Ponyo

When I left Memphis, I hadn't quite caught up with movies, so there were a few stragglers left on my list that had been out for about a month. Knowing that I would see at most only a few while I was travelling, I had to prioritize.

I spent my last few hours in Memphis amusing my host and friend Greg and his sons by making a makeshift list of movies showing across my planned route in Arkansas and Oklahoma, as well as little maps to the various cinemas, in case I didn't have Internet available.

The first opportunity came while I was Little Rock. I'd rolled into downtown in the mid morning and had parked in the newish entertainment district on President Bill Clinton Avenue along the river. After visitng the state capitol, and then driving over to Central High School (which is actually still a working a high school), it was only mid afternoon. I planned that evening to camp in the national forest in the mountains west of the city, and had a few hours to kill. It was obviously the perfect time to get out my notes from Memphis and see what was playing.

The obvious choice was Gake no use no Ponyo (or just Ponyo for short), which I'd missed while I was in Memphis. I wasn't sure I'd have the opportunity to see it back in Colorado, so I was very eager to get it crossed off my list. My notes said it was showing at the Riverdale 10 northwest of downtown, which turned out to the be a busy road in the nicer section of town.

The Riverdale Multiplex was inconspicuous, and I drove past the strip mall in which it was located several times before I finally saw it, beside an Office Max obscured by some trees.

It was mid-level multiplex, staffed by bored teenagers, with a huge entertainment arcade off the left as you walked in. I bought a ticket to Ponyo and found myself the only person in the auditorium. The projectionist screwed up the trialers, so that they didn't even display correctly, and I thought I was going to have to go out and complain, but it got fixed by the time the movie started.

Ponyo has attracted lots of raves, and within the first couple minutes, I could definitely see what the fuss was all about. It was lush and beautiful, the most visually stimulating animation I've seen in a long time. It was definitely worth the six bucks I'd paid for.

I liked the story too, as it began to unfold---the little boy finds the magic fish who will turn into a little girl. The fantasy of the story was a good match for the lush richness of the animation. I didn't mind that the voices (in English) were cast by people I recognized. Sometimes that bugs me, but in this cast, it was well cast.

But then something happened, that was not at all the fault of the film, or the theater, but of me. It seems that the night before, while I was camping in southeast Arkansas at Cane Creek State Park, it was a very humid hot night, and I had not slept well at all. It had already been a full day, and about twenty minutes into the movie, I began to feel very, very drowsy, as I often do in the late afternoon if I have not slept well.

Perhaps it was the dreamlike nature of the movie that helped it out, but in my extreme drowsinees, alone in the auditorium, I told myself, "I'll just put my head down and rest for a minutes."

As awkward as it was, I found it very comfortable to twist my body sideways and put my head down on the armrest of the seat, which was not at all meant for sleeping. I told myself that I'd listen to the movie dialogue with my eyes shut.

Off to dreamland I went.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in a completely different scene of the movie. I figured that maybe ten minutes at most had gone by, perhaps less. These kind of power naps are very refreshing, even if short.

The upshot was that I felt completely offkilter with the story. I had no idea of what had been "set up" during my brief nap, so I knew I wouldn't be able to evaluate the story in the terms that I usually do for movie narrative.

This seemed verified when in the following scenes, I quickly picked up the thread of the narrative, but many things were happening for which I had obviously missed the "set up."

But then another half hour went by, and it suddenly hit me that the movie was going deeper and deeper into a level of surrealism where nothing in the movie was being "set up" in traditional narrative terms. Improbable and fantastical things were simply happening in the movie, coming out of nowhere, on an increasing level of fantasy. We as the viewers were simply going along.

So the nap had fooled me, but somehow it suspended my critical faculties in a way that perhaps let me go along with the surrealism of the story.

I liked this movie. By the end of it, I realized that this type of fantasy narrative would be impossible in an American movie. Let me explain all this with a concrete example.

At one point in the later part of the story, we learn that the Moon has come out of its orbit, and it coming dangerously close to Earth, causing all sorts of problems (like I said, this is fantasy).

Now if this had been an American movie, we have had to haved learned about this possibility and threat much earlier in the movie. A character would have had to have informed us, "You know, if this keeps going, the Moon is going to come close to the Earth and cause all sorts of problems."

In this way, dramatic tension would be created. We could anticipate the Moon coming closer to Earth, and imagine all the things that would happen, even before it happened, and the tension would be in full swing by the time the Moon actually did start coming closer to Earth.

But this was not an American movie. We get no advance warning about this problem with the Moon. It just happens. We experience in "real time" as part of the fantasy. There is no dramatic tension, but surrealistic unfolding, like a dream sequence---a very different type of narrative, but one I liked.

The whole experience of the movie, the fantasy dream of the narrative, and the real dream of my nap, was quite refreshing. It was a nice drive up into the mountains as the sun set. Miyazaki is a genius.