like plane flying. And

17:32

I have not seen such

17:34

clouds since Michelangelo. I

17:37

have a long way to go. I don't even

17:39

have an engine or cockpit yet. Giro

17:42

kind of throws the plane as it fits a paper

17:44

plane and it goes back into flight. It's very beautiful.

17:48

This is my last design.

17:51

So, artists are only created for

17:54

ten years. We

17:56

engineers are no different. your

18:00

10 years with Japanese

18:02

boy. So

18:06

what's interesting to me about this is

18:08

another thing that Miyazaki does a lot, which

18:11

is talk about the

18:14

horrors of reality,

18:16

truly realistic things, as

18:19

either a way of changing the way

18:22

someone sees or inaugurating someone into a

18:24

new sort of position toward

18:28

the world or toward art or something else. At the

18:30

beginning of this

18:33

film, The Wind Rises, Jiro lives

18:35

through the great Kanto earthquake, which was 1923, I

18:37

believe, a huge earthquake that

18:41

destroyed Tokyo and Tokyo had to be rebuilt. And

18:45

Jiro sees the wreckage that

18:47

this, I

18:49

noticed Miyazaki's great with fire, and you

18:52

see these huge flames

18:54

flying through the air of Tokyo, like

18:56

ash descending on the city. And

19:00

as we'll talk about in The Boy and the Heron. Yes,

19:02

which opens with a fire. It opens with a

19:04

fire, opens with the fires of World War II. And

19:07

this is how Mahito

19:09

loses his mother. So it's

19:13

really interesting bracketing of war

19:15

and destruction and

19:18

carnage on the one hand. And

19:20

on the other hand, the specifics of

19:23

the Japanese past, Japan's history, I mean,

19:27

just to put a finer point on it,

19:29

these planes that Jiro will eventually go on

19:31

to help invent are

19:33

the planes that were used in the horrific

19:35

Pacific Theater of World War

19:37

II, horrible, unspeakable things done to

19:39

Koreans and others, which end

19:41

with another technological horror, the bomb,

19:43

the nuclear bomb. So

19:46

it's like, what does technology

19:48

mean? And I think it's such an interesting

19:51

way to posit that. Yeah, it's like

19:53

a kind of like an animating

19:55

trauma, you know, from whence

19:57

comes destruction also emerge.

20:00

is the artist or something, you know. Yeah.

20:04

Okay, so we're going to take a break. And

20:06

when we're back, we'll talk about Miyazaki's new film, The

20:08

Boy and the Heron. Yes, especially about

20:10

the parakeets. Oh my god. And

20:12

the pelicans. And the frogs. Oh

20:16

god, Vincent just did a frog. That's

20:21

the video that you guys will get later. That's

20:24

on our Patreon. That's right,

20:26

exactly. That's in a

20:29

minute on Critics at Large from The New Yorker. So

20:58

one thing to note about Miyazaki, because his work

21:00

looks so free and effortlessly imaginative, but

21:28

the truth is that he's extremely

21:30

dedicated to hand-drawn animation. Because

21:32

of this, his process of making films is painstaking. They

21:35

take years and years to

21:37

finish. So about seven years ago,

21:39

he started working on a new film, and it's

21:41

in theaters now, The Boy and

21:43

the Heron. Can somebody just give us, again,

21:46

a quick synopsis of this film? I will try. Please.

21:49

If I may. Please. All

21:52

right, so the film opens in wartime Japan. It's 1943

21:54

in Tokyo with the city on fire. A

21:58

hospital has been... firebombed

22:00

and in

22:02

that hospital is the mother of the

22:04

hero of the film, Maito, who dies

22:07

in this horrible

22:09

fire. He and his

22:11

father the next year leave Tokyo and

22:13

go move to the countryside where his

22:15

father is marrying another woman or maybe

22:17

has married her. We actually don't really

22:19

know exactly what's going on. And

22:22

Maito moved in with his

22:25

stepmother into this fabulous

22:28

house and how am I doing so far? This

22:31

is beautiful. We're with you.

22:33

Maito's father goes, works in a factory where he

22:35

is building planes. Yeah. Much

22:38

like your in

22:40

The Wind Drizes and much like Miyazaki's father.

22:43

Yes. Actually. Yes.

22:46

The film is... The theme's abound. Yeah,

22:48

theme's abound. The film certainly has all

22:51

biographical elements. And Maito

22:53

feels really alone. Okay.

