Two young
girls move to an old house in the country where they’ll meet ancient spirits.
Totoro is
possibly the most famous creation of studio Ghibli. His success certainly was
the factor that transformed Ghibli, and Miyazaki, in a power house.
Strangely I
never had the chance to see it, even if I wanted to for the better part of a
decade, so now I started seeing it with incredibly high expectations and I must
say that they weren’t really all fulfilled. Maybe it was inevitable, what you
imagine as a masterpiece it’s bound to be inferior to what you actually see,
another reason why hyping something too much is never a good thing.
Anyway
Totoro is still an enchanting piece of storytelling. Maybe the animations are
not as refined as in “Spirited away” and certainly they are not as rich as
subsequent Ghibli outings but they remain nothing short of spectacular.
It’s noteworthy
that in this movie there is no dramatic confrontation. There is some background
tension because the mother of our two protagonists is sick but that’s really
all. It’s a rare movie the one that manages to deliver so much without a bad
guy driving the plot.
Totoro
himself is an amazing character, decades before Wall-E he communicates perfectly
without speaking a single world. His design is a masterpiece and, with his
fellow spirits, he communicates the ecological message behind the movie
perfectly. This is another thing that Studio Ghibli does incredibly well, they communicate
their theme naturally, trough the movie itself, without any need for
explanations or some other morality stuff.
A must see
experience but I don’t think there was ever any doubt with a Miyazaki movie.
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