Movie Log: Porco Rosso

Since one of the major functions of this blog is to function as my external memory, I think I'm going to start talking about movies as well as books. (It may also keep me from becoming too monomaniacal, or it may show that I can be boring on even more subjects than previously imagined.)

The boys and I have been working through Hayao Miyazaki's movies on-and-off over the past year. They'd seen My Neighbor Totoro (which I still haven't seen more than parts of) some time ago, and really liked it, so we watched Spirited Away around Christmas time. That movie really impressed me: as a movie, as a fantasy story, and as a piece of entertainment that was suitable for children but didn't condescend to them. So we've been Netflix-ing other Miyazaki movies as we've had time (we have also been watching the first Star Wars trilogy, which Thing 1 liked a lot but Thing 2 seemed to find slow and boring, and seeing other movies on Boys' Movie Saturday), and are seeing them about once a month; we got to Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa and the Valley of Wind before this one. It's really becoming clear why John Lasseter and the Pixar guys like Miyazaki's movies so much, and have been championing them in the US: there's a similar sense that all experience is available for an animated film, and that making a movie kids will enjoy doesn't mean making one their parents will grudgingly tolerate.

Porco Rosso looked like a minor Miyazaki movie. I hadn't heard much about it before it came out in the last batch of Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli reissues, and it was coming out with Kiki's Delivery Service (which looks like fun, but also looks minor: more of Miyazaki's fascination with flight and spunky teenage girls) and The Cat Returns (which, as far as I can tell, is a non-Miyazaki Ghibli movie, which means it will be seen as minor). It's also the story of a seaplane pilot who was turned into a pig-man (only his face is particularly porcine, as far as the viewer can tell), and who works as a bounty hunter against comic-opera seaplane pirates in the Adriatic in what seems to be the mid-30s. So all the indications were that it was more on the silly than the serious side.

It is pretty silly; it's more light-hearted than Spirited Away or Nausicaa or Castle in the Sky (which is why I picked this one next, to be honest: I thought the boys would appreciate a light adventure movie next rather than diving into Princess Mononoke), but it has some serious ideas almost hidden in its core. The curse on the main character is never explained; it happened long before the movie started, and might -- might -- have been lifted at the very end of the movie, but we aren't told why he turned into a pig. We do get the general idea, though: he became a pig because he was a pig, and he might turn back into a man in a similar way. And the ending very clearly avoids the usual animated-kids-movie cliches in a way I appreciated a lot.

So it's not a great movie in the way Spirited Away is, but it's a quite good one, and an interesting movie for adults to watch with kids. Since so many of Miyazaki's movies are about girls, it also might be a good first Miyazaki movie for parents who have boys that are opposed on principle to "girly stuff."