22:56

The heron. A heron enters the

22:58

scene. A very beautiful, elegant bird

23:00

at first. But after some

23:02

magical stuff goes down involving

23:04

Maito entering this kind of

23:06

forbidden realm behind the houses,

23:09

this heron turns out to be a horrible,

23:12

freaky man with a bulbous nose basically wearing

23:14

a heron suit. And that is something I

23:17

don't understand and don't think I can understand. And I don't

23:19

think I should understand it. Right.

23:22

It's like gradually revealed that this is what it

23:24

is. First it looks like a heron, then it has human teeth,

23:26

and then we see this nose coming up from... Yes.

23:30

It's gradual. It's gradual. It's

23:32

gradual until suddenly Wallace Shawn and Princess Brydenbridge is from

23:34

the heron's build. Right, exactly. Yeah.

23:37

Exactly. I was like, oh, The Boy and the Heron, a

23:39

wonderful movie about interspecies friendship. Kind

23:41

of not. Yeah. And

23:44

kind of yes. Kind of yes. Kind of not

23:46

and kind of yes. And then Mojito has at

23:48

this point entered this other realm to try to

23:50

find his stepmother who's been taken in somehow, who's

23:52

disappeared and bring her back. And

23:55

all sorts of adventures ensue in this

23:59

other realm. Yes, definitely.

24:01

That's right. And so it's a quest. It's a

24:03

quest. That's right. It's a quest There

24:05

are a lot of I mean This is

24:07

also what I found interesting because I was

24:09

aware that Miyazaki is engaged with ecological themes

24:12

and so on This is a beautiful world that

24:14

Mito is entering and of course the world the

24:17

real world is being destroyed and despoiled by war.

24:19

That's right But nonetheless animal

24:21

life is not necessarily kind We

24:24

already had a hair and man and

24:26

then we have this army at

24:28

a certain point this kind of fascist Parakeet

24:30

army where these big

24:32

puffed up parakeets. Yeah,

24:35

we'll do whatever King parakeet Insists

24:38

that they do and they are out for blood

24:40

these guys. Yeah, there's a charming scene where they're

24:42

all like preparing their sweet banquet They're sharpening their

24:45

knives and they're cutting up a very looking cake

24:47

Yeah, the cake and I think they're also a

24:49

bunch of squashes and other vegetables that they're lovingly

24:51

starting to chop, too Right. Yeah to

24:53

go along with the main roast. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's

