go and see this movie

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2003)

I loved "princess mononoke" (the previous film of this director) and I love this one, even if less strongly. This is a strange movie, probably not targeted to a children audience, because there are some disturbing scenes and some hidden messages that can be faced only with an adult mind. Which kind of messages? First, I think that there is the idea (already present in Mononoke) that nature is good and industrialised world is bad. You can see this by comparing the two terrible big-nosed sisters of the movie, where the first runs a factory-like bath for spirits, the other one lives inside the nature and is far more good than the previous one. Another message is that our industrialised, capitalistic world has something wrong. I don't know if the director is left-wing or even communist but what I feel is that he - being a creative person - dislikes factories and tayloristic/beaurocratic organisations such as those shown in his movies. Low-level workers are like those little black balls that bring carbon to the fire for the rest of their lives. Or at least this is the message I want to see. Finally something related to the recent economic situation of Japan. The father says that what they are in is probably an amusement park that, with the advent of the economic crisis of first '90s, now is in abandon. The struggle of his daughter to find a job is something that probably now has become very present in Japan (as well as in Europe) due to this economic crisis. The movie thus becomes the representation of the end of childhood, when one has to get a job and become independent from its parents, who are accused to have lost country whealth, to have eaten all what is good (and destined to the spirits - that is "the nature") and to have become pigs.
I see those messages, but maybe I'm wrong and just so "European" (that is cervellotic) and I want to see messages everything also where there are not.
However in general this is a strange and maybe disturbing movie but I suggest every adult to see it.