Director/writer: Hayao Miyazaki
Photography: Mark Henley (English version), Hisao Shirai
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Editor: Takeshi Seyama
Cast/voices (English version): Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daly, Pat Carroll, Lea Salonga, Frank Walker, Paul Butcher
My Neighbor Totoro, a Studio Ghibli production written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke), has been steadily growing in critical regard over the nearly 40 years since its release. Entering the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? in the lower echelons of the top 500, My Neighbor Totoro has risen steadily since then to its present position at #161. It is well ahead of another Ghibli movie released the same year, Grave of the Fireflies, which is presently at #462. That’s nearly that movie’s high point on the list, when it leapt up from #750. I think Grave of the Fireflies is the better picture overall—I tend to give extra points to movies that make me cry as hard as it does—but it's easy enough to see why Totoro is the more beloved picture.
I’m not even sure Grave of the Fireflies is entirely suitable for kids in the first place, whereas Totoro most assuredly is. It’s a gentle fantasy that focuses on two sisters, Satsuki age 10 and Mei age 4, and it’s emotionally grounded the way old ‘60s US sitcoms used to do it—the mother is mostly offstage, either dead or, as in this case, in the hospital with an unexplained, long-term, and possibly life-threatening condition. She’s supposed to be home soon, but this family has heard that before. The father is an archeology professor who moves the family to the country to be closer to the hospital. He’s a great Dad, always in a good mood and trying to help his kids any way he can, but his job is demanding even without the single-parent pressures. Fortunately, the neighbors in their new digs are supportive, helpful—and unusual.
On the one side, their neighbor is a family of rice farmers headed up by kindly old Granny, who looks after Satsuki and Mei during the day. It’s a love fest between these three. On the other side—well, it’s a big camphor tree. Really big. Like I wonder if this was the inspiration for the very big tree in Avatar. Under shelter of this towering, mountainous tree, inside the spaces between the branches and leaves, live Totoro and his or her or its various lookalike sidekicks (Totoro pronouns they/them). Mei is the first to discover them. They are pear-shaped, bipedal creatures. Totoro is covered with thick fur, maybe 10 feet tall, and looking like they should weigh half a ton or more, judging by size. They’ve got a big cheshire cat grin. That is, if they really exist, even in the world of this picture. They have a way of defying gravity and other realities, floating, disappearing, appearing only to select humans at select times.
Miyazaki scrupulously avoids all questions of any reality here. It’s fairy tale fantasy, simple and pure. Totoro seems to be capable of flying or they can jump very high, or something. They feel heavy like a great beast, like a grizzly bear or rhinoceros. Yet they seem to float sometimes. They also travel by way of a large cat with about 10 legs that functions like a bus. They are often seen with a smaller blue version of themselves and an even smaller semitransparent version. Are they cubs? Is it a family? Hard to say. Totoro, for their part, is kindly and fuzzy like a teddy bear, though they can let loose with ferocious teethy roars and they snore heavily when they sleep.
Totoro is the main show here, of course, but the picture is full of ingenious animation and effects, intermixing photography as well. The house in the country, which the girls half hope is a haunted house, is full of (not to say infested with) so-called soot gremlins or soot sprites. They are small blobs of flat matte black with about eight tiny legs and quick scurrying herd-like motions. They act a lot like cockroaches so they’re kind of disgusting and a little worrisome, but in other ways they are just cute and unthreatening. If you catch one, it makes your hands dirty as with coal dust. A version of them also appears in Spirited Away.
There is a certain intangible sense of tranquility and calm to this picture, which makes looking at it a relaxing experience. It reminded me in many ways of YA literature—things may get intense but never too intense, and the tension is often quickly burst with moments of humor and/or the girls laughing with happy faces. Totoro is an utter mystery and I like that best of all here. It’s unexplained almost perfectly. They just appear and provide a kind of tender parenting hand when Satsuki and Mei need one very badly, with their mother in the hospital and her fate unknown. Perhaps Totoro is just their imaginations giving them comfort in their anxieties—but others living nearby are aware of Totoro too, and how difficult they are to see.
I watched the English-language version of My Nighbor Totoro and recognized the names more than the voices of Dakota and Elle Fanning. The soundtrack is unique to the English-language version for some reason. It hit me as somewhat dated and recognizably ‘80s. Maybe it was the nostalgia, but it still worked on me somehow. The narrative, not as much. It seemed too simple in a way, although when you factor in the elements of the fantasy I can see a lot of complexity there, even if it did not really reach me. Wikipedia lists them as “animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism and the joys of rural living.” Fair enough and it’s also very relaxing to watch!
Miyazaki scrupulously avoids all questions of any reality here. It’s fairy tale fantasy, simple and pure. Totoro seems to be capable of flying or they can jump very high, or something. They feel heavy like a great beast, like a grizzly bear or rhinoceros. Yet they seem to float sometimes. They also travel by way of a large cat with about 10 legs that functions like a bus. They are often seen with a smaller blue version of themselves and an even smaller semitransparent version. Are they cubs? Is it a family? Hard to say. Totoro, for their part, is kindly and fuzzy like a teddy bear, though they can let loose with ferocious teethy roars and they snore heavily when they sleep.
Totoro is the main show here, of course, but the picture is full of ingenious animation and effects, intermixing photography as well. The house in the country, which the girls half hope is a haunted house, is full of (not to say infested with) so-called soot gremlins or soot sprites. They are small blobs of flat matte black with about eight tiny legs and quick scurrying herd-like motions. They act a lot like cockroaches so they’re kind of disgusting and a little worrisome, but in other ways they are just cute and unthreatening. If you catch one, it makes your hands dirty as with coal dust. A version of them also appears in Spirited Away.
There is a certain intangible sense of tranquility and calm to this picture, which makes looking at it a relaxing experience. It reminded me in many ways of YA literature—things may get intense but never too intense, and the tension is often quickly burst with moments of humor and/or the girls laughing with happy faces. Totoro is an utter mystery and I like that best of all here. It’s unexplained almost perfectly. They just appear and provide a kind of tender parenting hand when Satsuki and Mei need one very badly, with their mother in the hospital and her fate unknown. Perhaps Totoro is just their imaginations giving them comfort in their anxieties—but others living nearby are aware of Totoro too, and how difficult they are to see.
I watched the English-language version of My Nighbor Totoro and recognized the names more than the voices of Dakota and Elle Fanning. The soundtrack is unique to the English-language version for some reason. It hit me as somewhat dated and recognizably ‘80s. Maybe it was the nostalgia, but it still worked on me somehow. The narrative, not as much. It seemed too simple in a way, although when you factor in the elements of the fantasy I can see a lot of complexity there, even if it did not really reach me. Wikipedia lists them as “animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism and the joys of rural living.” Fair enough and it’s also very relaxing to watch!
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