24:55

right Which would that mean human roast right to

24:58

be clear. There's also a great scene

25:00

where we're still learning about this heron What

25:02

exactly are you? I know you're not

25:04

a normal heron the

25:06

herons up in the sky and he

25:10

It I guess at this point lands on

25:13

Water and then starts kind of running across

25:15

the water. It's it's it's webbed feet sort

25:17

of skittering across the surface comes up Now

25:23

How dare you my mother it said

25:26

has this long conversation with my hotel

25:28

that ends with Mahito

25:30

being covered from the legs up by

25:32

a legion of frogs Yeah,

25:43

I come up as if from the mud and they

25:45

cover him like all you can see is like his

25:47

eyes and they're closing across them I

25:50

think there's a good point where it's like know the

25:52

animal world isn't necessary Necessarily

25:55

friendly nor do we get

25:57

the sense ever that they ought to be friendly, you

25:59

know These movies because also

26:01

the humans aren't humans aren't that yeah? Necessarily

26:04

these movies are I what kept

26:06

on the phrase that came to me after a while was Humane

26:09

but not anthropocentric right not

26:12

about you know human man's

26:15

conquest over nature or some sort

26:17

of you know Kipling thing

26:19

like that it's about coexistence

26:22

and its troubles You know that

26:24

humankind is a participant

26:26

in a wide field and that

26:29

Living together can get tricky and it also does

26:31

propose this world in which you know what if

26:33

Humans were food as animals or food for

26:35

us. That's right. What would that be and

26:38

wouldn't that be just wouldn't couldn't

26:40

be yeah? Yeah, but so I

26:43

do wonder How does this

26:45

movie then for you sort of? We've

26:48

talked maybe about how it Continues some of

26:50

the work that we've we've known and loved

26:52

before but where for you does it depart

26:54

well I think you know it's

26:58

I mean I love this movie I Think

27:01

my favorite Miyazaki if I had to

27:03

choose would be the

27:05

Miyazaki that's It

27:08

is about complication, but ultimately

27:10

reassurance whereas This is not

27:13

a movie that you would watch with a five-year-old Maybe

27:16

not if you want unless you wanted to ruin

27:18

their life. Yeah, because it's scary. It's scary

27:20

and it's it's a lot of it is about

27:22

horror no odd of it is about death and

27:26

It's a bit of a more of a challenging viewing

27:28

experience, which is not to say that's not a bad

27:31

thing It's just a matter of personal preference

27:33

and but but

27:35

I do think One

27:38

thing that I appreciated about the boy in the hair

27:40

and that I appreciate about Miyazaki

27:43

in general is

27:45

that so many of his works are

27:48

about letting

27:50

go of The

27:52

fantasy of the mother of the

27:55

fantasy of total care right you

27:57

know his mother dies at the very very beginning And

28:00

then when he goes on this quest, he

28:02

meets a lot of characters or several

28:05

characters that

28:08

serve as potential

28:10

mother figures that

28:13

he kind of tries out and learns things

28:15

from before he can return

28:17

towards the end to the real

28:19

world and kind of come to accept

28:21

the new circumstances of his life and

28:24

kind of move on. And I

28:26

think that's so beautifully done

28:28

and something that Miyazaki is

28:30

really a master at. What

28:33

were some of the lines of continuity

28:35

or discontinuity for you, Alex,

28:37

given your sort of

28:39

more recent induction? Well, one is, I think,

28:42

a theme that goes across cultures

28:45

in children's literature when it has to fantasy, which

28:47

is the need to reenter one's own world. And

28:52

that is the kind of given.

28:54

We can't choose to stay behind,

28:56

like Wendy and her and

28:59

her brothers are going to come back

29:01

from Neverland. And Alice has

29:03

to return in time for tea. There's

29:06

this tension between

29:08

the need to escape circumstance

29:10

and the need to return to it and

29:12

accept it. And I think part of what

29:14

the movie is about and

29:16

some of its darker parts have to do

29:18

with what is what we

29:21

have to do in life. Those

29:23

that we have to accept and live

29:25

with. So he's given a book

29:27

late in the film called How Do You

29:29

Live? And I think that's

29:31

so I was reading about this. From 1937. Right.

29:35

This 1937 Japanese children's book. And that

29:37

is a profound name for any book

29:39

to have, let alone a children's book.

29:41

Oh my God. When I was a

29:44

child, the book that my mother gave me was

29:46

called It's Perfectly Normal. It was about sex, so

29:48

very different. Yeah.

29:51

How do you live? That

29:54

question animates the movie.

29:56

And it's also the name

29:58

of this film. in Japanese, not the

30:01

boy and the heron, which obviously it's

30:03

asking a bigger philosophical question. How

30:05

do you live when terrible things have happened? How

30:07

do you live when your own life has changed

30:09

so radically? And what choices do you

30:12

make? And how do they affect you and

30:14

the people around you and the creatures around you? So

30:17

all of those things getting wrestled into this movie,

30:19

the answer becomes you have to return to

30:22

the place where your living has to be

30:24

done. And there's a, you know, it's

30:27

tempting to stay behind or it's tempting to want

30:29

to stay behind. It's certainly tempting

30:31

as a viewer, I think, to want the

30:34

character to forever inhabit this magical universe. But

30:37

those things have to be given up to accept this

30:40

kind of bigger moral obligation. Yeah,

30:42

talk about putting aside childish things in

30:45

some way. You know, it

30:47

reminded me maybe a year ago, I

30:49

wrote about this TV show,

30:51

this Japanese TV show, Old Enough. I

30:54

love that show, Jesus Christ. So yeah,

30:56

so for those of our listeners who aren't familiar,

30:58

it's a show, it's a reality show,

31:05

I guess, or a documentary show, whatever you want

31:07

to call it, where children

31:10

as young as like literally three,

31:12

you know, or like two

31:14

and 10 months, some are like so young, are

31:19

sent on their own by their

31:21

parents and filmed at it as

31:24

they learn how to do errands. Okay,

31:27

so they might be sent down

31:29

the street to the fishmonger to get

31:31

like, you know, tuna for father's

31:34

lunch, you know, or they might

31:36

go, a lot of the stuff

31:38

is food related, you know, going to the

31:40

grocers, you know, it's like, and they're babies,

31:43

babies, you know, it's like, they barely

31:45

learn to walk, they've barely learned to

31:47

walk off and you know, everybody is

31:49

really helpful. Obviously, they're also they're followed

31:51

by camera crew, you know, these kids

31:53

are going to be okay. And

31:56

yet they are left pretty much to

31:58

their own devices. And then

32:00

they have to carry the bag back to

32:02

the house and the bag breaks. And

32:05

you know, there are all sorts of hijinks ensue.

