My Neighbor Totoro

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (TONARI NO TOTORO) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

In no time at all sisters Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka) and Mei (Chika Sakamoto) enjoy exploring the new home they moved into with their father (Shigesato Itoi) in MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. They laugh about its less than pristine condition and are intrigued by the dust bunnies--or soot sprites, as an elderly woman (Tanie Kitabayashi) nearby calls them--that scatter when they throw open the doors and windows to long-closed rooms.  This new place suits them fine, although they’d prefer for their hospital-bound mother (Sumi Shimamoto) to have joined them already.

While Satsuki is at school and her father works in his office, four-year-old Mei wanders around the garden where she spots two small, unfamiliar creatures.  She chases them into the forest and encounters a much larger one that also resembles an egg-shaped cat and rabbit hybrid.  Mei tells her sister and father that she met a totoro, or a troll from one of her storybooks.  She wants to introduce them but is unable to find the way back to the spirits.  The totoro reappear from time to time to enhance the girls’ appreciation of nature and to comfort them when distressed.

As a hangout movie for kids, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO pleases with its easygoing pace, curiosity about the natural world, and sweet spirit.  It’s not quite a plotless film, but there’s an ambling feel to the unfolding story, as though these are just a few days plucked from the stream of Satsuki and Mei’s time.  They play, they learn, and they rest. Discovering the totoro is as and no more noteworthy than spotting any other woodland animal.  

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO lacks a villain, although the illness of the girls’ mother is a concern to the youngsters.  Here again writer-director Hayao Miyazaki takes a different tack, choosing not to impart major lessons or have his characters pursue self-actualization.  Instead he portrays such a matter as part of life rather than an all-consuming worry.  The children fret but are reassured by both parents and the old woman who sometimes looks over them.  

Miyazaki characterizes the children as children in all of their brash, inquisitive, creative, and vulnerable ways.  MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO respects where kids are in their development and provides them an unhurried space to continue to explore at their own speed.  Not much happens, yet every day is an adventure.  Few films understand childhood in such terms and present it in such beautiful imagery.  

Grade: B

The NeverEnding Story

THE NEVERENDING STORY (Wolfgang Petersen, 1984)

Still grieving the recent death of his mother and suffering at the hands of school bullies, young Bastian (Barret Oliver) is having a hard time in THE NEVERENDING STORY. His father’s advice is to get his head out of the clouds and buck up. It’s time to move on. No good can come from dwelling on the pain.

Such advice may sound all well and good, but for a kid who feels alone, these consoling words are neither comforting nor helpful. So Bastian retreats into books, which affords him the ability to escape his everyday worries and experience adventures from a safe distance.

One day while hiding from his three harassing classmates Bastian encounters a man in a book shop who is reading something he deems too dangerous for the boy. Like any child who has something forbidden dangled in front of him, Bastian can’t resist wanting to know what such a book might contain. He borrows it when the bookseller steps away for a few moments. Instead of going to class and facing his tormentors again, Bastian slips off to the school’s attic, a dusty old place that looks more like a medieval sorcerer’s quarters than an academic storage area.

Bastian curls up with the book, THE NEVERENDING STORY, and begins reading about Fantasia, a land which is being slowly overtaken by The Nothing. After this darkness in the form of encroaching storm clouds arrives, where once there was something, now there isn’t anything. The Childlike Empress (Tami Stronach) knows how to combat the malevolent force but is unable to resist it because she is dying. Enter the child warrior Atreyu (Noah Hathaway), who is summoned and sent on a quest to find a cure for the Empress before The Nothing destroys everything.

As a testament to the power of books, the often gloomy THE NEVERENDING STORY comes off as a READING RAINBOW episode covering existentialism. This is heavy stuff for an epic children’s fantasy, even if it’s leavened by Henson-esque creatures. The inhabitants of Fantasia and a mourning Bastian aren’t trying to ward off tangible villains but are dealing with the eternal struggle against despair.

Whether it’s the production’s German roots showing or the prevailing children’s psychology of the time, THE NEVERENDING STORY confronts angst head on instead of offering any coddling or easy reassurance. The directness empowers the tale’s frightened heroes because courage is defined as the ability to stand up to one’s fears and author solutions in the continuous battle with mortal concerns. Reading is not a passive activity for Bastian but an active engagement that permits safer interaction with individual and collective anxieties. In a bit of meta exercise, it is suggested that those of us viewing are similarly employing the imagination through THE NEVERENDING STORY to keep at bay or conquer fundamental doubts and uneasiness.

At the helm of his first English-language film, director Wolfgang Petersen treats the kid-oriented material seriously to overall benefit and detriment. THE NEVERENDING STORY doesn’t condescend to young viewers. In so doing it provides them with plenty to mull over while taking in the stranger delights akin to ALICE IN WONDERLAND by way of THE DARK CRYSTAL. The lighthearted moments and playful exchanges, such as a Rockbiter extolling the vintages of particular stones he’s chowing down on and an ancient turtle ambivalent about impending doom, hint at a less stern composition, but mostly the playfulness juts out awkwardly in a film whose personality prefers affection at arm’s length.

THE NEVERENDING STORY’s virtues derive in part from its weirdness and uncompromising tone. Much of children’s entertainment instructs about self-actualization, but rarely is the message realized in a manner as respectful of its young audience’s intelligence.

Grade: B-