Wednesday 9 September 2009

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Film Review

Title: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika)
Year: 1984 (English Language Re-Dub 2005)
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
Written by: Hayao Miyazaki


Original sci-fi epics are thin on the ground these days, with new takes on old stories littering our screens such as Battlestar Galactica, Flash Gordon, I am Legend and Doctor Who. It is fitting, then, to analyse a genuine oldie, rather than a rehash, and therefore I have opted to revisit a Miyazaki masterpiece, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

When Nausicaä first made its way to English speaking shores, the respectful American market decided to release it exactly as is: knowing that a film is a work of art, and therefore deserves to be released as close to the authors vision as is possible. No, my mistake. Instead the footage was butchered into a new form and released as Warriors of the Wind. In contrast to the current trend of updating oldies, Nausicaä was released properly in 2005, with an English dub that is simply a direct adaptation of the Japanese release. In some ways, this wait may have proven fortuitous, as the calibre of voice actors they were able to bring in was likely higher than it would have been back in the day. I am, however, getting ahead of myself.

The story follows Nausicaä, the young Princess of the Valley of the Wind, a small kingdom near the edges of the gargantuan, oppressive and poisonous Toxic Jungle. Nausicaä is an unusual princess, inasmuch as she is constantly in danger throughout the film, due to her own adventurousness and explorative exploits. The heroine of the film is not a throne-dwelling non-entity, but a fantastical old-school monarch-figure, leading the metaphorical battle from the metaphorical front line.

The Toxic Jungle is the focal point of the film, as the poisonous spores released from the plant-life within are, to humans, fatal, and so human life is coloured by a constant struggle against these deadly flora. Similarly, the Toxic Jungle is home to ‘ohmu’, which are essentially super-sized insects, and anyone who has seen enlarged pictures of creepy-crawlies will know quite how disgusting that is.

Of the three nations in the Nausicaä mythos, only the people of the Valley of the Wind appreciate the need of co-existence with the Toxic Jungle, with all others attempting to discover ways to obliterate it completely.

In all aspects of Nausicaä, the design is detailed and varied, which makes the world feel huge and complete. The jungle scenes are overgrown and otherworldly, which really adds to the ominous nature of any time spent there, as the characters traipse around in strange masks, so as to survive in the inhospitable air. In stark contrast to the threatening jungle, the Valley of the Wind is a peaceful sylvan idyll, looking almost too much like the wet dream of an overexcited member of the Green Party.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind exists in an unusual marriage between swords & sorcery and hard sci-fi. The majority of the characters are decked out in something resembling tunics or ponchos, unless of course they are antagonistic, in which they are likely clad in a variety of plate-mail. Weapons range from daggers and swords to rifles that fire flares, also incorporating tanks, flamethrowers and mid-air dogfights, all-in-all it is a quite diverse mix which should be unsettling, but the unique magic of the world ensures that it is all included naturally.

Contrast is a huge part of the film, with even the look of the technologies used by the various nations creating dichotomies between them. The nation of Tolmekia uses obscenely colossal airships, hulking and grey, and whilst landing they gouge huge scars into beautifully green patchwork fields. The Valley of the Wind, conversely, is as lo-fi as it is possible to be whilst still utilising ‘technology’, the blades of their windmills are an organic brown, and even the blades of their swords are a translucent non-metal, which is little surprise really, the environmentally-friendly credentials of the Valley of the Wind are of paramount importance to the story.

The action in the film is tastefully done, with enough down time between bursts of hyperactivity so as not to render actual story meaningless. As I have discovered is usual of Japanese stories, a potent no-holds-barred vein even runs through yarns aimed at children, and so the pre-dominance of blood and death should be taken as read. The main criticism I have of the film is that Nausicaä is almost too brilliant, as she is loved by all, genuinely courageous, adept with nature, technology and at battle she is near-invincible, despite her small frame and her un-utilitarian mini-skirt. Honourable mention must go to her boots, which are outstanding. Having the young princess decimate a group of armour-clad adults using only a primitive croquet mallet is slightly jarring, no matter how distraught she may be. Adrenaline can certainly lend people unusual strength, battle prowess is another thing altogether. Fans of the overpowered old man character will quickly warm to Lord Yupa (voiced by Patrick Stewart), who is an inhumanly calm master swordsman.

It is good to see such a copious amount of characters bedecked in voluminous quantities of facial hair, I feel these are usually missing in the slick world of anime and manga character design, where smooth baby-faced androgyny is the norm. Lord Yupa is probably the most amazing exponent of the ludicrous facial hair, with a bushy grey goatee that obscures his mouth, also offset by the youthful brown Mohican he hides underneath his hat.

The film does occasionally hit a blip when it comes to the dialogue. As I mentioned briefly earlier, the cast are filled with a plethora of veritable movie talent, including Patrick Stewart, Shia LeBeouf, Uma Thurman and Luke Skywalker. The voice acting is fantastic, which, in my opinion, is still a slight novelty in English dub, which is blighted by its notoriously dreadful history. There are a number of lines in the script, however, which no actor could improve. There is a repetition of dialogue along the lines of “Look at those red eyes, he’s blind with rage”, playing slightly too heavy-handedly on the idea that the stampeding ‘ohmu’ literally cannot see because they are so furious.

Playing further on the idea of tortured puns, I wrinkled my nose slightly at the line: “Join our enterprise”, which I feel may have been crowbarred into the script due to the presence of Captain Jean-Luc in the cast. It is fully possible that I am simply too attuned to the world of awful nods to the audience to comment credibly. Despite my criticisms, there are some delightful turns of phrase dotted throughout the film, such as the oddly phrased, and for me, hugely amusing insult: “You act like a scared little fox-squirrel”. Slightly more direct, and a phrase I will be using myself, is the outburst: “Silence old hag, we’ll have none of your raving”.

The music, as you would expect of anything Ghibli, is utterly wonderful, and is scored by the magnificent Joe Hisaishi. My two favourite tracks from the film are ‘Stampede of the Ohmu’, which is one of the first numbers in the film, and is best described as portentous terror-cheese-synth. It is brilliantly led into by a sequence of silence, bursting into the actual track as an immense ohmu explodes from the dense jungle. The second track is a chirpy track entitled ‘Mehve (Seagull)’, which I have been unable to detect in the actual film, though it is present on the OST (Blog Trivia: and also on my phone, as my text tone).

The main message of the film seems to be one of the need to co-exist with nature, and to have more respect for the environment, lest we reduce the planet to an uninhabitable mud-rock. I’m sure there are a number of people who would disagree with the pro-Green points the film is attempting to make, though the message is surely more valid today than it was at its first inception. I would certainly hate to live in the world as portrayed in Nausicaä, although I’m sure I would enjoy the flying sequences.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind certainly agrees with my firmly held belief that you cannot go wrong with Ghibli. Hayao Miyazaki’s studio is often described as the Japanese Disney, which he apparently is not pleased with, which I don’t blame him for, after all, aside from a number of fantastic classics, Disney has been responsible for a huge catalogue of awfulness. In comparison, (what I’ve seen of*) Ghibli has never been less than masterful, and Nausicaä is an example that has truly stood the test of time.

*Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Spirited Away
Only Tomorrow
Grave of the Fireflies
Howl’s Moving Castle
Whisper of the Heart
Princess Mononoke
Tales from Earthsea

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