32:08

But the point of this show strikes

32:11

me as not totally dissimilar to,

32:15

I don't know if to call it the point

32:17

of Miyazaki's movies or The Boy and the Heron

32:19

because those movies are complicated and have many points,

32:21

but the idea of, okay, look

32:23

up. You

32:26

know, you have to be strong. And

32:28

certain bad things happen, but

32:31

you have to contend with that and go back to the

32:33

real world. We're

32:37

going to take a break and then we're going to contend with some stuff. That

32:44

show is crazy. That show is crazy. I mean,

32:46

it's great. I love it. And

32:48

I love the voiceover where it's like, I mean, it's in

32:50

Japanese, but it's like, oh, who's

32:53

a big baby crying for mother? It's

32:56

time to get back on your feet and

32:58

walk to the Sushmonger. We'll

33:05

be back in a minute. There's

33:19

a mystery on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

33:21

So I just want to ask, to be

33:23

clear. Did you ever

33:25

see the body of Maurice Bishop? No.

33:29

You're sure? Absolutely. 40 years ago, the

33:31

remains of the prime minister went missing

33:33

and we've been trying to figure out

33:35

what happened. I can tell

33:38

you, in my words, this thing stinks. I'm

33:41

Martine Towers with The Washington Post. The

33:43

empty grave of comrade Bishop is out

33:45

now. Follow and listen wherever you

33:47

get your podcasts. Yeah,

33:57

I'm really compelled by.

34:00

the discussion that we just had about the sort

34:02

of teaching kids to

34:04

buck up and not in

34:07

a grumpy way, but in a heartening way. And

34:09

not in a way that ignores

34:12

the hardships. No, I

34:14

mean, you can only you can only buck up

34:16

if you acknowledge hardship. Yeah, exactly. You can only

34:18

deliver one message. It's not repressing it. It's

34:20

not saying, oh, you have it good.

34:22

Shut up and get out. It's like,

34:25

oh, yeah, it's hard. Here's the world. Right. Yeah. It's

34:27

an outlay. And I think this might like sort of

34:29

dovetail with something that we've talked about before when we

34:31

talked about Martin Scorsese. If

34:34

you haven't heard that episode, you might want to go back and listen to

34:36

it. Just about the late work

34:39

of artists, people who have

34:41

refined their approach, you know, film by

34:44

film or novel by novel and arrived

34:46

at something that seems final. It does seem

34:49

to me that this might be a kind

34:51

of and I think it's been described this

34:54

way by Miyazaki, among others, as a kind

34:56

of goodbye statement to him. And it seems

34:58

to me that he's always been in contact.

35:00

I mean, what you

35:02

played for us, Nomi from Kiki, a similar

35:04

thing in contact with the young, trying to

35:07

relay messages. And here it's like an

35:09

older person, a person that's kind of

35:11

preparing his way to leave the scene.

35:14

We won't give too much away, but at

35:16

the end of The Boy and the Heron,

35:18

there is a, you know, an ancestor of

35:20

Mahito, an older man who wants

35:22

to sort of relay to him a mantle.

35:26

This world I've created and

35:28

all my power, every little

35:30

bit of it originates from

35:32

this stone. That stone?

35:34

So that stone is what created this whole

35:36

sea world? And there's more

35:38

work to be done. Worlds

35:41

are living things and they can be

35:43

infected by mold and mud. I

35:46

have grown old. I

35:48

seek someone to be my successor. Mahito,

35:54

will you continue my work? You

35:58

Want me? Right to say. No,

36:00

you take up my work with kind

36:02

of i'm exiting you're entering and part

36:04

of your that the rite of passage

36:06

is again signals and difficulty but. What?

36:10

Did that? Part. of this film

36:12

feel like to you the sort of i'm.

36:16

This deep acknowledgement that. Children.

