Toy Boat Toy Boat Toy Boat Toy Bo-

Ponyo on the Cliff (2009)

Rating ... B+ (77)

Japanese animation maestro/legend/Superman Hayao Miyazaki is, among other things, living proof that target audience is an irrelevant concept. Habitually the purveyor of cinematic children's fantasy, Miyazaki has brought the midas touch to both literary adaptations and creations of his own design, even in spite of "retiring" on two distinct occasions. The chromatic haze of his latest, the G-rated Ponyo on the Cliff, suggests bedtime story in lieu of his usual forte - rousing adventure - but one would do well to ignore the accompanying temptation to dismiss the movie as kids' programming because outgrowing Miyazaki means outgrowing passion, reason, and understanding in film.

Many critics have called Ponyo a relative letdown not simply because the film is not the bombshell that was Spirited Away but rather because they feel some crucial element present in Miyazaki's earlier work is missing, be it maturity, empathy, or visual imagination. Curiously enough, if there was a movie to showcase elements common to Miyazaki's filmography like spirituality, ecology, and human duality, Ponyo might be that film - even moreso than his early Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, which haphazardly attempted to cram most of his ideas into a single package. After testing the water with that movie, however, Miyazaki developed incredible refinement (along with his commendable cohort, Isao Takahata) while maintaining the same ardor and his newly formed Studio Ghibli began churning out cinematic gold with impeccable regularity.

Arguably the 2000's may represent the finest of Ghibli's streak - Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, Howl's Moving Castle, Nasu: Summer in Andalusia (this was written by a longstanding Ghibli animation director, but they couldn't fit it in the assembly line so he took it to Madhouse) and now Ponyo - but ideologically the film hearkens back to the 90's and Miyazaki's criminally overlooked Porco Rosso. While Ponyo on the Cliff concerns itself with the chance encounter and burgeoning relationship between landlubber Sosuke and washed-up goldfish Ponyo, the ultimate goal - as in Porco Rosso - is to study how priorities change with age.

Thank goodness the mandatory environmental hand-wringing is mostly isolated to the film's first act because we can easily forget about it and focus on the film's relationshipsw. Sosuke is an ordinary youngster but Ponyo belongs to a sea kingdom, breathlessly depicted in the film's placid opener as the caretaker (played by Liam Neeson) extracts colorful fluids from multitudes of creatures to form magic elixirs. After coming to the surface, a drop of human blood is sufficient to initiate a transformation in Ponyo - from sea animal to land dweller - and for much of the film she bears the same kind of haphazard duplicity of Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle and Porco in Porco Rosso. When Ponyo uses her powerful magic it causes her to revert back to sea foam, while her human characteristics appear as a result of sustained contact with the land environment, which creates a dynamic between inner and outer forces. For a brief period it appears Ponyo can actually maintain this best-of-both-worlds state (signified by the light she holds above her head that grants her angelic status) but she soon discovers her existence is binary - land or sea, human or magical, but not both. The sea represents nature in every way - capability and personal betterment, internal balance and external harmony - while land resembles civilization and the humans that reside on it - a mess of emotions and relationships, excitement and unpredictability, and Ponyo's climactic decision between the two is a rethinking of similar subject matter. In Porco Rosso Miyazaki skewered have-it-all masculinity; Porco half-asses both his career and his relationships but will not admit to himself that he must choose the one that makes him truly happy. Porco is old, and his romantic relationship has all but collapsed because infatuation has worn away and he isn't willing to invest the necessary effort to reinvigorate. He finally regains his humanity when he understands his indecision is holding both people back. In Ponyo, however, Miyazaki tackles the problem from a different perspective. These are youngsters who are falling for the first time, and when Ponyo chooses to love Sosuke, her decision is a deliberate assumption of maturity and all its responsibilities. This relationship is implicitly illustrated by Miyazaki's gentle characterization. In one tranquil scene, Sosuke presents origami birds to several old women busy watching a storm roll in. The director observes the young and old's fascination with their surroundings as Sosuke's mother and the other nursing home attendants ignore the beauty of the inclimate weather to instead focus on accomodating the needs of the patrons. All three generations are simultaneously present, and like only the finest filmmaking, the meaning here is affecting but subtle. We outgrow nature, but it catches up with us in the end.