Too monotone for me

Rating: 5/10 (17 October 2005)

I kind of understand the world this movie is trying to express. The world and the characters that appears in this movie are caricature of archetype Japanese personalities. But it's in the area of what I would call emotional human waste dump. I think Japanese also has healthier world views in them asides from the one expressed in this movie. The loneliness, sadness, cruelty expressed in this movie is what kids in the feudal era of Japan would have experienced when they were sent away to serve at a large merchant's house at a very young age. If your family was too poor to support you, that was your only option. This is a fictional modern day version of many stories like this a child might have experienced even as recently as 60 years ago in Japan.
To me, the movie basically had no message. I'm surprised that it was embraced so well by the audiences here. I'm pretty sure western audience are not aware of the psychological connotation of this movie which only have meaning to the Japanese. Hayao Miyazaki has been at producing anime movies for 30 years, and he's been digging a lot into the dark side of Japanese psyche for the past 5 years. It might help to remember things that are almost being forgotten today, but for me I'm not sure if remembering these things are even healthy to begin with. Wouldn't it be nice if a child discovers how to grow up in the world as citizen of earth instead of remembering the saddest memory of the past ?