Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Said to be Studio Ghibli's very first film, Nausicaa immediately shows how impatient Miyazaki was to bring his themes and ideas forth. Perhaps you can compare it to say, Princess Mononoke. They both have strong environmental and pacifist messages. Except Nausicaa takes place in a post-apocalyptic world.

From there, we can see how it builds on, and how things quickly get chaotic, before we come to a sad and terrible climax to a surprisingly positive resolution. Have I told too much? Well, it's formula. Except this was the very first, so you can say it's original. Truth be told, I perhaps concur with the assessment that Miyazaki has outdone himself with his later films. True, they were much more concise and lucid. Nausicaa can get rather confusing at times, after all.

But for a first movie of sorts, it is great. Indeed, one of the greatest: having a depth hardly matched by Disney films at their golden age. And greatness is a hard thing to execute.

2 comments:

David BC Tan said...

hey i haven't seen this tho i've read about it. meybe you want to screen that for us sometime? :)

Daniel said...

Yes, that would be nice. =)