A beautiful documentary broadcast in the third part of the evening evokes the Japanese animation filmmaker inspired by the relationships between humans and their environment.
Hayao Miyazaki 83, is pessimistic. According to him, the XXIe century is « uncertain, the future is not bright. Now we wonder if humans and civilizations are right »he blurted while observing a landscape. The director of Spirited Away shares his concerns in the new documentary by Léo Favier and Léo Brachet: Miyazaki, the spirit of nature . Since his earliest childhood, this has been at the heart of his concerns. « It’s thanks to her that we are alive »believes the great designer. The Boy and the Heronhis latest film, released in 2023, inspired by the book And you, how will you live ? by Genzaburo Yoshino, further demonstrated his relationship to existence, creation and death (Golden Globe and Oscar for best animated film 2024).
« Miyazaki has always been inhabited by this deep tension, between darkness and light »report Léo Favier and Léo Brachet. The little boy has come a long way, he was 4 years old when his family fled the bombing of Tokyo at the end of the war, recalls Susan Napier, author of Miyazaki’s World. Throughout his career, the Japanese master of animation has never stopped defending his convictions under the leadership of his mentor, Isao Takahata, with whom he founded the famous Studio Ghibli in Tokyo in 1985 (its name s inspired by an airplane, Miyazaki is passionate about it).
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Our review of the film The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki’s twilight fable
An ecological fable
Adapted from a manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Windone of his masterpieces, depicts a civilization wiped out by nuclear war, a world in which a courageous princess tries to survive. Armed, helmeted and masked, she enters a menacing jungle teeming with mysterious insects. Archive footage returns to Miyazaki in 1996. We see him working behind his tiny desk.
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At 57, he is developing his « most ambitious film to date »an ecological fable called Princess Mononoke, in which a teenager goes in search of a deer god who is fighting to prevent the destruction of the forest. « Sometimes you have to use 120 % of one’s abilities, without these moments, one cannot accomplish anything »notes Miyazaki, who has long questioned the state of the world and the messages he transmits to younger generations through his feature films.
© Studio Ghibli
In 2022, Studio Ghibli created a theme park. Located in Nagakute, 300 kilometers from Tokyo, it pays homage to Miyazaki’s boundless imagination and extends his films. It was designed by Goro Miyazaki, the director’s son, a landscape architect by training. It looks like Disney, but bigger. Visitors can play among the settings, eat like the characters, have their photo taken with Totoro or Ponyo, and above all walk in a wooded forest. Let us imagine that it is not polluted. Since the 1990s, Miyazaki has decided to quit cinema several times, notably in 2013, at the Venice Film Festival, where he presented a new gem, The wind rises. His followers can rest assured. Last May, his son Goro Miyazaki announced that after The Boy and the Heronhe was preparing a thirteenth feature film, still with Studio Ghibli. An adventure film in which Miyazaki would return to his first creations, such as The Castle in the Sky. His illustrious father can truly echo the verse of Paul Valéry: « The wind rises !… We must try to live ! »
