Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Average user rating

1 review

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Miyazaki was already a culture hero in Japan when this animated mythic adventure raised him to a status approaching living national treasure. The young warrior Ashitaka is infected by poison while saving his village from a demonic giant boar; he rides his elk to the west (where the boar came from) in the hope of finding a cure. He stumbles into a three-way battle between a woman chieftain in a fortified encampment (built to protect the secret of smelting iron from ore), a clan of samurai eager to take control of the iron - and the creatures (chiefly wolves and boars) of the surrounding forest, enraged by all the human damage to their natural habitat. Fighting on the side of the animals is Mononoke, a girl raised by the wolves, who hates and distrusts all humans, including Ashitaka. The samurai are pretty unredeemed, but Miyazaki insists that there are things to be said for both the Iron Age settlers and the animals and their deities: rather than a Lord of the Rings-style showdown between good and evil, this argues for peaceful co-existence. Superbly imagined and visually sumptuous, it's let down only by Hisaishi's sub-Miklos Rosza score. (An uncut English language dub also exists, with dialogue by Neil Gaiman and a voice cast including Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and Billy Bob Thornton.

Author: TR

Time Out Film Guide

Email Tweet Share

User reviews of this film

Will Pottorff said...

Posted on Nov 15 2010 17:00 There are few films I have ever cried during but I'll be the first to admit it I'm a big softie at heart, but there are few animated films I have ever cried in. What Miyazaki did with Princess Mononoke was create a world, which nowadays is in my mind taken for grated especially with computer generated effects being able to make whatever the director really desires. Mononoke is different then all those surreal Avatar-esque productions because in my mind it really taps into something that is underlining real. Either its the well established characters such as the melancholy warrior prince Ashitaka who seeks to end a war or the wild wolf princess San who hates her own people, or the beautiful visual bliss that is the feudal Japanese countryside and it's forests. All just accumulate and build into a dense story about war, the environment, greed and love.

Report as inappropriate