Porco Rosso

This comes about after watching a film titled Porco Rosso, a studio Ghibli film, tonight. For those of you who have not seen it, let me give you a short rundown (via Fandango):

Master animator Hayao Miyazaki directs this tale about a former World War I flying ace who is also a pig. Slouching toward middle age, Porco Rosso makes his living by flying about in his bright red plane and fighting sky bandits who prey on cruise ships sailing the Adriatic. When he's not engaging in dogfights, this pilot lives on a deserted island retreat. Porco Rosso was once a young man, but after his entire squadron was wiped out, he was mysteriously transformed into a pig. Rosso is defeated in a dogfight against a dashing American rival, who has been hired by the dastardly bandits. With his plane damaged, he finds a repair hangar near Milan run by an aging mechanic named Piccolo, and his spunky granddaughter Fio. Initially skeptical of her mechanical prowess, Rosso is amazed when she and a legion of local women fix his plane. Soon, Porco Rosso is ready to battle his rival.

I understand how ridiculous a movie this sounds. In fact, when I first saw it (I was watching a Miyazaki marathon on TCM) and I saw the synopsis for this on the TV guide I was extremely weirded out. I ended up watching it anyhow for lack of anything better to do. I was actually very moved by the film. So, I bought it at my earliest convenience. The first time I watched it with another person was with my mom who, much like some participants tonight, (to quote her own words) “didn’t get it at all.” I was very disappointed because, to me, this movie was pretty special. I tried explaining to her what I saw, but she just “didn’t get it at all.” And that made me a little sad, I’ll admit. Then I watched it with another friend who thought that it “was really, really weird…”

I thought that maybe I was the only one who saw that this film was a master piece. I mean, sure, the dude’s a pig (well, his head ) - that’s really weird, right? I totally get that. But when I saw it, I just knew that what he was didn’t matter. Rather, it was why he was the pig, what led him to become Porco that was the key to the story. And I just had trouble understanding why other people don’t see the brilliance of this movie. And then I found out I wasn’t the only person who thought that this was a piece of animated genius.

Well, this excerpt is from a blogger who reviews all of Ghibli’s latest and greatest. This summed up a lot of my feeling:

“Whenever I want to show a Hayao Miyazaki movie to someone who has never heard of Studio Ghibli, I'll almost always go for Porco Rosso. Of all their great movies, it's this one that best embodies all the great traits and characterists of the great film studio. It has adventure, imagination, and great humor; but it's also quiet and often reflective, a nostalgic romanticism.”

It is this last part that I find people somehow manage to overlook - the quiet moments of the film. The movie is chalk-full of laughs (or moments that try and be so; too many pig jokes) and irony and hyperboles, but it really lends itself to the moments where we gradually begin to see the soul of Porco Rosso. Porco’s disillusion with his very race, his conflicts, his self-loathing. And we also see two perspectives through Fio and Gina. Fio is a seventeen-year-old American plane engineer who has this very ambiguous connection to Porco that, for the most part, seems to be about her youth and sincerity. In moments, it seems like she might have feelings for him, but that is not her function in Porco Rosso. Marco (Porco’s human name) says towards the end that, because of her, he regrets ever letting the curse happen in the first place. In her is Porco’s hope that the world can sometimes be good. Gina (Porco‘s childhood friend and primary love interest), in contrast, has lived more than Fio and witnessed the dark undertones of humanity as Porco has. She is by no means under the belief that life is useless (that’s Marco’s extreme), but she is deeply rooted in reality. She says herself that she is “numb”.

One of the smartest moves Miyazaki made here, a movie inspired by himself, is that we do not know everything at once. It’s like getting to know somebody. First there is only what you see, but the more time you invest in this person, the more you learn about them and what makes them: who they are, what they believe, their motives, their strengths and weaknesses. At first all we see is this crude, disgusting pig-man who is a chain-smoker/womanizer/self-serving chauvinist. If you just look at him and expect this pig at every turn, then that it what you will have. A middle-aged pig in all sense of the word. But if you invest your time in him and the film and really watch him and his interactions closely, you’ll begin to see why he is that way. Sure, he still his a chain-smoking, womanizing, self-serving pig, but knowing why opens up so many doors.

