December
2, 2003
At
one point during Kiki’s Delivery Service, a young
artist was explaining what motivates her to paint. In so many words,
she explained that, yes, she could have followed the same commissioned
works everyone else makes, but she chose instead to create her own,
original, art. When
I heard this, I thought to myself, is Miyazaki speaking straight
to the audience about himself? Was he afraid his audience wouldn’t
understand such a lighthearted, simple gem?
Nausicaa
of the Valley of Wind, Hayao Miyazaki’s 1984 landmark
film, was a serious sci-fi adventure with a strong environmental
theme and brilliant action set-pieces; Castle
in the Sky, in 1986, mixed adventure, romance, and screwball
comedy; 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro
was a pristine, nostalgic childhood fantasy. On first glance, Kiki’s
Delivery Service seems slight; almost trivial. Even after viewing
all of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films, I felt reservations
towards what I expected was just a “kid’s movie.”
What
I discovered was one of the most charming, joyous films I’ve
seen in a long time. I can’t remember a movie that consistently
surprised me as much as this one; Kiki’s is the rare coming-of-age
movie that connects with people on both sides of adolescence. The
story – based on a popular children’s book in Japan
– is about a young witch who ventures from her village and
strikes out on her own. The girl, Kiki, wears a dark mop of hair
with a red bow, and is confident, strong-willed, determined to prove
herself in the world. She’s a teenage Audrey Hepburn in a
Frank Capra picture.
On
her 13th birthday, Kiki is required to spend a year away from home
to study her skills, in the family tradition, so she flies off and
finds a coastal city with a romantic, European flair. One of the
jokes in the movie is that Kiki doesn’t have any witch skills;
all she knows is how to fly a broom, and even that can be shaky.
There’s a wonderfully funny moment when she takes off from
her home, with friends and family waving her off. There’s
a long buildup, and then she suddenly darts off, crashing into the
nearby trees before gaining control. One of the villagers remarks
that he’s going to miss hearing those bells on the trees,
and you realize that’s because she crashes every time she
takes off.
Miyazaki
always sprinkles his films with a sense of humor, but he’s
never been as openly silly as here. The jokes come one after another,
and there’s such great joy in the setups that you can’t
help but smile. And the humor avoids the typical cartoon slapstick
you get most of the time; the humor is firmly rooted in its warmth
and humanity.
This
is, I believe, Miyazaki’s greatest talent; he truly loves
to tell stories, and his stories come out of a deep well of his
hopes and his experiences. His films may be animated, but they are
as emotionally real as the best live-action movies. He loves the
movie medium, and you know he would shoot live actors if he wanted
to, but using those wonderful impressionist watercolor landscapes
is far more his style. Miyazaki is a true artist in an age when
movie art is an endangered species.
Kiki’s
first steps toward adulthood resonate for me because of those qualities.
I can relate to her efforts to find a place to live, to start her
own delivery business, to fit in with a city full of strangers who’ve
never seen a witch on a broomstick, to fit in with the popular,
pretty, stuck-up girls. When Kiki feels awkward in her black dress
and longs to look like the popular kids, she feels helpless, and
who hasn’t felt like that? Sometimes, there really isn’t
much you can do anyway, and you know you have to believe in yourself,
but you'll still be an outsider.
Of
course, she does make friends with her good charm, including an
expectant mother who runs a bakery (and takes Kiki under her wing),
the silent bakery chef, the young adult artist, and a young boy
who is immediately smitten and becomes something of a kindred spirit.
He shares his love of flying, takes Kiki on a ride on his propeller-bicycle
(one of the movie’s high points), and gets caught hanging
from a wayward zeppelin in a climax that parodies the Hindenburg
and Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last.
So,
why the reservations that Kiki’s Delivery Service
was just another “kid’s movie?” Those reservations
only reflect the endless abuse I’ve suffered at the hands
of American animation. In America, the word “animation”
means “babysitter,” and Disney’s formulaic assembly
line of patronizing, simple-minded cartoons. Cartoons-slash-corporate
tie-ins, if you really want to be bold. This endless conditioning
means, of course, that virtually no animated movies in this country
are aimed at an older audience, or at least treat its audience like
adults. Everything gets dumbed down for Rod and Todd Flanders (or
maybe it's Ned...now there’s a topic to pick up).
The
key to enjoying Kiki’s – and I think this really
is the lynchpin of it all – is one word: subtitles. Disney’s
earlier English dubs for Kiki’s and Castle in
the Sky were noisy, intrusive, and seemingly determined to
kill any sense of mystery; everything is shouted out loud. To be
fair, Disney brought solid actors for the voice parts, including
Kirsten Dunst and Phil Hartman (in his final role), but the dubbing
is a little syrupy and overdone. The new DVD release finally allows
Western audiences to hear the original Japanese soundtrack, and
the film is considerably better for it. The images are allowed to
shine and flow freely, and silence is used as wonderfully as in
Totoro. Silence, after all, is one of Miyazaki’s
gifts; to sit back and enjoy the images, watching scenes play out
at just the right tempo. His quieter voice unveils itself between
the beats, and it soars. |
