Film Review - Ponyo (2008)

Fig.1 Ponyo (2008)

Set in present day Japan, Ponyo is a family adventure/fantasy film about a goldfish princess that lives in the sea. The princess escapes her controlling father and visits the human world where she meets a human boy named Sousuke, who gives her the name Ponyo. The film follows their friendship, and as it becomes stronger, Ponyo becomes more human like. However, When her father brings her back to the underwater world, she escapes again, but spills her father’s magical elixirs into the ocean, causing imbalance and danger to Souske’s village. The film explores themes of fantasy, friendship, loyalty, love, acceptance, devotion, and happiness. The film is lighthearted and fun, and is definitely created for a younger audience to enjoy, but can still be enjoyed by older audiences as the story and visuals are so engaging. The film also has an underlying narrative about balancing the mind. Ponyo and her ocean world represent the creative subconscious of the human mind, contrasted by Sosuke and his life on the land, which represents the outer, conscious human mind. This narrative is something that perhaps only older audiences can identify.

Although Studio Ghibli films have used small portions of CG in the past, Ponyo was animated by entirely hand drawn frames. The director of the film, Hayao Miyazaki was heavily involved in the animation process, And drew a decent amount of it himself. There was a lot of experimentation involved in the process, especially when animating the sea waves. In an interview with Collider, he spoke about how he realised he wanted a specific style to animated the waves in. “So the waves weren’t as difficult as I thought they would be. So as I was drawing, I thought, “Well, I should have done this from beginning.” I realised that I should do it like an Ukiyo-e woodblock print, draw them that way.” - Hayao Miyazaki. the film set a new record for Miyazaki’s films with just over 170,000 hand-drawn frames.  The use of 2D hand drawn animation enhances the fantasy film well, not only making it more appealing to children, but making it a beautiful film for people of all ages to watch and enjoy as they can appreciate how much work has gone into making the film so complex and visually appealing.

Fig 2. Ponyo Poster (2010)

Hayaozaki’s films have often been compared to as the Japanese equivalent to Disney, often because the films are often re-released by Walt Disney Studios as English dubbed versions to Western audiences. They have become one of the most famous film studios in Japan, and are well known for having an iconic 2D style. All of Studio Ghibli’s films have a signature style and way of storytelling. Most Ghibli films include fantasy of some kind and just cannot be told through live action. There are too many magical visuals that are showcased so beautifully through Studio Ghibli’s 2D style that wouldn’t translate well if the stories were told through live action films. 

Ponyo was written and directed by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, and animated by Studio Ghibli,a Japanese animation film studio based in Koganei,Japan. Miyazaki has worked with the same animators for almost his entire career. Miyazaki wanted to create Ponyo as he is commonly known for making films that revolve around the sky, but always wanted to create a film about the sea. 

"I have always dreamed of making a film with the sea as a motif, but animating the waves is really hard, so I wasn’t able to do that up to now. I decided to change the way of animating, and had a change of thought: that the sea is actually a living thing. Of course, it took courage to draw eyes on it! But a lot of the staff thought it was interesting so I thought, ‘Oh, okay, it works!” - Hayao Miyazaki.

He also felt like he hadn’t made a film specifically targeted towards young children in awhile, e.g My Neighbour Totoro. 

“I also thought maybe we’d travelled too far away from children, that we should go back to the five-year-olds. But I can’t go back and make the same innocent ‘Totoro’ kind of film. So I put in more complex things. If you want to make something innocent, a shorter film is better. It’s not a good thing to make something very long for small children.” - Hayao Miyazaki.

The reception of Ponyo was a little mixed, it was received very well by the general public, and achieved worldwide success.It received a 91% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and won several awards such as the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year.  It also won five awards at the Tokyo Anime Awards. The awards included "Anime of the Year", “Best Domestic Feature", “Best Director”, “Best Original Story” and “Best Art Direction.” It was originally released across Japan under the title: 'Gake no Ue no' which means; 'Ponyo on the Cliff',on July 19, 2008 in 481 theatres, and achieved $91 million  into it’s first month of release. It was released in Southeast Asia under the name; 'Ponyo On the Cliff by the Sea.' on January 1, 2009, in the United States and Canada on August 14, 2009 by Walt Disney Pictures, it reached 927 theatres across America, which broke the record for the amount of showings a Studio Ghibli film had ever had across America. it was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on February 12, 2010. The film raked in over $201 million worldwide, however, some die hard Ghibli fans felt as though Ponyo wasn’t quite up to par to some of Miyazaki’s previous films.

