—by Charles McCarter

PRINCESS MONONOKE is now in limited release in the United States. Opening to good reviews by some very influential people (Roger Ebert in particular), its future depends on attendance in the theaters in which it is currently playing.
The LA Premiere was held at the Mann Festival Theater in Westwood, on the west side of Los Angeles, on 20 October 1999. In attendance were several of the film's stars, including Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup, and Billy Bob Thornton. Also in attendance was screenplay writer Neil Gaiman. They turned out to show their support for the film and to see the culmination of two year's hard work.
Included here are some photos of the premiere, as well as some comments from the cast and screenplay writer Neil Gaiman. But first, a few words from the director of the film himself.

A Statement by Miyazaki Hayao

This film has few of the samurai, feudal lords and peasants that usually appear in Japanese period dramas. And the ones who do appear are in the smallest of small roles. The main heroes of this film are the rampaging forest gods of the mountains and the people who rarely show their faces on the stage of history. Among them are the members of the Tatara clan of ironworkers, the artisans, laborers, smiths, ore diggers, charcoal makers and drivers with their horses and oxen. They carry arms and have what might be called their own workers associations and craftsman guilds.
The forest gods who oppose the humans take the shape of wolves, boars and bears. The Great Forest Spirit, around which the story pivots, is an imaginary creature with a human face, the body of an animal, and wooden horns. The boy protagonist is a descendant of the Emishi tribe, who were defeated by the Yamato rules of Japan and disappeared in ancient times. The girl resembles a type of clay figure found in the Jomon period, the pre-agricultural era in Japan, which lasted until about 80 AD.
The principle settings of the story are the deep forests of the gods, which humans are not allowed to penetrate, and the ironworks the Tatara clan, which resembles a fortress. The castles, towns and rice-growing villages that are the usual settings of period dramas are nothing more than distant backdrops. Instead, we have tried to recreate the atmosphere of Japan in a time of thick forests, few people and no dams, when nature still existed in an untouched state, with distant mountains and lonely valleys, pure, rushing streams, narrow roads unpaved with stones, and a profusion of birds, animals and insects.
We used these settings to escape the conventions, preconceptions and prejudices of the ordinary period drama and depict our characters more freely. Recent studies in history, anthropology and archaeology tell us that Japan has a far richer and more diverse history than is commonly portrayed. The poverty of imagination in our period dramas is largely due to the influence of cliched movie plots.
The Japan of the Muromachi era (1392-1573), when this story takes place, was a world in which chaos and change were the norm. Continuing from the Nambokucho era (1336-1392), when two imperial courts were warring for supremacy, it was a time of daring action, blatant banditry, new art forms, and rebellion against the established order. It was a period that gave rise to the Japan of today. It was different from both the Sengoku era (1482-1558) when professional armies conducted organized wars, and the Kamakura era (1185-1382) when the strong-willed samurai of the period fought each other for domination.
It was a more fluid period, when there were no distinctions between peasants and samurai, when women were bolder and freer, as we can see in the shokuninzukushie—pictures that depicted women of the time working at all the various crafts. In that era, the borders of life and death were more clear-cut. People lived, loved, hated, worked and died without the ambiguity we find everywhere today.
Here lies, I believe, the meaning of making such a film as we enter the chaotic times of the 21st century. We are not trying to solve global problems with this film. There can be no happy ending to the war between the rampaging forest gods and humanity. But even in the midst of hatred and slaughter, there is still much to live for. Wonderful encounters and beautiful things still exist.
We depict hatred in this film, but only to show there are more important things. We depict a curse, only to show the joy of deliverance. Most important of all, we show how a boy and a girl come to understand each other and how the girl opens her heart to the boy. At the end, the girl says to the boy, "I love you Ashitaka, but I cannot forgive human beings." The boy smiles and says, "That's all right. Let's live together in peace."
This scene exemplifies the kind of movie we have tried to make.

The Cast

Billy Crudup (Ashitaka) talks to the TV press. Gillian Anderson (the wolf goddess Moro) waits her turn to talk to the press.

