Foot­prints of a god – In praise of Princess Mononoke

One of the most strik­ing images in Princess Mononoke is of a life-cycle in micro­cosm. The deer-shaped god of the for­est trav­els through­out his domain and, with every step, the ground blooms with flow­ers before they imme­di­ate­ly wilt and die away. In the step of the ancient for­est spir­it lies life and death, held in bal­ance. As direc­tor Hayao Miyazaki’s daz­zling fan­ta­sy cel­e­brates its 20^th anniver­sary, its pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with this del­i­cate bal­ance feels fresh­ly urgent.

Bal­ance is the watch­word from the film’s first frame. The open­ing text speaks of a time when the world was cov­ered in forests and humans lived in har­mo­ny with the spir­its. That time is over, as human greed is encroach­ing on the for­est and wag­ing a war with the spir­its. The scene that fol­lows shows the result of that war, as a writhing, blood clot-ten­ta­cled demon rav­ages the land­scape. The world has been thrown out of bal­ance and nature is suf­fer­ing. Yet Miyaza­ki refus­es to be didac­tic; this is not animé’s answer to An Incon­ve­nient Truth.

Princess Mononoke encap­su­lates sev­er­al dif­fer­ent Miyaza­ki tropes, from strong hero­ines to a soar­ing Joe Hisaishi score. Nowhere is this film more Miyaza­ki, how­ev­er, than in its moral shades of grey (where Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion tends to think in black and white). There are no bad guys in Princess Mononoke, just sev­er­al com­pet­ing groups of equal­ly murky moral­i­ty. Lady Eboshi, by all rights, should be the vil­lain – she is lead­ing the charge against the for­est spir­its and exploit­ing the land­scape to expand her indus­try. Yet she also leads a social­ist col­lec­tive with­in her fortress, where freed slaves and lep­ers help to run the place, while her agen­da is almost explic­it­ly fem­i­nist as she empow­ers women to run the show; hard­ly vil­lain­ous traits.

Then there is Mononoke her­self, a fear­some, pas­sion­ate and com­plex hero­ine who we first meet wip­ing blood off her mouth and she sucks the bul­let out of a wolf god. She is the defend­er of the old ways, an advo­cate for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and nature, yet she is also quick to vio­lence and thirsts for revenge. At one point, a char­ac­ter asks of Ashita­ka ​“whose side is he on?” and the ques­tion applies equal­ly to Miyaza­ki. The dan­ger lies in embrac­ing extremes where a mid­dle path can exist.

One thing, how­ev­er, is clear: Miyaza­ki urges his view­ers nev­er to lose their rev­er­ence of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and nature. His frames min­gle awe with inti­ma­cy. Grey and black human devel­op­ments are con­stant­ly dwarfed by mass­es of dap­pled green, forests and hills cov­er­ing the image in a morass of detail. Yet even in a world where gigan­tic boar-deities suc­cumb to eldritch demons and explo­sive wars take place on hill­sides, Miyaza­ki still cre­ates a space for tran­quil spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He rev­els in small details, like a canopy of smil­ing Kodama spir­its enjoy­ing the sen­sa­tion of sway­ing in the wind.

Like the foot­prints of a for­est-god that cause a small cycle of life, death and life again, Princess Mononoke exists in a state of per­fect bal­ance. The view­er is left with the impres­sion of a wise, age­ing direc­tor look­ing at the world with a sense of con­tent­ed detach­ment. Far from try­ing to bend the view­ers to his will, he presents a world of spir­its and sol­diers, gods and men, progress and tra­di­tion, while envi­sion­ing a world where all can coex­ist. In an era where nuance and bal­ance die dai­ly on the inter­net, we would do well to catch on to his vision.