36:19

Have consciousness is that we all had

36:21

and perhaps we forget to quickly and

36:23

I'm what's going on in the lives

36:25

of children who is interesting to me

36:27

that muzak he chose to be cel

36:29

autobiographical. I mean, I know that he

36:31

has said he will retire before and

36:33

kind of keeps popping out of retirement,

36:35

but at eighty two it does seem

36:37

like this. Could. Mean, sorry

36:40

likely as is my some So

36:42

how interesting that he decides to

36:44

return to his own childhood and.

36:47

You know there? there's something about his decision of

36:49

children like he has been called. I think he

36:52

even Margaret Cho that in the New Yorker. Who

36:54

I'm with, who wrote a great profile

36:56

as me a Zaki number of years

36:58

ago. Second: two thousand five Evo Yes

37:00

oh it's a little while those after

37:02

spirit away I'm she called him like

37:04

maybe the first asked her if children

37:06

so making and I think there is

37:08

something says. Specific to his vision

37:11

of what childhood is even

37:13

as it corresponds with all

37:15

these other you know tropes

37:17

of children's films or literature,

37:19

Them that we can aims

37:22

so. In a way I feel like is kind of

37:24

going back. To his own origin point for

37:26

all of it, and partly trying to show

37:28

us where it might have come from. but

37:30

it really kills a person with this small

37:33

boy. this. Almost adolescent

37:35

boy avatar discovering the

37:37

whiteness of the world

37:39

during. Wartime in Japan.

37:42

I'm like as Cilic, he wants

37:44

to rediscover where it might have

37:46

come from for himself rec. Yeah,

37:49

and I think to I mean

37:51

again, I think Pixar, for instance,

37:53

you know, has made. Disney.

37:56

Let's. Say more more broadly has made

37:58

some and credit. movies. You know,

38:01

I think, you know, we spoke of Ratatouille

38:03

in our Fredrick

38:05

Weisman and Restaurant episode,

38:07

you know, they'll never forget. But

38:10

I do think there's something about Miyazaki

38:17

working from a perspective that's

38:19

not monolithic American.

38:21

These are

38:23

not movies are not like originally

38:26

movies. But as I was rewatching

38:29

Miyazaki this weekend, I was like, Oh,

38:31

this is kind of like the

38:34

Tove Jansen's Moomin family,

38:37

where it's an

38:40

ongoing saga of these

38:42

cute, but kind of

38:45

sometimes selfish, sometimes idiotic,

38:48

sometimes adorable, sometimes

38:50

mean characters. You

38:53

know, Jansen was able to treat

38:56

children's inner lives seriously,

38:58

you know, and to

39:00

think about made

39:02

up characters as

39:05

straddling the divide between children's entertainment

39:08

and adult entertainment, and

39:10

treating both of these demographics

39:14

with respect. Yeah, yeah, it

39:16

seems, just in terms of

39:18

other things that this reminds

39:21

me of, actually,

39:23

halfway through, I realized, Oh, like this

39:25

reminds me, at least the setup of

39:28

the Chronicles of

39:30

Narnia. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes,

39:33

especially the book, The Land, which in the wardrobe

39:35

is like, formational, like formative for me, I've read

39:38

those books over and over into my

39:40

adulthood. And it starts, I just remembered that it

39:42

starts with these children going to this house that

39:44

of course has the enchanted wardrobe in it, but

39:46

they leave London to come to the

39:48

countryside. Yeah, during the wartime bombing. And

39:53

so it seems to me that, you know,

39:55

one lesson here, or one, it's not a

39:57

message, and it's never as simple as that.

