His book The Power of Film is well worth reading.

First of all, the film is stunningly beautiful visually.  The fluidity of the ocean is marvelously and imaginatively depicted and the solid gravity of earth keeps the human characters anchored to the ground in a very real way.  It is a delight to behold.

The film tells the story is about a curious “daughter of the sea” (Ponyo) who is rescued by a very young boy.  She is trapped in a glass jar, a piece of ocean trash washed up on shore.  In helping her out of her predicament, the boy (Sosuke) cuts his finger.  She licks the wound and it heals instantly.  Ponyo, having ingested human blood, begins the transformation to becoming human.  The two children desperately want to stay together.  Ponyo risks all to be with her friend Sosuke.  Sosuke must accept “all the Ponyos” in all her incarnation as a test of true love.

Here is what Manohla Dargis, writing in the New York Times has to say:  “To watch the image of a young girl burbling with laughter as she runs atop cresting waves in “Ponyo” is to be reminded of how infrequently the movies seem to express joy now, how rarely they sweep us up in ecstatic reverie. It’s a giddy, touchingly resonant image of freedom — the animated girl is as liberated from shoes as from the laws of nature — one that the director Hayao Miyazaki lingers on only as long as it takes your eyes and mind to hold it close, love it deeply and immediately regret its impermanence.”

That is exactly what I’ve been missing in more recent live action releases.  I see so very little joy, hope or the exuberance of life and love on the screen.  And yes this is a fairytale. But there are gentle reminders that things are not at all well in the world.

The ocean is polluted and Ponyo’s father decries how careless humans are with the natural treasures in our world. The youthful exuberance of the children is contrasted with the routine and sedentary existence of the seniors in the center where Ponyo’s mother work (and where Sosuke often visits).  The impermanence of life is reflected in those seniors whose lives are slipping away.

This film really hit home for me.  Sosuke must promise to love Ponyo in whatever form she appears to him.  During our lives we all go through many iterations of ourselves.  Some variations are more pleasant than others. My husband and I have been together since I was nineteen.  In the decades we grown up together we’ve gone through many changes, and very different forms and iterations of ourselves– we’ve undergone rough times and smooth times, seen much sorrow and great joy.

But constancy, fidelity and true love must allow for each change, no matter how difficult.  Right now my father-in-law is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s.  In many ways he is longer recognizable as the man he once was, and yet we love him just the same. We love him in whatever form he appears to us.

That constant love is what Sosuke must promise to Ponyo’s mother, the Goddess of Mercy.  It is his love that restores the balance of nature in the film.  No matter how upsetting or difficult the circumstances it is love that restores the balance and harmony to our own lives.  When we love we see life through the lens of compassion.  When we have compassion it is also possible to find joy no matter how difficult the situation.

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

]]> https://etbscreenwriting.com/ponyo-day-ten-40movies40days/feed/ 0 https://etbscreenwriting.com/defiance-day-eight-40movies40days/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=defiance-day-eight-40movies40days https://etbscreenwriting.com/defiance-day-eight-40movies40days/#respond Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:48:16 +0000 http://etbscreenwriting.com//?p=4230 I chose this film, again thanks to NetFlix Instant Streaming.  When Defiance came out I didn’t see it.  It got mixed to positive reviews and did only middling box office.  The film got one Academy  Award Nomination for Best Score.  I am big Daniel Craig fan and decided to give a chance.

Defiance tells the remarkable story of Jewish Partisan Fighters who survived World War II by living on the run in a vast forest in Poland/Belarus.  Eventually, the forest community numbered 1,200 men, women and children.  The partisans survived for several years only losing 50 people to sickness, old age or combat.

One brother, Tuvia, played by Daniel Craig, is a Power of Conscience character.  He establishes and enforces the moral order and the rule of law in the ragtag community.  Another brother, Zus, played by Liev Schreiber, is a Power of Will character.  He is a warrior who believes only in force, strength and might makes right.

The two brothers clash over authority and strategy.  Zus joins the Russian Army Fighters in the forest.  The two come together when the Russian Army retreats in the face of a planed air and ground attack by the Germans.  Zus joins Tuvia and together they defeat the advancing enemy.

Defiance suffers for having no specific individual antagonist– only the general looming threat of the Germans.  Schindler’s List is a much more effective and powerful film for setting up the personal dynamic between Oskar Schindler and Amon Goeth.  For most of the movie Tuvia’s only personal antagonist, his brother, is on the other side of the forest.  Defiance has too little focused personal conflict and is very episodic.  It doesn’t engage emotionally.  I felt interestd but curiously detached in viewing the film.

I guess the thing that struck me most strongly in Defiance was the terrible privation the forest dwellers endured.  Things we take for granted like hot water, sufficient food, clean drinking water and a warm dry place to sleep are impossible and unobtainable luxuries.  The terrible sorrow in the loss of loved ones and the physical suffering in the film reminded me of what many people in Japan (and Haiti) must be enduring right now.  We should all be grateful for the small luxuries we too often take for granted.

Here’s the best place to make a contribution to Japanese Earthquake Relief Efforts:  https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052&idb=0

These text message based formats have become a best-selling genre in Japan. The authors publish under one-word pen names and usually remain anonymous. The stories are about love and loss, tragedy and recovery, betrayal and resolution.

Below is an excerpt from a Time Magazine article about the phenomena of moble-novel writing.

Today, there are a million titles in Maho i-Rando’s online library — one for every six members, who are mostly women in their teens and 20s. That represents a lot of phone time. “Young Japanese access the Internet more from their cell phones than their PCs,” says Misa Matsuda, a professor of literature and sociology at Tokyo’s Chuo University. “Cell phones occupy pockets of spare time in people’s daily lives — especially for exchanging nonurgent e-mails, playing games, visiting fortune-telling sites. Keitai shosetsu fit in that tradition.”

It was a male writer known as Yoshi who had the idea of bringing out the first keitai shosetsu in book form. In doing so, became one of the first to break away from the pack. His self-published Deep Love (2002) was a collection of racy tales about a teenage prostitute in Tokyo that had previously appeared online. As a book, it sold 2.5 million copies and became a manga, a TV series and a film. It was also greeted as a one-off — the product of a quick-thinking writer-entrepreneur. But Maho i-Rando members soon began pleading with the site’s owners to see their favorite stories in hard copy, too, and its first books debuted in 2005. “Mobile novels are created and consumed by a generation of young people in Japan that demands to be heard,” says John Possman, former head of Tokyo entertainment consultancy Dragonfly Revolution. “It is truly pop culture.”

It has also become big business. In major book wholesaler Tohan’s 2007 best-seller list, five out of the top 10 books in the fiction category are keitai shosetsu, including the top three. The new genre is provoking fierce indignation among Japan’s literati, many of whom think that keitai shosetsu should stay on cell-phone screens. But it is undeniably shaking up a publishing industry whose sales have been declining for a decade. A professional author of fiction is lucky to sell more than a few thousand copies of a title. A popular cell-phone novelist sells several hundred thousand, and recruitment for new talent is intense. “Find the novelist in you!” online ads cry. “Make your debut!”

They are written with the participation of the audience. A girl will start posting her “diary” on a site called “Magic Land.” Readers begin to comment, add their own experiences and advice and urge the writer on. U.S. sites devoted to mobile novels are in beta launch here.