Mystical, imaginative and fierce: A mature Miyazaki

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2005)

Princess Mononoke is another fantastic, magical and profound piece of work of Hayao Miyazaki.
It takes you into a mystical world of Forest Spirits, ancient gods and despotic humans.
In the land around a mystical forest different tribes of humans combat each other in greed for land and resource. A tyrannic lady doesn't even shy away from destroying the old forest with its ancient gods and forest spirits with fire arms. A young prince tries to interfere and reconcile the tribes. He wishes that animals and humans can live together alongside. But the war has already developed its momentum.
Princess Mononoke is about the ancient conflict between humans and nature. Miyazaki embeds this story in a wonderful scenery, with all kinds of weird and mystical creatures. But in contrast to other Miyazaki-films is the style of Princess-Mononoke not that childish, the creatures and battles might be too scary and violent for under-13-year-olds, even though it's still animation.But the maturity of the film does good.
Especially in the first halt of the movie, Miyazaki once again delights us with beautiful pictures of a magical scenery and a great soundtrack.
First, Miyazaki shows us a beautiful and unspoiled forest and then we witness how human greed tries to destroy it. The presentation of such elementary contrasts works very good.
The main advantage of every Miyazaki film is, as it is also in Princess Mononoke, the ravishment of the spectator into a wonderful and visually overwhelming fantasy world, but exactly here lies a flaw of the movie. The coexistence of the ordinary villages and the mystical forest seems a little bit overdone at times. Particularly the role of gods and demons and their transformation into each other comes across a bit too confused and fantastic. Miyazaki concentrates too much on a spectacular as possible finale, so that the film totally looses its magically calm atmosphere in the end.
But anyway, Princess Mononoke impresses with beautifully breathtaking pictures an imaginative story and a great soundtrack.