FILM GARDEN 001: Ghibli Studios

What’s Inside

04

editor’s letter

05

Totoro and why we animate the details

07

Takahata and coming of age

Cover Story 09

Mononoke and the reality of environmentalism

13

Kiki and believing in yourself

16

additional recommendations

17

support the zine

​ ​about

Film Garden Magazine is a quarterly publication featuring reader submitted film discourse and art inspired by the medium of film. Every season, a theme will be chosen for the upcoming issue and readers will be encouraged to submit their relevant artistic input to the issue.Film Garden was created for the artists and cinephiles who want a platform to share their passions and participate in the community with other like-minded artistically inclined individuals.

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Want to contribute? send some art/writing samples our way and you get your very own feature in the zine! contact: 18breannawhite@gmail.com

Editor s Note Welcome to the first Film Garden issue. If you re reading this and you love cinema, art, or just love quality media, congratulation, you re in the right place. I created Film Garden for you and people just like you to share art and film opinions.

This started as a simple, individual zine idea but expanded into something much more. Less of a publication and more of a space for people to share their passions and interests through a digital (and, hopefully, physical) platform.

So, a little bit about me. Art has always been an enormous part of my life (I was that kid in your math class drawing anime characters on the back of their homework) and I ve constantly worked to refine my drawing skill, but film has only recently become a huge interest of mine. It started with a Contemporary Film class in high school and blossomed until I became a full blown cinephile, complete with a huge wishlist of Criterion edition movies I hope to own one day. I am not currently in school for film but I have studied so much of what makes the medium of film unique and alluring that I eventually acquired the ability to right competently about film.

Along with that, my main purpose in creating this publication is that I believe everyone should have the opportunity to share why they love something.

Which films are a cinephiles favourite and why can say a lot about them and what themes personally affect them on an existential level. For any piece of media to speak to someone on that magnitude is extraordinary in its own right.

I ve had that feeling, and I know others have too.

That s why I want a publication like this to exist. Whether you express your love through loving diatribes, homages, or grand artistic pieces, you ll have a place here.

And that s powerful stuff!

Breanna

The most fascinating thing a film can do in my eyes is tell a compelling story through details without the audience explicitly noticing. Only through an understanding of the film s characters and internal motivations does the film s true purpose reveal itself. You ll hear me talk about this phenomenon often, but few films exemplify this as brilliantly as the 1988 Miyazaki masterpiece ​My Neighbor Totoro​.

This is impressive and important in animation especially. Miyazaki s persona as a perfectionist is well-earned and his best films lack the usual pitfalls that plague most animated films, especially those from the West. Not to cast aside Western strides in animation, but if I have to watch the same story beats and plot devices played out as predictably as possible, I will lose all hope. But the ​Totoro ​team has managed to create fully realized characters complete with an insane level of believability and character development that plays out naturally.

Before diving into more praise for Ghibli, I d like to offer some context. ​Totoro ​follows a father and his two daughters, the energetic yet mature Satsuki and the adorable and impressionable Mei, moving out to a

rural Japanese neighbourhood to aid in their Mother s recovery from a serious illness. There, in the free countryside, is where the siblings meet a variety of lovable, mysterious creatures. These creatures range from ash sprites (who are reminiscent of those that appear in another certain Miyazaki movie!), Cat Buses that glide through the air, and a huge fluffy monster, which Mei names Totoro.

Totoro may be the soul of the movie but the heart of the film, the driving force, is the ill Mother. It has been noted previously that each character detail we observe can be directly chased back to their feelings about the ill Mother. The chemistry of the siblings is informed by their circumstances.

No surprise there, right? Isn t that how all children develop their perceptions and behaviours? Of course.

Development is a complex process directly and indirectly informed by their circumstances and past experiences.

But how do we animate that?

It was no small task, but ​Totoro ​pulls this off primarily through ​character details​.

Take the scene where we are first introduced to one of the rural neighbours, a helpful elderly woman.

