Book Inside Miyazaki
Profile.Hayao Miyazaki, the man who laughs at ghosts
Today is a day of celebration.
Hayao Miyazaki
, Japan's most famous, influential and admired wizard king, turns 80 and is still active, preparing what will be his twelfth feature film,
How Do You Live?
, whose premiere is scheduled for 2022 or 2023. After announcing his retirement several times, this former economics student born in Tokyo on January 5, 1941, refuses to put down the pencil as responsible for several milestones in contemporary animation and co-founder of the Studio Ghibli,
a Japanese entertainment empire
that has little to envy the almighty Disney.
Since the mid-80s, when he directed
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
, this gentle-looking teacher but
as stubborn, elusive and grumpy as some of his characters
, has created a universe of his own halfway between European and European influence. Japanese tradition.
Films such as
My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away
and
Princess Mononoke
,
authentic
hand-animated
marvels
of detail, speak for themselves, but to review the milestones of their career, their thematic influences and obsessions, nothing better than
How Children Think and other memories of my life
, a book recently edited by the Confluencias publishing house.
There, notes, conferences and interviews with filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa or cartoonists such as Moebius, texts from different periods and purposes are gathered, among which the true traces that sustain the creativity of this passionate craftsman, winner of two Oscars, one of them honorary, are glimpsed. from the Golden Bear of Berlin and from the Golden Lion to his entire career in Venice.
THE REFERENTS
Osamu Tezuka's manga were a source of courage for the self-conscious child that I was.
I believed that he knew all the secrets of the world.
This is how Miyazaki describes his relationship with the one known as the
God of manga
, in whose comics he took refuge during a particularly difficult childhood, in which he was bedridden for long periods due to a serious illness.
His dream was to emulate his idol until, while he was preparing to enter the Faculty of Economics, animation crossed his path.
«I first fell in love with anime when I saw
The Legend of the White Serpent
.
I still remember the sense of anguish I felt at the incredible beauty of the young female lead and how much I wanted to see the movie over and over again. "
Still from 'My Neighbor Totoro'.
A LIE THAT SEEMS REAL
It is one of the maxims of Miyazaki, who has built his creative universe from an aesthetic that combines hyper-realism in the settings and the design of human characters with the
waste of imagination of fantastic creatures and beings
.
"The animator must create a lie that appears real so that viewers think that a drawn world could exist," he wrote in 1979. It is one of the pillars of his aesthetic of clear lines and pure colors, which has evolved throughout over the years and taking the odd drift, like
Ponyo's on the cliff
.
CHAIN WORK
“I feel like I am the manager of a movie factory.
I am not an executive, rather I am like a foreman,
like the head of a team of artisans,
"he says in one of his writings.
After going through Toei Animation, where he met Isao Takahata, the head of
Heidi
and
Marco
, they both founded Studio Ghibli to accommodate their own creations.
There, wearing his inseparable cartoonist's apron, Miyazaki has established
a method that depends entirely on his creative flow
.
When he decides to launch a film, his sketches are the starting point for the work of a team that has reached 400 people waiting for his instructions and his storyboard.
«It takes a lot of effort to create meaningful works that bring animation to life.
It's like pouring clean water, drop by drop, into a stream of cloudy water, ”he says almost in the form of a haiku.
Still from 'Princess Mononoke'
THE GHIBLI SEAL
Beyond the colors, the strokes and the fantastic background of most of his films, Miyazaki's creative constants remain unchanged over time.
Although the desire to break conventions beats in him ("Easy-to-understand films are boring, logical plots sacrifice creativity," he goes on to say in the highly recommended documentary series 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki), the absolute priority is that your audience, whether adult or child, have a good time.
“I want to portray the reality of children in Japan today - including their wishes - and make movies that inspire them with heartfelt entertainment.
This is something fundamental, something that we must never forget.
If we did, our studio would collapse ",
FORBIDDEN TO DO SEQUELS
This contravenes the most obvious rules of the audiovisual industry, increasingly focused on offering an
infinite loop of nostalgia and marketing
that is fed back with second and third parties, spin-offs and remakes.
«We do not do sequels [...].
People try to continue this line, but we consciously avoid it.
For better or for worse, we are not going the easy way.
This shows, once again, that Miyazaki's principles are more about creativity than business.
HARMONY WITH NATURE
His
militant environmentalism
is evident both in his films and in his texts, in which he calls for the need to change perspective and see the world through the eyes of trees and insects.
Following the premises of the writer
Henry David Thoreau
, when he is preparing a movie, he usually retires to a cabin in the mountains, where he makes food, washes clothes, cuts trees and, above all, walks in complete solitude.
«My days are a repetition of these activities.
I walk the same path every day, the landscape can look completely different depending on the rays of light and the way the wind blows.
I am always discovering new things.
In all their stories, the conflict between human beings and nature, welcoming and fearsome in equal measure, is spoken more or less clearly.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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