Ponyo on the Cliff

“Ponyo on the Cliff”

Japan. 2008. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Starring: the voices of Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi, Akiko Yano, Jôji Tokoro, Yuki Amami, Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazushige Nagashima, Tomoko Naraoka, Shinichi Hatori, Nozomi Ohashi, Tokie Hidari, Emi Hiraoka, Rumi Hîragi, and Kasuko Yoshiyuki.

Rating: ★★★

It is often said that older people start to return to a much more youthful, childlike state and so it is for the now 68-year old master animator, Hayao Miyazaki with his latest film, Ponyo on the Cliff. After making numerous movies that have presented a more mature depth in presenting childhood as in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, this time he just immerses himself completely into the mind of a five-year old. It assumes no more life experience than a child at that age and captures only the simple wonder of one who is just beginning to realize what it means to grow up into the human world.

The plot is borrowed somewhat from The Little Mermaid and is more stripped down and elemental than that Disney movie. Like Ariel, the titular character, Ponyo (Yuria Nara) is a red goldfish who wishes to become human although she has little trace of human traits at the start other than a face that does resemble a human girl. Also, she and the boy she meets, Sosuke (Hiroki Doi) are only five, which means that this is not a teenage love story but about befriending someone unconditionally as a child before all the worldly complications set in.

The movie has a wondrous underwater opening that is simultaneously a trademark and a departure for a Miyazaki film. The masterful sense of perspective, texture and movement are all present but the water color and pastel animation here goes for more of a simple children’s drawing palette than a photorealistic one with shadow lighting (except for the villainous or more mysterious characters who are drawn with darker shadows). It is here we see the little goldfish escape in a bubble away to the surface from her sibling schools of fish led by her father, Fujimoto (Joji Tokoro). Once the goldfish escapes, however, she gets her head stuck in a glass jar and washes on shore. There Sosuke finds her and gets her out of the jar by breaking it. He immediately bonds with the goldfish that he names Ponyo perhaps because she is the first one he has directly rescued from harm.

Meanwhile, Ponyo uses the magical powers she has gained from her father to gradually turn herself into a human girl including eventually growing human arms and legs. Fujimoto strongly disapproves of this as he, despite being actually human in form, has abandoned his race on land and settled underwater to raise his children as fish due to the way humans have polluted and mistreated the oceans. This, of course, allows Miyazaki to cycle back to some of his past themes about humans’ responsibility with nature and the imbalance and discord that can result without it.

Despite those familiar themes and the presence of other characters such as Sosuke’s mother, Lisa (Tomoko Yamaguchi) and absentee fisherman father who introduce the themes of fear of parental loss and death, the story is simpler and aimed more squarely at little children than any of Miyazaki’s previous films. The dialogue is also less elliptical, as the film’s focus is on just building the adorable bond between Ponyo and Sosuke, who, as all little children, cutely say exactly what they mean and want (or sometimes spit out water in the case of Ponyo). And the movie has plenty of endearing moments as when Ponyo is trying to figure out how to eat noodles for dinner at Sosuke’s house or when she uses her magical powers to transform Sosuke’s toy boat to float on the flooded island. There is also a quietly memorable scene in which Ponyo calms down a crying baby, which creates one of the story’s crucial turning points.

Miyazaki is a name in the forefront of anyone intimately familiar with the world of animation and it is interesting to wonder why he decided to lend his own unique touch this time to the basic premise of The Little Mermaid. I think it is for two fundamental reasons. One is because he perhaps wanted to leave the romantic infatuation out of it while leaving the curious idealism more intact and purer. As babies, we are born starving for love and affection from any person around us but, of course, we eventually want to share the basic human affection we receive. Thus, when the five-year old Sosuke saves Ponyo, he feels she is the first one that he is personally responsible for and can really share his own human affection for.

The second and very much related reason, I suspect, is that he wished to make both the human and fish characters more distinct and also equally emphasized. Ponyo wants to become a human from the very beginning or perhaps, more accurately, return to the way she was meant to be since her human father brought his family to the water. But that would not be valuable or worthwhile for her if she did not have someone on land that really cared about her. By giving as much emphasis on Sosuke’s characterization here (much more than the human man was explored in The Little Mermaid), he makes Ponyo’s quest for transformation mean something a little more.

Miyazaki had announced in the past that he wanted to retire but his fascination with the closed worlds and thinking children create on their own always seems to bring him back. That was the case when he came out of retirement after making Princess Mononoke and famously got the inspiration from the fantasies of a 10-year old girl for one of his best films, Spirited Away. Ponyo on the Cliff is not at that level or that of the beloved 1988 classic, My Neighbor Totoro, I think, because it is not quite as reflectively profound and rich as those masterworks. It represents, however, Miyazaki’s coming full circle to his own sense of childhood youth figuratively and imaginatively and that leaves me hopeful that Miyazaki is still far from retiring.