When introducing herself to the new neighbour, Satsuki, who just moments before had been sprinting through the house, immediately crosses her hands in front of her skirt pleasantly, and makes sure to bow as well. Or take the tense moment when Satsuki notifies her father on the phone of the trouble down at the hospital. I don t claim to know the specifics of Japanese telephone etiquette, but we can infer from Satsuki s precise and eloquent demands for a long distance before reciting her father s number from memory (along with an impressed stare from Kanta, another neighbour around Satsuki s age) that Satsuki has grown quite mature, even for an eldest sibling with a small baby sister.

This along with the tender scene of Satsuki visiting her Mother in the hospital subtly tells us the impact that playing the role Mei s mother-figure for most of her life has on her behaviour. We can feel the pressure of being Mei s older sibling and caretaker weigh on Satsuki in these scenes. We can feel it in her manufactured awe at the mundane and moldy nooks and crannies of their old country house. We

can feel all of this purely through the power of stellar animation and voice acting.

It s the ability to convey complicated feelings through familiar shorthand that we as humans can connect to bigger ideas and themes. And isn t that the true power of detail?

Issao Takahata s contribution to Studio Ghibli isn t discussed in the West nearly as much as Miyazaki s, and that s a shame because Takahata possesses a similarly distinct and breathtaking visual style. Take ​Pom Poko, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, and, our subject for today, 1991 s Only Yesterday. Only Yesterday ​is Takahata s very personal character study of a woman named Taeko and an exploration of the effect her childhood loves and losses have on her present-day life.

Once Taeko boards the train on the way to her countryside getaway, the flashbacks begin.

Takahata has taken great care with these sequences: notice the faded colour profile, reminiscent of an obscure children s animation of post-war era Japan, which brilliantly conveys the feeling of a hazy recreation of rosy childhood memories. These are mostly slice-of-life sequences, but they speak volumes about Taeko s true interests. Perhaps one of the most

famous sequences include Taeko s curiosity in a pineapple her family has purchased, the fruit being a rarity in mid-century Japan. This could be read as foreshadowing for Taeko s future interest in nature and agriculture.

Another more emotional scene features Taeko ruminating on the guilt she feels in remembering her cruel treatment of a poor classmate she knew as a child.

But here lies one of the film s core beliefs. Taeko learns that mulling over her past follies and uttering constant what ifs isn t beneficial to her current emotional development and interpersonal relationships. Once she realises this and makes peace with her past, she creates room for herself to grow in the​ present​.

The past is essentially a hazy recreation, but the present is crisp and real.

Dealing with any semblance of objective morality in environmentalist media can be challenging, in part because of the subject s complexity. Most straightforward environmentalist messages that we in the West find the most familiar (and a bit overdone) involve feeding the audience an easy to swallow pill of objective right or wrong. This is not to devalue good/evil narratives, some of which can make genuinely great cinema, but to reflect on the impact this method of evaluation has on the real-world issue of global climate destruction. When real-estate developers or businesspeople of the sort are painted as morally bankrupt in a simple, fundamental way, audiences lose nuance and empathy. Although the belief in nature s intrinsic goodness is more Shinto in nature, it is pervasive in the West as well. In other words, it doesn t matter which trees are leveled, the only thing that s important is that nature is by

definition superior to any developments that can be made in the land it occupies. This is not to say that Earth s complex ecosystem is immune to human intervention, but without an understanding of how to actually balance​ nature preservation (necessary) with real-estate development (also necessary) instead of simply chaining yourself to a tree trunk. It simplifies a complex problem.

That brings us to 1997 s ​Princess Mononoke. ​It would be tempting to compare ​Mononoke ​to similar pre-war tales of warring clans and violent samurai (Kurosawa comes to mind), but Miyazaki deliberately places the audience in an innovative, if morally grey, era of Japanese industrial development.

At the centre of the development is Lady Eboshi, the leader of an iron town and the subject of the titular character s ire. Lady Eboshi is a determined, caring, if sometimes ruthless leader and

represents both industrial and social advancements. She reminds the audience that, though human expansion can be destructive, there are often progressive social developments that come along with it. With Lady Eboshi’s technological innovation comes social innovation as well. She considers the independent women in her village who would otherwise be outcasts as being of equal usefulness in defending the village as the men; these women forge iron, wield guns, and prepare for battle. Lady Eboshi even welcomes the historically marginalised victims of leprosy.

