The Magnificent Caphor Tree

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2014)

Similar to "Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" (2001) in premise and "El espíritu de la colmena" (1973) in its depiction of childhood imagination, Miyazaki's "Tonari no Totoro" (1988) succeeds in blending the Japanese folklore and warm childhood summer nostalgia, the unattainable freedom of youthful imagination and hope, and the fear of not only growing up but becoming overwhelmed by the worldly sorrows of the grown-ups.
Full of the small, beautiful moments of family life: the bath, the bicycle ride (the dad resting in the grass while the girls eat), the possibility of the mother's death frames a deeply moving story of two children at a loss as to how to cope with the illness and absence of their mother. And they've also just moved house, as Sen had before going through the tunnel, which in this film leads further into the forest, to the magnificent Caphor tree.
A great deal is made of that which exists but cannot be seen by the adults. The Susuwatari, the rustle of wind that in fact is something much more than mere wind, the rain that hides more on the darkening nightly road than an ordinary bus, the planted seeds that magically grow overnight; all this leads to the final emotional resolve, where the girls deliver an ear of corn on the windowsill of their mother's hospital room. In a sense, the whole film is all about this trip the children make, where the film tries to convince us that in that ear of corn not everything is as it seems.