Okay, what am I talking about here? Isn’t vernacular the everyday language people use in everyday life? Yes, and it also has a secondary meaning related to architecture for domestic use (houses, barns, sheds, garages), and today I’m going to apply the word to films—those that use everyday, commonplace visuals and apply them to film.
In other words, we’re talking about ways of expressing oneself using familiar language and familiar visuals to create great art. Perfect example: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this novel, Twain tells the story using the first-person narrative of a kid growing up along the Mississippi River just before the Civil War. Huckleberry Finn speaks in a plain, unadorned manner of a semi-literate 12-year-old boy. Who could have imagined when they first started reading it, that a novel using this vernacular voice would be the voice that tells the greatest and most powerful story in American literature?
I took . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.
There it is. This is the moral apex of American literature and really of all of American art. And it is spoken in a language that is commonplace and intimate. This is the vernacular taken to the sublime.
Vernacular art, for me, is art that emerges from the commonplace art of our lives. Take Walt Disney, Hayao Miyazaki’s only real peer in the world of animation. Disney’s first animated cartoon was Steamboat Willy. It is a sort of roughly drawn, moving version of the kinds of comic strips Americans devoured in newspapers every day. Everybody read comic strips then. They were silly, inventive, had talking animals and cavemen and detectives with two-way wrist radios. And they also were completely disposable. This was vernacular art. People saw it and read it every day; it was a commonplace visual language everyone understood and accepted. What Walt Disney did was to take those flat, everyday characters and make them move. Then, he took the next crazy step of making a feature-length, full-color film using animation: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Miyazaki comes from a similar vernacular tradition: Japanese manga. Manga is a popular form of Japanese publishing that uses cartooning to tell all sorts of stories—even nonfiction. It has been around for more than two centuries in Japan, but its popularity exploded after World War II. Manga is read by everyone in Japan: young, old, male, female. Miyazaki didn’t invent animated manga, but he’s clearly inspired by this tradition. His first job was as an animator with a feature film animation company in Tokyo, Toei Animation, where he directed a couple of animated features in the early 1980s. What Miyazaki did was to take animated manga to artistic heights without losing contact with the audiences. That’s what makes a great vernacular artist. There are tract houses, and then there is a Phillip Johnson house or a Frank Lloyd Wright house. There is manga and then there is a Miyazaki movie.
Where Miyazaki really began to take full flight as a moviemaker, however, was with the launch of his own firm, Studio Ghibli in 1985. Over the next 30 plus years, Miyazaki created a series of films that are stunningly beautiful to watch, filled with gripping, mysterious, wide-eyed stories that, like manga, are accessible to everyone. Put your grandmother in front of the TV and have her watch Spirited Away (2002), and I am pretty sure you will find she gets as swept up in it as your four-year-old. And you? You probably already love Miyazaki, so you’ll love it as much as they do.
Today we’re going to take a look at six Miyazaki films from Studio Ghibli. These all are worth renting over and over again. For the uninitiated, remember that Miyazaki’s stories can be a bit confusing and not especially linear. Sometimes it feels as if you don’t quite know what is going on and you might feel a bit lost. Don’t worry about it. Part of the joy of a Miyazaki movie is that the images are so beautiful to look at that you can just enjoy the film on that level for a while until things start to make sense again.
This was the first film from Studio Ghibli. Many of the lead characters in Miyazaki are young girls and this film’s protagonist is Sheeta, a girl who floats down to earth from a battle between airships. The bad guys are after Sheeta because of a blue amulet she wears. She lands in a small mining town where she meets a young orphan boy, Pazu, who becomes her protector and companion. Adventures ensue as they are chased, captured, escape, and then end up on a mysterious castle that floats in the air. This movie is filled with action and is lots of fun for younger viewers, and it’s a good introduction to Miyazaki for kids. There are a couple of versions dubbed in English. In the version DVD.com carries, the leads are voiced by James Van Der Beek and Anna Paquin. Please note: when you search for it on DVD.com, Laputa is not included in the title. It’s simply listed as Castle in the Sky. Once you watch the movie, however, you’ll learn that Laputa is a core element of the story.
