Ponyo
Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Frankie Jonas, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Betty White, Cloris Leachman and Lily Tomlin. (G)
From the opening scenes of Ponyo, director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) makes the case for his luxurious, hand-drawn art. With only music for accompaniment, he takes us on a tour of his underwater world, one filled with the kind of strange aquatic life that may be real but owes as much to Dr. Seuss as Mother Nature. It's gorgeous, entrancing stuff, and watching it made me think of why the most memorable children's stories are usually illustrated by hand. In so many films for young people today, the script is king, filled with easy one-liners stamped with an expiration date; in Miyazaki's work, personality comes first and foremost through his fantastic visuals—a more immediate, and more lasting, sense.
But Miyazaki isn't known for slighting the story, either; indeed, he has a rabid following of adult admirers who await each new film the way tween girls wait for the next Hannah Montana project (Ponyo stars the little sister of Montana's Miley Cyrus). Which makes it a bit surprising that the story of Ponyo is its weakest point. More than any of Miyazaki's latest films, Ponyo, despite some familiar ecological themes, is a movie for kids.
Loosely based on the Little Mermaid story, it is the tale of a magical fish-creature who falls in love with Sosuke, a human boy who lives in a house set on a seaside bluff. When he first meets Ponyo, she has escaped from a cramped life with her father Fujimoto (Liam Neeson), a mysterious ocean-dwelling being. Once human, Fujimoto—whose hair and wardrobe suggest a past career in '70s-era British glam rock—has come to despise mankind because of its disregard for the ocean, and he does all in his power to keep his daughter sheltered from the world above the surface.
But Ponyo is more powerful than he realizes, and her determination to reunite with Sosuke causes a disruption in the natural order: the Moon is drawn dangerously close to Earth, tsunamis threaten the shore, and her childlike glee in following Sosuke puts herself and others in danger. To help restore balance, Fujimoto calls on his wife, a sea goddess (Cate Blanchett), who suggests that all will be well if Sosuke proves his commitment to Ponyo—a rather startling thing to ask of a five-year-old boy, but one his mother (Tina Fey) accepts. More interesting but mostly unexplored is how Ponyo's wish mirrors her father's history.
I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the original Japanese version of the film is a richer experience. The version released to U.S. theaters by Disney is dubbed with English actors (Neeson is particularly good), and while translation itself isn't necessarily an inherent evil in an animated film, the suspicion here—given the richness of Miyazaki's earlier work—is that the story has been somewhat watered down. More suspicious still is the fact that the two main roles are voiced by Noah Lindsey Cyrus and Frankie Jonas, two young members of fortune-making Disney dynasties. It's enough to make one wonder: were they the best thing for the film, or is Disney just trying to create another Hannah Montana?
*
The Cove
Directed by Louie Psihoyos. Written by Mark Monroe. With Ric O'Barry, Louie Psihoyos, Dave Rastovich, Joe Chisholm, Mandy-Rae Cruikshank and Charles Hambleton. (PG-13)
The Cove, a new film by first-time director and National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, is marketed as a documentary. It would have been just as appropriate to call it a thriller, or, sadly, a horror film. The story of dolphin slaughter in a small Japanese fishing village and the concerted effort to keep it from the prying eyes of Westerners, much of the film is concerned with the history of its protagonist and his continuing struggle to expose the slaughter. Only after a long stretch of cloak-and-dagger is he able to get the film he wants; when you finally see it, it brings chills, and tears.
Psihoyos' entry into the story is Ric O'Barry, an aging mariner who once made a living wrangling dolphins. It was O'Barry who caught and trained the five dolphins that collectively played Flipper on the hit television series, setting off a global fervor for SeaWorld-style animal parks. When one of the dolphins died in his arms—as O'Barry recalls it, it committed suicide—he became a dedicated advocate for the humane treatment of aquatic life and the enemy of sea parks everywhere.
What makes Taiji, Japan so important is that it functions as the clearinghouse for the world's parks. From September to March, thousands of dolphins are herded into the small coves along its coast, where the choicest specimens are captured and sold to aquariums the world over. The dolphins that don't make the cut are slaughtered in such numbers that the sea runs red with their blood.
The townspeople and O'Barry are old enemies, and he and Psihoyos are forced to enlist Hollywood model makers and professional divers to construct and place a variety of hidden cameras in the area around the protected cove. The effect is more Mission: Impossible than Wild Kingdom, filled with night vision views and hair's breadth escapes. As the mission progresses, O'Barry digresses to explain how the meat from the slaughter—dolphin meat, laden with mercury, causes crippling birth defects—is sold to the Japanese public as whale meat, and has even been used in public school lunches.
Why does it continue? The short answer seems to be money, but the reaction of the Taiji fishermen to O'Barry's intrusion also hints at larger, older issues of East vs. West. In the credits, Psihoyos highlights two Japanese councilmen who, at risk to themselves, helped end the use of dolphin meat in schools; one hopes his film will rally more to O'Barry's cause.
Also this week: In the short time it's been open, Amherst Cinema has made a point of expanding its programming beyond the usual art-house fare. It's hosted film festivals with visiting directors, presented live feeds of plays from Britain's National Theatre, and given over space for dramatic readings and poetry nights. Perhaps most laudably, many of the theater's special events have had local ties—a trend that continues this week as Amherst embarks on a collaboration with WFCR and Tom Reney, host of the radio station's long-running program Jazz a la Mode.
Reney will be on hand the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 1, to inaugurate the WFCR Jazz Series with a screening of Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer. The film is a welcome portrait of the often overlooked O'Day, a stylist whose wide-ranging gifts—compare her early version of "Skylark" with Gene Krupa's band to her breathtaking rhythmic reinvention of "Sweet Georgia Brown" at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival (caught on film in the classic Jazz on a Summer's Day)—were sometimes overshadowed by a tumultuous personal life. Directed by O'Day's former manager Robbie Cavolina with Ian McCrudden, the film wrapped just weeks before her death in 2006, leaving us a bittersweet coda to a remarkable life in jazz.
In addition to a post-screening discussion of the music and musicians at the heart of the series, each show will be preceded by a 20-minute live jazz performance. Kicking things off on Tuesday is local guitarist Jay Messer, whose solo concert begins at 6:40.
On Friday, Aug. 28, writer Tom Monte visits the theater to introduce Taking Woodstock, the new film adapted from a book Monte co-authored with Elliot Tiber. Based on Tiber's experiences as an unlikely mover-and-shaker during the legendary music festival—when a neighboring town pulled the Woodstock promoters' permit, Tiber offered up his family's dilapidated El Monaco motel in hopes of forestalling foreclosure, and found himself swept up in the defining moment of a generation—the film features a talented ensemble cast under the direction of Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain). Monte will lead a question and answer session following the screening.
