Spent a day letting the Miyazaki interview percolate through, and, you know, much as I enjoyed hearing him speak, I still think he's overrated.
(Hey, this is the "blog" section of the site. I'll write a real article later.)
I mean, the work is amazing. The storyboards are works of art, the animation spares no expense, the acting exceptional, the plots lyrical, the backgrounds lush and elegant. Technically, Ghibli's at the top of the form. Beyond that, Miyazaki's work is almost always immersive and entertaining.
But still, I think that he stopped challenging himself a long time ago. There are certain themes that Miyazaki tends to repeat. His heroines -- and, to a lesser extent, heroes -- blend together. I've heard from people I trust that his best work was
Future Boy Conan, and he's been repeating himself ever since. I'm not sure if I believe it, but my favorite Miyazaki films are definitely the earlier ones. There's an element of safety in his later work that's even more tragic because some of the emotions he works with are so intense -- the moral ambiguity of the factions in
Princess Mononoke, or the loneliness that underpins
Spirited Away. It's difficult to imagine, but somehow the whole has always seemed less than the sum of its parts.
Perhaps it's a personal failing. My position seems tough to defend. Perhaps it's that the work is so good that its remaining flaws seem all the more glaring, doubly so because his early works are already so
close. If Miyazaki were willing or able to push one step further -- but perhaps that would be demanding something impossible.
And
Nausicaä is still among the wonders of the earth.
words from chris, 2009-07-31 03:50:05, los angeles