Bibliography:

Rotten Tomatoes, s.d. Ponyo (2009). At: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ponyo (Accessed on 06.02.19)

Ghibli Culture. (2014) Analysis of Ponyo. At: https://ghibliculture.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/analysis-of-ponyo/

(Accessed on 06.02.19)

Weintraub, S. (2009) Hayao Miyazaki Interview PONYO At: http://collider.com/hayao-miyazaki-interview-ponyo/ (Accessed on 06.02.19)

Jolin, D. (2011) Miyazaki On Miyazaki: The Animation Genius On His Movies At: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/hayao-miyazaki/ (Accessed on 06.02.19)

The Massie Twins, s.d. Ponyo (2008) At:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0876563/ (Accessed on 06.02.19)

Images:

Figure 1. Ponyo. (2008) From: Ponyo. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki [Film Still] Japan: Studio Ghibli. At: https://www.nytimes.com/watching/titles/ponyo (Accessed on 06.02.19)

Figure 2. Ponyo. (2010) From: Ponyo. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki [Poster] Japan: Studio Ghibli. At: http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRUj7UnYxLXtFeZF0iYaxzgeR-RDidUtR20y9Kl_IblXS0lanr5(Accessed on 06.02.19)

Film Review - Mary and Max (2009)

Fig 1. Mary and Max (2009)

Mary and Max is an indie/drama film about an overseas friendship between two characters with very different lives. An eight-year-old girl from Melbourne named Mary Dinkle, who is picked on for having a birthmark on her forehead, and Max Horovitz; a 44-year-old overweight Jewish man with Asperger’s syndrome. The film shows the two characters friendship develop through the letters they write to each other over the span of 20 years. The film explores themes of friendship, mental health, and autism, but also covers some dark and mature themes such as; anxiety, sexual differences, alcoholism, religious differences, past trauma, agoraphobia, obesity, neglect, bullying, and suicide. The film also has its comedic moments, which when mixed with the dark themes, creates some morbidly funny situations.

The film was made using claymation/stop motion animation. It has a more handmade quality and gives the characters movements a more quirky style, which in this case supports the dark and sometimes off-putting themes. With stop motion, and especially with Mary and Max, the characters look more puppet-like, rather than people, which can be quite unsettling when paired with dark themes, but in a way that fascinates the audience, rather than putting them off.

The story of Mary and Max could definitely have been portrayed through live action rather than animation, however, it is the animation itself paired with the story that really makes the narrative work. There are some things that cannot be captured by live action films. For example, each character is designed so uniquely and are so over exaggerated that you can tell exactly what the characters are like without even hearing them speak, the film also has a very interesting use of colour.  When showing Mount Waverly; the place where Mary lives, the only colours used are sepia tones, except for the Mary’s Mother’s red lipstick, and later on, Mary’s red lipstick and red shoes. The choice of these colours aids the melancholy feeling of the film. When showing New York; the city that Max lives in, it is only shown in black and white which makes Mount Waverley suddenly look rather simple and peaceful compared to the chaotic, polluted city. The abstract characters and quirky animation mixed with the dull colour palettes make the film slightly difficult to watch, especially with the challenging themes it shows, however, there is a good balance of rather blunt humour and darker moments. If the narrative was told using live action, the story may have felt a little too drawn out, and also dulled downed some dramatic scenes such as the scene where Mary almost commits suicide where pictures of her friends and family are seen floating around her. If this was done using live action it wouldn’t look as interesting, and the characters would lose a lot of their creepy charms.

Fig 2. Mary and Max (2009)

The film was directed and written by Adam Elliot, an independent Australian stop-motion animation writer, director and producer based in Melbourne, Australia. Adam refers to a lot of his work as “Clayography” which means clay animated biographies. He views every character and prop and set as a tangible object, so that the audience can see that very little detail has been hand crafted. He decided to create Mary and Max because he always focused on one character in his previous short films, and thought it was time to explore multiple characters. The film became a feature length film unintentionally during the writing process as Elliot doesn’t usually plan how long the film will be. Adam also designed just over 200 characters himself, he also had to create a style bible to give to the sculptors so that they could accurately portray his style. Elliot’s stories focus on characters that are seen as outsiders or marginalized ed. He wants to educate the audience on issues that not everyone would know about, or should tease someone for. He wants the audience to be able to empathize with his characters.

The reception of Mary and Max was very positive. It received a 95% (57 of 60) of the critics at a film review aggregator rotten tomatoes rate Mary and Max fresh, with eleven of the fourteen top critic reviews agreeing. It grossed $1,444,617 at the Australian box office and although it received no general theatrical release in the United States, it was shown at several American film festivals and was briefly shown in the Laemmle Theatre in Los Angeles. The film was released in France and Germany and received significant box office success. It also won many awards such as; Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Best Director in a Feature Film at the Australian Director Guild, Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Grand Prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, as well as being nominated for 9 other awards.

Bibliography:

Hailey, J. s.d. Mary and Max (2009) At: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/ (Accessed on 17.01.19)

Mary and Max, Official Trailer [online] AMBI Distribution (2014) 2:03 mins At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2GbYu010a0&feature=youtu.be

(Accessed on 17.01.19)

Mary and Max: The Exhibition - interview with Adam Elliot [online] Pres. Adam Elliot. ACMI (2015) 15 mins At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUVzPaBANkw&feature=youtu.be (Accessed on 17.01.19)

Pulver, A. (2010) Mary and Max Review. At: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/mary-and-max-review (Accessed on 17.01.19)

Rotten Tomatoes. S.d. Mary and Max (2009) At: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1209767_mary_and_max (Accessed on 17.01.19)

Images:

Figure 1. Mary and Max. (2009) From: Mary and Max. Directed by Adam Elliot [Poster] Australia: Gaumont. At: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/mediaviewer/rm1312167936  (Accessed on 17.01.19)

Figure 2. Mary and Max. (2009) From: Mary and Max. Directed by Adam Elliot [Film still] Australia: Gaumont. At: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/mediaviewer/rm3229040640 (Accessed on 17.01.19)