Grave of the Fireflies

Dir. Isao Takahata
1988
9.0


A few months ago a good friend suggested I watch Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies in tandem. Released by the same studio in the same year, one could hardly find two more opposing companions. Miyazaki's Totoro is a light hearted account of childhood adventure with a profound yet gentle subtext. Takahata's Fireflies is a full blown, heart breaking tragedy. Channeling all the frustration and anguish of post-war Japan without once submitting to outrage or propaganda, Grave of the Fireflies is focused not on the superficial valor of wartime heroes but on the hapless civilian casualties. It is at once both mythic and human, neo-realist and magically surreal. It is also a testament to the absolute cultural and psychological devastation left in the wake of WWII and its continuing influence on new generations of filmmakers.

Takahata's film represents a composite of three types of war films: the glorifying war film (think: Independence Day), the emotionally devastating war film (think: Saving Private Ryan) and the politically and/or morally inconclusive war film (think: Gary Cooper on the mount in Sergeant York). For a war film (or more precisely a film about war) it contains little action although it doesn't avoid graphic violence. Images of bodies being ceremonially burned and cities being torched are grisly and upsetting but Takahata never makes his film into a piece of propaganda. In the tradition of the Italian neorealists who regularly fought against a faceless or nonexistent enemy (that enemy was often Italy itself), Takahata's film avoids a distinct antagonist. In fact, not a single character in the film speaks a hateful word against “the enemy”. Every citizen conserves all their energy to be put toward optimistic patriotism.

As for the film's protagonists, a boy and his younger sister, their drama is weighty but never exploitative. The children's father is in the Navy and is never seen. They are looked after by their mother until she dies in an air raid. They are sent to live with their aunt who is burdened by their appetites and perceived uselessness. Though she harasses the children about their complacency during wartime she is never vilified. When the children decide they have had enough of her misinterpreted tyranny they flee to an abandoned bomb shelter. As the two slowly descend into starvation the horrific contradiction of wartime nationalism becomes self-evident: while Japan cares deeply for its population, it is helpless to stop the slow death of two of its citizens. The tragedy heightens when the viewer realizes that is the pride and unfortunate choices made by the boy that will ultimately cause both his and his sister's deaths. However, it is his selflessness and bravery, critical and controversial terms given the boy's stealing and looting during wartime solidarity, that allows them to stay alive as long as they do.

Most especially in these scenes by the lake where the bomb shelter is located, Fireflies recalls Kenji Mizoguchi's mastery of formal composition and dramatic integrity. The hallucinatory juxtaposition of fire falling from the sky causing mass destruction and the serenity of fireflies illuminating ponds and caverns while joyous laughter echoes from all around, reflects and becomes largely symbolic of the brutal tragedy the two children face: a country both divided and united by war. Though the locations remains largely static, the narrative takes on mythic proportions. Takahata lends a divine humanity to the film's more purposefully allegorical second half. Even when he dips into surrealism, Takahata maintains an intense sense of gravity with each image adding to a tantamount sense of fate.

Ultimately the film represents all that post-war Japanese filmmakers have had to face in coming to terms with the devastation of defeat. Much like post-war German cinema, this sub-conscious weight has greatly affected the mood of the country's more thoughtful filmmakers. If Miyazaki could be charged with escapism (an unjust accusation if one is willing to seriously study the recurrent themes in his oeuvre) the same cannot be said about Takahata. His dedication to the individual in a time of national crisis is both heartbreaking and fortifying. One of the foremost post-war filmmakers in Japan, Yasujiro Ozu, showed that there is drama and sadness, joy and death behind every door. Grave of the Fireflies is not meant to be an anecdotal microcosm but just one door in the infinite hallway of suffering that was, and continues to be, WWII.

My Neighbor Totoro

Dir. Hayao Miyazaki
1988
8.2


For my part, I have seldom known external rupture. From my birth to when I left for college I lived in the same place, never once changing school districts or towns. Internally my experience was bread and butter: as a youth I created adventure and occasion out of the most commonplace objects and ordinary events. As a teenager I rebelled against my perceived commonality and turned inward, discovering (or perhaps inventing) all sorts of meaningless melancholy and angst. I sometimes wonder what my childhood and subsequent adolescence would have been like had they not been so regular and consistent. What if I had been faced with a real outside threat to the stability I had long ceased appreciating? It is this sort of hypothetical question regarding the universal experience of childhood that Hayao Miyazaki has been exploring for years. It is in My Neighbor Totoro that he answers the question as firmly, simply and gracefully as possible.

Miyazaki makes kids films about what it's like to be a kid, as opposed to the contrived schlock of so many Hollywood G-rated films which are all slick production and dichotomous simplification. In regards to the smooth and undoubtedly coercive experience of Hollywood versus the challenging, exciting and sometimes a bit frightening world of Miyazaki, one might argue that while it is certainly important at an early age for a child to feel empowered, it is also important for them to feel safe. Miyazaki knows that the former is, if not more important, generally less of a priority. Miyazaki's films feature children, divorced from the protection of their parents, making decisions for themselves. These decisions, which are often physically realized in a surreal, quasi-fictional environment, are nonetheless grounded in day-to-day reality and informed by the strange yet beautiful rationality of children.

For the girls in My Neighbor Totoro the challenge to their confidence is a move from a town to a rural farming community. A country idyll, initially fixed in animated realism turns magical when the younger of the two girls follows a small creature into the trunk of a massive Camphor tree and discovers the drowsy giant Totoro. What is perhaps most impeccable about the film from this point forward is how the discovery does not launch a serious narrative arc of any kind. As viewers we are privy to the growing bond between the sisters and the relationship between the two and their father and mother, the latter of whom is in a long-term care hospital.

While rich with moments of childhood fantasy which cross over into reality in a characteristically Miyazakian way, the film does not eschew seriousness. When their father fails to return on time from the university he teaches at, the girls hold a vigil at the bus stop where Totoro joins as a surrogate father figure. Fantasy characters as stand-in family members are a recurring theme in Miyazaki's work which further suggests the symbiotic relationship between the real and the imagined. At the news that their mother has fallen ill again, the younger girl attempts to walk to the hospital and along the way gets lost. Her elder sister and an collective of neighbors begin a search that turns desperate when a girl's shoe is located in a nearby pond. Faced with mounting tension the film elegantly unwinds with the family united around a symbolically charged ear of corn.

A beautiful film from first frame to last and an evocative excursion into the minds of children, My Neighbor Totoro delicately balances subtle character development with a heartwarming story of family and community. Without moralizing or becoming heavy handed, Miyazaki illustrates the dramatic conversion from conventional life to exotic adventure that only children are capable of. As our frontal lobes develop and we begin to reason away the more fantastic trappings of our imaginations, so too does it become more difficult to face the darker shades of reality. While children may not have an understanding of death, adults often struggle to find a means of coping with that knowledge. My Neighbor Totoro exemplifies the courage and strength in children who are given the opportunity to feel empowered and independent; who are not sheltered from reality but rather use the real world as a building block for something far more exciting but no less profound.