I was talking with my younger brother yesterday. We live a couple of hours apart and it has been quite some time since we have spoken to each other. I Skyped him on a whim, missing the way his voice sounded and we said goodbye over five hours later at half past one in the morning.
Now, as siblings who have known each other our whole lives, our conversations seem to flow easily from one topic to another. We talked about politics and books. Music and stupidity. By the end of it we found ourselves discussing films and how it’s been a really long time since either of us felt we had watched a film that touched us deeply. Not just a film that was good, but a film that changed something inside of us.
Both of us are rather intense in our likes and dislikes. We tend to immerse ourselves completely in the subjects that interest us and we like to feel things deeply. Yet, the media we have consumed lately have felt somewhat lackluster. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s just not any better than good.
We started talking about our love for animated films and books. Graphic novels and anime. The way we both felt disconnected from it nowadays, yet we still remembered loving it so. We started discussing Miyazaki’s films, and studio Ghibli in general. For those of you that don’t recognize his name, Hayao Miyazaki is one of the founders of Studio Ghibli, an animated film studio from Tokyo, Japan. Him and his fellow directors and animators create simple, yet beautiful re-imaginings of children’s tales and new original stories. Most of them center around the idea that greed, war and lack of common sense and manners make us disconnected from what is important in life.
What is so special with his films is that they seem to appeal to those that would not usually enjoy the medium. To those that otherwise easily dismisses so-called ‘foreign’ productions. He bridges that gap and is able to influence and affect people of all ages.
He now claims he’s made his last film. I’m curious as to what kind of magic it will bring.
– Coco