Here we are presented with a logical balance. Lady Eboshi may be the catalyst for deforestation, but she is also improving the lives of other humans in a tangible way.

It’s this confrontation with complicated balance of pros and cons that every social issue inherently has that told me that Studio Ghibli ​really​ respected the

subject matter. Only a group of people who have an authentic interest in exploring the nature of these intricate issues would take this much care in presenting the nuances of their themes in this much detail. That, in my mind, is the sign of great filmmaking.

It s an amazing feeling when you can see yourself in a film character. Filmmakers somewhere have felt the same thing you have felt, and this experience was so strong they wove it into an entire piece of narrative art. This is the connection I felt while watching the 1989 Ghibli film ​Kiki’s Delivery Service. ​The film follows the coming-of-age of a young, unsure witch named Kiki, and her black cat familiar, Jiji. We see her struggles with her new urban surroundings, her social ineptness, and her disbelief in her magical abilities and self-worth.

I won t lie. This film can be difficult to watch and understand at times. We watch Kiki fail over and over again to deepen her connections with the people around her and truly see eye to eye with others on different scenarios throughout the movie. But before we discuss that, we must first establish the idea of behavioural self-efficacy.

When I talk about self-efficacy and its impact on confidence here, I am referring to the general belief one has in themselves that they can succeed at something. Whether it be a test, a marathon, or life, someone with high self-efficacy believes in their ability to succeed at something and, in turn, ​increases their likelihood of succeeding by doing so. ​This concept has brought me, personally, a lot of comfort in recent years. The assurance that you can increase your chances of winning at life through sheer confidence and belief in your abilities has kept me going even when life is a downer!

In this case, I would say Kiki starts the film low self-efficacy and unassuredness. She s dreamt of living an idyllic life by the sea, but her dreams didn t take into account the hardships she would encounter by starting her delivery service. Through the film, we see her wrestle with what it means to be independent. These themes are widely relatable and as a fresh

graduate I find them especially relatable.

What makes her useful?

What skills give her value? These questions are at the forefront of Kiki s mind, especially during her lowest moments in the film. All she can see is her failures to perfect her magic and her disconnect with her new surroundings. Her preconceptions of the other citizens and how they conflict with her ideology doesn t help either, particularly with an interaction she has during a delivery job with a wealthy girl in the town who disregards the traditional old ways of her own grandmother.

With this limited, subjective view of her achievements, she loses her sense of meaning in life, a sentiment that sends her through her downward spiral. Her failing confidence leads to the loss of her magical abilities, and the loss of her connection to her pet familiar, too. A painter neighbour of Kiki s, Ursula, ponders that maybe a new

life s purpose would reignite her magical powers, and in a grand, if flawed, finale, Kiki suddenly regains her flying powers in order to save the citizens from peril.

This emphasis on confidence, independence, and finding one s purpose makes K ​ iki one of my all-time favourite films.

To see a character whose tribulations parallel yours so closely overcome her self-doubt is a rare and touching experience that everyone should have.

Recommendations

Here’s where I provide additional recommendations for those who enjoyed the films featured. All of the films in the issue were relatively mainstream, so I’ll dive deeper into the genre for this particular set of recommendations.

Chie the Brat (1981) dir. Takahata Isao, comedy/slice of life Chirin’s Bell (1978) dir. Yanase Takashi, adventure, drama Galaxy Express 999 (1977) dir. Matsumoto Leiji, sci-fi Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) dir. Miyazaki Hayao, action/adventure My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) dir. Takahata Isao, comedy/slice of life Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985) dir. Sugii Gisaburou, sci-fi, adventure Panda Kopanda (1972) dir. Takahata Isao, comedy/children Space Battleship Yamato (1977) dir. Matsumoto Leiji, sci-fi

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