A stellar cast provides the English voices for PRINCESS MONONOKE. And if they weren't already, the cast members had become some of Miyazaki's biggest fans by the end of the recording sessions. Here's what the cast had to say about PRINCESS MONONOKE and bringing it to the American public.
Each of the actors was touched by the film in a different way, but many shared similar views of Miyazaki's work. Billy Crudup, who plays Ashitaka, said "The movie was such an entirely different experience; it had a whole new sensibility I had never seen in animation. It also had something profound to say: that there has to be a give and take between man and nature. One of the things that really impressed me is that Miyazaki shows life in all its multi-faceted complexity, without the traditional perfect heroes and wicked villains. Even Lady Eboshi, who Ashitaka respects, is not so much evil as short-sighted."
Minne Driver, providing the voice for Lady Eboshi, saw the same complexity of life reflected in the film. "It's one of the most remarkable things about the film: Miyazaki gives a complete argument for both sides of the battle between technological achievement and our spiritual roots in the forest. He shows that good and evil, violence and peace exist in us all. It's all about how you harmonize it all."
Gillian Anderson, a longtime Miyazaki fan, played the wolf goddess Moro. "There is action and violence and yet there is something else, too, an almost indescribable feeling that this is very emotional and deep. It's ultimately about respect for the world and the natural order of things…It's such a spiritual film. The look is so stunning and the characters are so rich and layered. I was very excited to try to capture the wisdom and maternal loyalty of a 400-year-old wolf watching over the forest."
Perhaps it is Claire Danes, the voice of the Princess herself, who summarizes the feelings of the cast the best. "The film touches on so many fundamental things that touch all of our lives from nature and spirituality to love, friendship and loyalty to bravery and belief. It's all in there and it's all magnificently balanced, not to mention breathtakingly beautiful."

The Screenwriter

Screenplay writer Neil Gaiman talks about working on the film. Billy Bob Thornton (Jigo) talks to the press.

The unenviable and difficult job of rewriting the screenplay for American audiences fell to another big fan of the film, and Miyazaki in particular, Neil Gaiman. Perhaps best known as the author of the popular SANDMAN comics, Gaiman fell in love with the film when he first saw it, which is what prompted him to take the job..
"I got a phone call early last year from Harvey Weinstein of Miramax. Harvey said that he had bought MONONOKE and would be getting the top actors he could find, people like Minnie Driver and Claire Danes to star in it, and that he had decided he wanted the very best screenwriter he knew to write it. So he phoned Quentin Tarantino, and Quentin said he didn't want to do it and suggested me. I went to see a screening of the film and fell in love with it."
And he didn't just translate the film, he researched it as well, reading everything he could on Japanese myth and folklore as background. After that, "a lot of consultation with Steve Alpert from Studio Ghibli, who had done the literal translation, making sure that I had the nuances, or the spirit of what was being said down to his satisfaction."
"Miyazaki created funny, cool characters who seem at once timeless and contemporary. Each character has his or her own way of talking that reveals who they are. Ashitaka is very formal, using absolutely no slang...Jigo the monk, on the other hand, is very crude and philosophically pragmatic. Toki is very boisterous and rebellious, while Lady Eboshi exudes an aristocratic regality."
When asked which character was most difficult to write for, Gaiman responded, "Well, the easiest was Moro, the wolf goddess, because she doesn't move her lips when she talks. I don't think there was a specific character who was hard to write. There were specific situations that would be hard—for example, jokes, moments where people laugh, but the literal Japanese translation wouldn't be funny in English. That was pretty hard."
Gaiman is proud of the way the film has turned out. "I think that PRINCESS MONONOKE sets a new standard in dubs. Some people who have seen it didn't know it was a dub. Others assumed we must have gone in and reanimated the characters' mouths to make it work. We didn't. We just did a good job.
"Do I think America is ready for PRINCESS MONONOKE? I honestly don't know. It's a 2 hour and 13 minute epic tale set in a 14th century forest in Japan, and it's animated—a medium perceived in the U.S. as only suitable for children. If America proves not to have been ready it will have more to do with the simple fact that that this film is animated than with the fact that it's dubbed."
Fan support and word of mouth will be essential to the success of this film, believes Gaiman. "Go and see it: tell your friends. Spread the word. If it goes big and it goes national it will have more to do (in my opinion) with word of mouth and buzz and people wanting to see it and packing out the cinemas in which it's showing than it will to do with Miramax's PR campaign."