This was the first Miyazaki movie I saw. When my youngest daughter was five years old, she complained that I only rented, “weird movies where people don’t speak English or movies for big kids.” So, I was browsing the kids’ section and thought I’d give this movie a try. I put it on and she plopped down on the couch next to me and demanded I watch it with her. Grudgingly, I agreed. Within minutes, I was entranced. Two young girls spend the summer in the country with their father while their mother is ailing. They meet a series of amazing animals and spirits. This is a quiet and incredibly imaginative movie. I just love it and it’s a marvelous movie to watch with your younger children. Or on your own, after they go to bed.
This was my youngest daughter’s favorite Miyazaki movie. After we accidentally discovered him by renting My Neighbor Totoro as I just related to you, she insisted that I rent every one of his movies that I could find. Hey, I wasn’t fighting her on that one! She watched it over and over, and even though she is 22 years old now, she has a framed copy of the Japanese movie poster (which I bought her as a 20th birthday present) hanging on the wall in her apartment living room. Originally titled Witches’ Delivery Service in Japanese, this is an utterly charming movie about a young girl training to become a witch. Naturally, she can fly a broom and she puts this skill to use running a delivery service. The movie is filled with spectacular aerial scenes as Kiki makes her deliveries and ends up rescuing a boy who likes her. This is one of the best girl power movies you’ll ever watch, and if you watched it as a kid, time to watch it again as an adult.
For many Miyazaki fans, this is by far their favorite. Set in medieval Japan, it isn’t an historical drama, but more of an action-adventure tale with fantasy elements. Mononoke is a Japanese word for a shape-shifting spirit or monster. A boy searching to break a curse stumbles upon a town and a powerful Princess—a mononoke—who is fighting to prevent humans from destroying the forest where she lives. The story is exciting and the imagery is breathtaking. This is a really great animated movie and more appropriate for older children. Or adults like me (who has watched it probably ten times now). In addition to the environmental themes in the movie, there also are strong thematic elements of sexuality and disabilities (in this case, leprosy, a disease that for some inexplicable reason has moral or karmic qualities attached to it.) The voice actors starring here include Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver, and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Remember how I mentioned earlier that sometimes the storylines in Miyazaki movies are a bit hard to follow and you feel lost? That is definitely the case in this beautiful movie. A family is moving to a new town and they get lost when the dad decides to take a shortcut and they end up in an abandoned amusement park. The young girl, 10-year-old Chichira, finds herself in increasing peril when she sees that her parents have metamorphosed into pigs and the realm they have entered appears to be filled with danger and mystery. I think this is Miyazaki’s most beautifully animated film. There are several points in this film where I have stopped the player just to take in the image on the screen. Already regarded as one of the best films of the 21st century, Spirited Away is an at-times baffling, but always beguiling film. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The English language version is voiced by then 12-year-old Daveigh Chase, who also voiced the lead in the Disney animated film Lilo and Stitch earlier that same year. Jason Marsden voices Haku, Chichira’s guide and protector, and the voice cast also includes Suzanne Pleshette and David Ogden Stiers. The Wow! factor in this movie is quite high, even if you sometimes feel as lost as Chichira while watching it. There is a real Wizard of Oz quality to the movie and it’s appropriate for all ages.
This movie was born of Miyazaki’s anger over the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Miyazaki said he had “a great deal of rage” about the war and this led him to want to make a film he felt would be a commercial and critical failure in the U.S. Well, he failed on both counts. The film was a critical and commercial smash, setting box office records in Japan and was enormously popular in the U.S. as well. It is based on a popular English Young Adult fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones of the same name (although it differs in some significant ways from the novel). The film tells the story of a teenage girl living and working in a drab job in a drab town. The design of the town is based on a village in the Alsace region of France that Miyazaki visited. She is cursed by a witch and turns into an elderly woman. She needs a handsome young wizard to help her break the spell. As with all Miyazaki films, this one creates a world that is both familiar and strange. And it has one of the best creations in his entire filmography—Howl’s Moving Castle—a creaky, jalopy-like castle that roams the countryside on four spindly legs. The film deals with themes of war, old age, and the importance of compassion in human existence. This movie is moving and powerful and full of delights and adventure. Highly recommended, especially because Miyazaki himself considers it his favorite movie.
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.