40:00

as a sort of PSA. But

40:02

in fact, it's a complexifying thing, which is that

40:05

wherever you are, whether it

40:07

seems to be peaceful, whether things

40:10

are scary or they're not, there's something

40:12

happening somewhere, right? And that our lives

40:14

are lived in this plural, multiple way

40:17

that like, and you have to learn

40:19

this as a child that, you know, this is

40:21

the, I mean, I guess one of the lessons

40:23

of cable TV, right? Your

40:25

life might be okay, but there's a war on

40:28

somewhere. There's pain

40:30

somewhere. And often

40:32

that pain is within, but sometimes it's without, and

40:34

you have to learn how to live your life

40:36

along multiple tracks, you know? Yeah, and often you're

40:38

the beneficiary of someone else's pain in some

40:40

ways, you know, in The Boy and the

40:43

Heron. And I think

40:45

also from what I read in the

40:47

Margaret Talbot profile in Miyazaki's own life,

40:50

his father, his very own father

40:52

was active in the

40:54

war effort, both

40:57

in the movie and in real

40:59

life, building weapons

41:02

of destruction for the actual war that

41:06

was going on at the time. And

41:08

how do you resolve that? How

41:10

do you feel about your

41:12

own flesh and blood being complicit

41:14

in this

41:17

sort of violence? How does it

41:19

trickle into your own life? And

41:21

how do you deal with it ethically? No

41:25

easy answers, you know? There's

41:27

a moral complexity

41:30

that you need to learn. Yeah, Vincent,

41:33

what you're saying is really hitting me.

41:35

It's so interesting, this connection between the

41:37

line The Wick and the Wardrobe and The Boy and

41:39

the Heron and this idea of escape

41:41

and wartime. And of course, we're talking right

41:43

now as we see children being affected by

41:46

war in such a profound way. And

41:48

one thing that those two works have in common, and

41:50

I think more than those two works, these

41:53

fantasy worlds, and I cannot stress

41:55

this enough, are not safe,

41:58

but they're places in which children have agency

42:00

to act and that is like

42:03

the dangers are vast in

42:06

many ways more present you know in the line

42:08

the witch and the wardrobe those kids are safe

42:10

in English countryside and the boy in the heron

42:12

he's safe in the Japanese countryside right nothing

42:14

is coming to find him but he

42:16

is thrust into this world of non-safety

42:19

and the difference is that he's able to negotiate it

42:21

and you know that question of

42:23

how do you live it it

42:25

has so many different valences how do you live

42:28

in any time how do you survive how do

42:30

you like manage to live and

42:33

granting of agency to children

42:35

which I think the great

42:37

children's writers or animators do

42:40

is so present in these Miyazaki

42:42

films and so touching have

42:45

you guys seen the memes

42:47

of Miyazaki like at his desk absolutely

42:50

in a state of anguish and despair I think one

42:52

of them may have appeared even on your own Instagram

42:54

this morning well there are like these minutes every string

43:03

can you describe the image yeah Miyazaki

43:06

he's like you know handsome guy

43:08

with a beard and a mop of white hair

43:11

a vest on and over

43:13

the vest a kind of apron and he's sitting at

43:15

his desk cigarette hanging from

43:17

his lip his hands like over his head

43:19

and in his hair just a total state

43:21

of anguish and they're many of these images

43:24

some of them picture

43:26

of despair despair and you know there are many

43:28

of them some of them have under them the

43:30

subtitles already saying is like I hate writing this

43:32

is awful and it's like but if somebody tells

43:34

me to quit I tell them to shut up

43:37

and it's such a picture like not only of the difficulties

43:39

of the writing life but we might like make a metaphor

43:41

out of this it's like there's no resolution

43:44

you know story and it doesn't have a great end and

43:47

you have a moment of happiness and something bad is

43:49

happening far away or you are

43:51

in the middle of your work and something bad happens to you

43:54

it's like it's about difficulty

43:56

you know up and keep going

43:58

yes that's from us

44:00

to you listeners, fuck up and

44:03

get on with it. Fuck

44:07

up and keep going. This

44:13

has been Critics at Large. A

44:15

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44:17

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44:19

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next week, we're switching gears a bit and

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meanwhile, here on Critics at Large, we're

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45:24

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46:01

Each story from our guests and listeners

46:03

is totally unique and utterly personal. We

46:06

love hearing about your first impressions

46:08

when visiting someplace new. My

46:11

first trip to the Patagonia region

46:14

was on the Argentine side. I

46:17

couldn't believe the expansive

46:19

territory. It's like being in Tibet,

46:21

the emptiness and the

46:23

harshness really. I found

46:26

transformative. Or the

46:28

story told when safely back on dry

46:30

land. You know things happened every

46:32

single day. I ran out of gas on a jet

46:34

ski in the middle of the ocean and I was

46:37

like what if a sea creature comes to

46:39

eat me? But then I'm delusional. I was

46:41

like I'll make friends with it and it

46:43

won't eat me and maybe I'll ride that

46:45

back to shore. That's how it works. Join

46:48

me, Lala Eirakopli, every week for

46:50

more adventures on women who travel wherever

46:53

you listen to your podcast. PRX