The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

 

I'm the kind of person who thinks the province of art is to shake people into seeing things differently, if only temporarily, and to me the effect of this film is more intense than any other's. At the end of the film, the main character speaks in defense of a world in which the "birds, bugs, beasts, grass, trees, and flowers" teach people how to feel both grief and joy. The line "birds, bugs, beasts, grass, trees, and flowers" comes from a folk song the characters sing about the progress of time. I think it's more appropriate to call the main character "Takenoko," the name she accepted, rather than "Kaguya," the name forced upon her by aristocrats. 

It starts out with the world as perceived by an infant with loving parents, witnessing constant surprises from a place of safety and comfort. It's also the world perceived by the parents, transfixed by their child's first outward signs of thoughtfulness, and her first steps. The way the film moves with Joe Hisaishi's score in these early scenes, it almost feels like the wind is playing the music when it blows through the trees.

Later, we see the world as perceived by an adolescent Takenoko confronted with the prospect that her family's livelihood depends on her permanently sacrificing her agency and relationships with anyone who really understood her.  She sheds the layers of her aristocratic vestment, leaving a trail of colors behind as she runs into a world of sketchy, monochrome strokes.  Emotion forces the world to be rebuilt from the ground up.  

Part of this film's effect comes from the style of the drawings.  This film draws on Takahata's previous film My Neighbors the Yamadas, adopting the "sketch style" of that film, sometimes stopping short of the edges of the frame.  Another part is how the narrative proceeds—not from one scene to another causally connected one and it isn't a story driven by intrigue.  It's a collection of emotionally significant events.  Rather than anticipating the narrative turns, we are shown another person's perspective on what matters. 

The film draws on the "sketch style," as the team called it, of Takahata's previous film My Neighbors the Yamadas, sometimes stopping short of the edges of the frame. Things rendered in the sketch style are simplified, composed of just the most important elements to capture the energy of the world.

Takahata argues that handscrolls became the "animation of the 12th century" by depicting secular subjects using visual media and techniques with the aim of making the audience sense movement in pictures that pass by in just a little time.

It's like a film of gesture drawings. It does not aim to capture every detail, but the general sense of motion, presence, or intention that catches your eye first. This is the world at the outset of perception.

Because this is all Takenoko cares about. She cares about the tactile energy contours of the world, and never even entertains the idea that any of the rules or norms people try to teach her could be meaningful. She only ever goes along with her etiquette teacher's lessons as a game. A koto to her is a musical instrument, not a cultural signifier, and she loves it for its sound. Takahata is not a postmodernist: there is something real which Takenoko sees, and connection or disconnection with that are the film's driving forces. 

The narrative does not proceed from one scene to another causally connected scene and the story isn't driven by intrigue. It's a collection of emotionally significant events. Rather than anticipating the narrative turns, we are shown another person's perspective on what matters.

Color drains from the film whenever Takenoko becomes depressed, but inevitably returns with the passage of time. When she twirls around, enjoying the beauty of a cherry blossom tree, the tilts of the fictional camera and the waving of her hair and kimono make it seem as if gravity has disappeared. The visual difference between the rustic place where Takenoko starts out and her manor in the capital is a move typical of Takahata: curved, organic lines compose the places where the characters feel most comfortable, while other places are angular and make the characters move in straight lines. Although the focus is Takenoko's fairly simple life, the scale of what the film shows us—vast expanses of forest and forces of nature—is immense.  

I don't have a good word for the feeling created by this mix of devices.  It's the feeling of letting experiences of joy and grief strip away unnecessary concepts of propriety and sense what is important at the very outset of thinking, before inadequate ideas about the world can confuse us.  What matters are the birds, bugs, beasts, grass flowers, and trees; the film does not argue this point, only shows that at that fundamental level, there is nothing to question about it.  At the film's biggest crescendo, Takenoko asks heaven and earth to take her in and make her a part of them.  

The film's ending is easily taken as a metaphor for death.  But what we witness is not simply a death, it's the death of someone who lived, against her will, as an aristocratic accessory.  Not all deaths are as sad as the one depicted in this film.  Nobility is forced onto Takenoko from the beginning of the film, when Miyatsuko interprets the gold and kimono he receives as a command from heaven to make her an aristocrat.  At the end, before everything is taken from her, the spirits of the moon have her place a crown on her head.  Death, as such, is not the enemy in this film.  It's the hatred of life which aristocracy represents.

The world of nobles as depicted in this film is a world of artifice.  Takenoko is taught to ignore the physical realities of her surroundings, to change her appearance, and to subject herself to empty promises.  She is told to shuffle around on her knees rather than walk upright.  Because of the sketch style, the slight frame-to-frame changes of the linework are visible, so that the outlines of objects seem to vibrate whenever they move.  When a character holds still, so does their outline, the stillness is more pronounced.

Among her five suitors, three try to deceive her.  The remaining two demonstrate the reasons for all this: one comes face-to-face with reality and retreats, while the other bumbles his way into an early grave.  But we've seen where Takenoko came from.  We've seen her as an infant, the film's careful observation of her rolling and stumbling as she gets used to the shape of her own body.  We've seen her swing on bamboo stalks and the railings of the manor's walkways before adopting the reserved style of a lady.  Nature is not kind. But in the king's court, there is a gap between her mind and the artificial simplicity, an environment that deprives people of the reflection needed for the unique feelings of clarity and humility this film creates.

To me this is the greatest of all films, to an extent I don't really know how to express without sounding like I'm exaggerating.  Of course, the reason there isn't really a "greatest" film is that films aren't complete all on their own.  Viewers with different backgrounds have different expectations, and films play on those expectations.  But this film doesn't just try to play on the expectations, it tries to strip them away and reach the Beginner's Mind underneath.  Maybe I am less resistant to that than others, but the fact that it could succeed in doing this is a miracle.