Presented in Cannes in May 2024 and available on Arte.tv until March 19, the documentary Miyazaki, the spirit of nature** tries to unravel the Miyazaki mystery. In almost an hour and a half, Frenchman Léo Favier mixes film extracts, archive images and interviews with specialists, a biologist, with Gorō Miyazaki (the filmmaker's son) and Toshio Suzuki, chief producer of the Studio Ghibli. But not with Miyazaki himself, who hasn't given interviews for 10 years.
“We had an incredible amount of archives which, for me, was the most important. Diving into all these archives where we see him working, drawing, it was the most wonderful material…”the director explained to us a few days ago in Paris. “Sometimes I don't see the point in making new images when the images are already there. It's almost a political posture. Why go to Japan with a team to film things that have already been filmed 15 years before? “
The “Princess Mononoke” turning point
In these archival images, for example, we can see Miyazaki arriving at Studio Ghibli in a gleaming red Italian convertible in the late 1990s, when he was working on his masterpiece Princess Mononoke. “Miyazaki talks about it in certain articles. He says that it doesn't start, that it's cold, that in traffic jams there's all the pollution. In short, that it's very uncomfortable… And we see that he only uses this car at that time in his life. It's a time when, around. Princess MononokeJapan is experiencing great upheaval. Afterwards, there were sarin gas attacks in the subway, the Kobe earthquake. It was also the Asian crisis. Then he puts it back in the garage and gets back into his 2CV. I like these little things, which are not linked to the filmmaker, but which tell a lot about his life. These archives are nuggets”comments Léo Favier.
Miyazaki's spirit still blows
For the documentarian, Princess Mononoke constitutes “the most intense moment of life” also Miyazaki. “It also marks a turning point in his conception of the evolution of the world and society. There, he lost hope in humanity. It was 1998… He is all the more right today. At the same time, when we are creators, we must keep hope…”
What the ambivalent ending of Ponyo on the cliff in 2008, which ends with an almost happy image of the end of the world. “Miyazaki is not naive about the world; he is imbued with its violence. And he cannot lie to children, tell them that everything is fine. We must show the violence of the world and, at the same time , give hope…”
The idea through drawing
In an old family photo, Hayao Miyazaki and his brother can be seen standing in a countryside lane after his family fled the bombing of Tokyo in World War II… “It's really the same images as in Stretch. It's poignant. It's always fascinating to see how an artist puts everything that is most intimate into a work…”confides the French filmmaker.
-gull“Miyazaki moved away from Marxist thought, but he kept something of it. His films are imbued with it, but they leave great freedom of interpretation.”
Miyazaki, the spirit of nature also shows a lot of the master at work, drawing constantly at his little desk. Throughout his life, Miyazaki remained faithful to the pencil, refusing digital in animation as much as possible. “Miyazaki says his ideas come from drawingconfirms Favier. And we really see it with Healingwhere it was completely assumed. He started by making watercolors. We see him drawing, then smiling. We see his imagination at work. The hand, a pencil, paper, it makes the imagination work. At the Beaux-Arts, we did that all the time. And you don't need to have studied Fine Arts, anyone can do it. It’s something all kids do all the time.”
Miyazaki defends the pencil
Behind his naive, even childish drawing, Miyazaki's cinema was deeply political. Because the master of animation had very deep-rooted Marxist convictions, particularly when he was a member of the Toei Animation union, which he joined in 1963. Before creating Ghibli in 1985. “They really discussed how to work differently, how to rethink the idea of collective work. Animation is big work collectives. At the end of a project, everyone goes home. But at Ghibli, everyone is an employee; they built a nursery… Miyazaki moved away from this Marxist thought, but he kept something of it, but they leave great freedom of interpretation. that always works today Miyazaki is not dogmatic. We see that he is nourished by contradictions. He is fascinated by war machines and calls himself a pacifist… Likewise, there is the idea that nature is marvelous. , of great beauty and, at the same time, that it is terrible, destructive…”reflects Léo Favier.
The future of Ghibli
Released in 2023, The Boy and the Heron is undoubtedly Miyazaki's last film. But also from Studio Ghibli? “I have the impression that Studio Ghibli is Takahata (Isao, director of Tomb of the fireflies and ShortEditor’s note), Miyazaki and Suzuki. Together, they put in place a structure allowing them to make the arthouse films they had dreamed of for years. Which was not done in Japan. Takahata has died. Miyazaki is 84 years old. Suzuki remains very active, but he is not a director. The only directors who were able to do things a little were Gorō, Miyazaki's son, Yoshifumi Kondō and Hiromasa Yonebayashi… And they didn't manage to hold on at Studio Ghibli. They say it themselves: there was always Takahata or Miyazaki passing behind them. They couldn't find their place. […] With Ghibli, they established an ecosystem that made it possible to make films, not just make one, and to create a joint work. Perhaps it was only possible in that context, at that time?”
- The documentary can be seen until March 19 on Arte.tv.
