Fly Me To The Moon

Tuesday evening, I headed to the TIFF theatre to see the newest Ghibli's movie: The Tale of The Princess Kaguya. Although directed by Isao Takahata, luckily this film was not the bleak despair of his masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies. There were some moments of melancholy, but many more scenes of laughter and joy. Tonight, there was a chat session afterward with Now Magazine's movie critic Norm Wilner.

The film was a straight re-telling of the folktale Princess Kaguya. An old bamboo cutter finds a tiny hand-sized baby inside a bamboo stalk. He and his wife decide to raise her as their own. The child grows at a prodigious rate. Also finding gold and other treasures inside other bamboos, he decides to build a grand mansion in the city to befit his child's status as a "heavenly princess". News of her beauty incite several noble men into attempting to win her.

Unlike the typical "anime" style, this film looked like a water-colour painting come to life. But think less Western painting, but more the Eastern style of Japanese scrolls (complete with exaggerated heads). This gave the movie an ethereal quality that matched its slow, quiet story. However, its deceptively simple style will probably not thrill all anime or Ghibli's fans. Though sticking to the folktale, Takahata has included story elements that lent themselves to various interpretations.

We touched on some of these during the chat. The easiest, as pointed out by Wilner, were allegorical references to parenthood and growing up, especially a parent's perhaps mistaken assumption about what was best for their children. Others saw a commentary on Buddhist's teachings of detachment and Samsara (with the arrival of the "heavenly hosts") or a rejection of Japanese traditional values (Kaguya's rebellion against being trained to be a prim princess).

They were mostly wrong. Particularly risible was Wilner's contention that Kaguya was different from the other "moon people" because of the way she was drawn. A casual perusal of Buddhist art would show that many Buddhist "deities" and characters are illustrated with a reference to the "original" Buddhists (namely South Asians). This would make them look markedly different from the Japanese Kaguya.

Takahata was concerned with illusion and change. Kaguya's 5 suitors compared her to mythical treasures. When she challenged them to return with these artefacts, all were shown to be fake; whether fraudulently made or bought by them. Gifted with real treasures, the bamboo cutter used them to construct a glittering falsehood of gentility and nobility for his family. Even Kaguya was deceived. She realized too late that she had forgotten that her goal (when she was living in Heaven) was to experience life on Earth, not fill her mortal rebirth with needlework and deportment lessons.

In contrast, Takahata included a folk song sung by Kaguya's on several occasions. Its verses talked of animals, seasons, the cyclic nature of the world. Her best memories were her time with the mountain folk, who lived according to the seasons. Life is change, life is real; illusion is often static construction. Yet we must also be careful and not be fooled by illusory change. Consider the princess' abode: the Heavenly moon, which changes as it wax and wane, yet is in reality eternal and fixed in the sky.