There is a question that often confuses me. That is, among Hayao Miyazaki's ten feature-length animated films, "My Neighbor Totoro" is not the best, and it is also a film for girls growing up. "Spirited Away" is not only in the structure of the world view, but also in the meaning of the characters. On the top, they are far higher than the slightly thin "My Neighbor Totoro".
And if you compare Hayao Miyazaki's three eco-movies ("Nausicaa", "Castle in the Sky" and "Princess Mononoke"), "My Neighbor Totoro" is more commonplace, and it has no postmodern inspiration. There is no nuanced ecological investigation. So, how can such a movie that only relies on "cute things" become the most well-known animation work in Hayao Miyazaki's life?
Chi is not happy
The reason is simple and clear, but it is often overlooked: the classic of "My Neighbor Totoro" lies in its return to the basics, because it is not willing to win with strange stories. It just gives you the simplest world, a paradise without impurities.
At the beginning of the film, the heroine's family moved to a remote mountain village. Although it is a new home, it is an old house. In this new home, which is rumored to be a "haunted house", sisters Xiaoyue and Xiaomei are full of curiosity and joy. They did not show their fear of the unknown, but greeted those "dust elves" with raised mouths. Even in the face of a dark room, they use ecstatic exclamations to overcome their vague fears.
This innocence and fearlessness, revealed at the beginning, persists throughout the film. Therefore, Xiaomei, who was only four years old, dared to explore the unknown in the woods, and after she found Chinchilla, she showed no signs of timidity. In her eyes, the outside world would not cause harm to her, but would only allow her to have more friends and surprises .
It is not uncommon for a four- or five-year-old girl to have this kind of mentality and understanding, but her father also has the same view as her. Although the father does not necessarily believe that there really is a chinchilla, he did not deprive his daughter of her interest in the mysterious world. And this kind of rare, in the real society almost never happens.
When we are still children, as long as we have the slightest exploratory mentality for the outside world, or dare to "explore" alone to find another world, we will be categorically blocked by our parents, let alone make our parents believe in those illusory legends and fairy tales. .
But for the father in "My Neighbor Totoro", his teaching to his daughter is: when Xiaomei meets the owner of the forest, it means that Xiaomei is lucky, but this opportunity does not come often.
The encouragement and praise of their parents, their own fearlessness and fascination, enable the two sisters to believe everything in the countryside and treat everything with trust and kindness. Therefore, the elderly mother-in-law can be meticulous and treat the two sisters like close relatives; while the mother-in-law's grandson Xiao Kai is introverted, but simple, kind, determined and resolute; even Xiaoyue's teacher can take the trouble to accommodate the naughty sister Xiaomei.
This kind of kindness and purity from the bones, although there are more or less in Hayao Miyazaki's films, but no film has ever been so pure and pure.
In "The Valley of the Wind", the princess of Dorumecia went to great lengths to try to gain power at the expense of other countries; in "City in the Sky", human beings' greed for money is no less than that of the Laputa survivors for power. fanaticism. As for the European wars in "Porcupine" and "Howl's Moving Castle", and the interracial vendetta in "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away", they are not hidden. Even with "The Witch's Delivery Service", which is about girls growing up, there is no lack of human affection. The old woman's selfish and indifferent granddaughter has become a moral stain in the film.
But in "My Neighbor Totoro," all moral flaws are absent. Although the mother of the two little girls was ill, they would bicker over a disagreement. But if these are not uncontrollable diseases, or they are the daily feud between sisters, in "My Neighbor Totoro", there are no bad people and bad hearts.
This near-perfect humanity even almost makes the film lack dramatic conflict. Because "My Neighbor Totoro" is too much like a fairy tale poem. The daily fights between the sisters, the father studying books on the summer night, and the mother, although she was hospitalized, never lacked the care and care of her family. There are only two things that drive the development of the whole film: one is the trivial things in the lives of the two parents, and the other is the encounter between the sisters and Totoro every time.
The father's return home later on a rainy day can be a "big event" between the sisters, but the appearance of Chinchilla has turned this seemingly trivial "big event" into a blessing. The same variation also occurs in the climax, the "big thing" at this time is that the mother delays going home due to illness, but luckily, the two sisters can take the cat bus.
The calm story line makes "My Neighbor Totoro" like a lively version of Hou Hsiao-hsien's movie, but the ubiquitous mysterious elements give it a unique Miyazaki label.
Whether it's the "dust elves", or the three jumping chinchillas, or the giant cat bus, they're all like old friends in Miyazaki's movies, and we'll never get tired of seeing them. This kind of "not getting tired" is not simple. You can just put some "gods and ghosts" and you can fool the past. Miyazaki's mysticism is almost never divorced from ecological nature, his mystique is a kind of "animity", rooted in the unity of heaven and man in the eastern world.
In "My Neighbor Totoro", the "dust elves" and the smaller chinchillas can live in the "haunted house" all year round. Regardless of whether it is the father of the intellectual class or the mother-in-law of the humble woman in the countryside, these "weird powers and chaos" are regarded as a normal state. They are naturally placed in the human world, and human beings themselves exist in the animistic natural world.
Therefore, the teasing between Xiaomei and My Neighbor Totoro seems childish, but in fact it is Miyazaki's own master. In "Red Pig", he talks about anti-war and compassion, and in "My Neighbor Totoro", he turned into a child and believed in this paradise.
When we walked into this peach blossom garden and tried to re-ruminate the emotion and convincing we had when we watched it, we could not find any profound and serious introduction at all! Because 30 years later, when "My Neighbor Totoro" was re-released, we went for that "childishness". Since it is "childish", please don't let us take the dirt of the real world and set foot on this incredible The mountain village went to look for chinchillas.
This article first published "China Film Index"
View more about My Neighbor Totoro reviews
