Princess Mononoke

Miyazaki Hayao, Studio Ghibli, Princess Mononoke (1997), “Copyrighted Image”

So, another Ghibli review. This time it will be Princess Mononoke. The story of the film follows Princess Ashitaka, a prince in a small village. One day, he witnesses a boar demon rushing to his village, and prepares himself to defend the village. He eventually succeeds by shooting two of the demon’s eyes with his arrows, but not before touching the beast and getting a scar on his arm. The scar on him is a curse place upon him by the beast’s hatred and anger, and will eventually kill him. Through the advice of his village elders, he journeys to the west to seek a cure from the legendary Deer god, which is the God of Life.

Princess Mononoke’s main theme that it tries to communicate to the audience is the fight between humans and nature. The Ironworks, led by Lady Eboshi, represent the progression of humanity as we use resources from the earth to produce tools. This causes harm to the forest and the nature around them. On the other side, there is Princess Mononoke and the Wolf god Moro, along with the other gods and creatures in the forest that fight against the humans.

The different thing about this about this film compared to most films about the battle between nature and man is how they don’t characterize man as being truly evil and should be destroyed. It shows how both sides are suffering from the conflict between them, and how the misunderstanding of both sides led to the conflict. For the side of nature, to mine the metals needed to produce the tools and weapons, they have to cut down trees and pollute the environment. However, many people within the factory relies on Lady Eboshi for a living, and she has even saved a few cursed people and treated them as human. We are shown that the people in the factory aren’t bad people at all, and are able to live well because of the factory.

However, their actions have destroyed the environment around them, and so the wolves in the forest lead attacks to destroy the factory. But, Lady Eboshi and her workers have developed guns and firearms to defeat the gods. The side effect of the weaponry would be how it corrupts the gods, and turns them into mindless spirits filled with hatred. Finally, not only do the humans have to deal with the assaulting gods, the lord of a group of samurai under the emperor’s command wants to take control of the factory, and they have to defend themselves from them as well.

So, as you can see, the film really presents the complications between the two sides, and how they are just trying to live. The main character, Prince Ashitaka, acts as a bridge between the two sides, as he empathizes and understand the consequences of the actions of both sides. He believes that both sides can coexist together, but it is still difficult for both sides to forgive each other. He believes that hatred breeds more hatred, as tells both sides to stop before its too late. As for Princess Mononoke, or her real name San, despite being a human, was raised by the wolves and has learned to hate humans, and continuously denies her identity as a human.

Overall, Princess Mononoke was a really good film. Now, I’m going to say that before I watched the film, I had listened to much praise given to this film. And from the looks of it, I thought the film was almost perfect. Well, I watched it and as I’ve said with Howl’s Moving Castle, people give it far too much credit that it almost becomes god-level. While I feel that Princess Mononoke wasn’t as awe-inspiring as I thought, don’t get me wrong, it was still an incredible film. I will conclude with saying that it accomplished what it set out to accomplished. The film wanted to present the conflict between man and nature and show both sides, and encourages us to coexist with nature. We can do what we want with human intellect, but we must also be vary of the consequences it brings. And for that, I think it is still an incredibly powerful and meaningful film.