Japan's most successful feature film will soon be playing at the Hop. "Princess Mononoke" ("Mononoke Hime" in Japanese) is part of the Dartmouth Film Society's Winter term series, "The Last Decade: Movies of the Nineties."
Dubbed into English for its release in the United States last October, the film features the voices of several notable American actors, including Gillian Anderson, Claire Danes, and Billy Bob Thorton.
The movie is the latest full-length animated film from director Hayao Miyazaki, who has received critical acclaim both in Japan and in other countries for films such as "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" and "Laputa: Castle in the Sky."
"Princess Mononoke," like many of Miyazaki's other films, is an action-adventure movie set in a sleek style of Japanese animation known as anime.
The story takes place in fifteenth-century Japan during an age known as the Muromachi Era. This period in Japanese history is marked by a lack of organized government and a large increase in iron production, causing massive deforestation throughout the country.
In his film, Miyazaki gives nature the opportunity to fight off land-clearing humans with powerful "gods" -- referred to as "mononoke" -- that take the shape of various animals and serve to defend Japan's remaining forests.
The film focuses on the journey of Ashitaka, a young man who, at the beginning of the film, engages in battle with one such mononoke. Ashitaka leaves his clan to go in search of a cure for a fatal curse placed on him by the god.
On his way, he encounters the film's title character, Princess Mononoke, also known as San. Raised by wolves, San hates humans and battles on the side of the mononoke in defending the forests. Despite their differing backgrounds, the two eventually become allies in a complicated struggle between man and nature.
Miyazaki makes a point to never depict anyone in the movie as strictly evil. There are no villains in the film, only characters with conflicting needs: the gods, who must defend the forests to protect their homes, and the humans, who must develop land for their own survival.
Unlike many American-produced animated films, "Princess Mononoke", with its ample depictions of graphic, often bloody, violence, is intended for a more mature audience. The film also contains long stretches of silence as well as panoramas of the Japanese countryside, not common in action-adventure movies.
Opening in Japan in 1997, "Princess Mononoke" was the country's highest grossing film until the release of "Titanic" the following year.
"Princess Mononoke", with a running time of 133 minutes, plays in Spaulding Auditorium at the Hopkins Center on Sunday, February 13, at 6:45 and 9:30 pm.