Anyone who has seen a Hayao movie before (especially Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle or Nausicaa) will know that he is very anti-war. He has also stated that Porco is actually based off of him. It’s rare that, through a character, we are given an open window into the creator himself. Porco, having been through WWI and apparently considered a great hero, lost most of his friends in a single dogfight. Porco says he “only cared for myself” and did not protect the others like he should have. He was the sole survivor. After this there is a sequence involving a type of graveyard for seaplane pilots that Porco witnesses, but I can’t really delve too deeply into that. I can’t really even understand that too well myself, but it seems that it is important to his decision in becoming a pig. After this point, Fio, with certainty, tells Porco it is because it was not his time yet. But Porco felt he should have died for them or at the very least with them.

He awoke as a pig-man thing. One of the most fundamental parts in Porco Rosso is Marco’s allowance of the curse. A few times it is off-handedly mentioned that he is “cursed” with being a pig, but other times he declares he “chose” to be a pig. I think it was probably both. The so-called curse turned him into a pig because he was so disgusted with himself and, in turn, humanity that he wanted it to happen and, subconsciously, did not stop it from being so. He would rather be anything else than be a human. And this is what my mother, my friend and most other people I watch it with just don’t seem to soak up. At least, not in the way I do. And I must say that my favorite quality of the film is the way that Miyazaki handles Porco’s ending. Tonight I heard it as “unsatisfying,” but for me it is anything but.

We witness this cynical pig gradually begin to notice that maybe he isn’t the pig he always thought he was and, on some levels, forgive himself as he learns from a young and ambitious girl. Here she is with a clean slate and manages to see worth in him and help him see it in himself as well.

And here’s the real kicker: I think tonight I understood why not everyone finds this as amazingly amazing as I do.

We’re all different. Our struggles are different, our strengths are different, our eyes and minds and hearts and souls are different. I came to realize how much I feel like Porco sometimes, how often I am confused and depend on the sincerity and love of other’s to realize that somewhere deep down Marco is still in there. Maybe it is because of all these things that this movie resonates with me so deeply. That I can see that being a pig doesn’t matter, only why. That the world can be wonderful even when it’s not perfect. That sometimes it’s not worth it, but when it is - well, there’s nothing quite as amazing as knowing what it’s like to breathe and live. And that even when we don’t like ourselves so much, there are others who see what we can’t. There’s compassion, and understanding.

So maybe it’s all of these things to me that make it a grand movie. Or maybe it’s something else.

But, really, it’s probably that first thing (:

Toodle Pip.

Sure thing, Prince Salami

Today, I got to thinking… if I was ever proposed to, I might want it to be like this:

“COURTNEY, YOU CRAZY FOOL! MARRY ME!”

… a more lengthy blog tomorrow. Good night.

Toodle Pip.

Reach

I was recently told something to the affect of: “Why try and hold onto the magic? No matter what you do, it will always disappear.” Normally I would have taken into account (and I do stress this) that I was told this by someone in a rotten mood, and people (me at least) love spreading their dark clouds around. There is nothing more sickening than a happy person when you’re in bad spirits. And I wouldn’t have thought further on what this person had said… had, for one, it not been about magic (and I’m not using magic in terms of sorcery here, but more as an expression of wonder and happiness) and, two, about Beauty and the Beast… and it’s magic. Now, at first I was readied to defend the ‘magic’ of Beauty and the Beast. Every time I watch it (which is only on occasions, since I don’t like watching it too often), I don’t like it any less. I know what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t ever take the magic away. And what I should have said rather than “Beauty and the Beast is magical!” was what I really, really believe – magic is what you make it.

If you don’t want it to be there, how can it exist? It’s like happiness. It can be found almost anywhere, but only if you want to be happy and only if you let yourself be.

This is a very apt quote I found that summarizes my feelings on this subject: “That’s the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.” ~ Charles de Lint.

Probably the reason what said person told me stayed with me so much is because, if you haven’t noticed, it is a great deal of who I am. While I grasp the shallowness of fables and stories, I take the best of them with me because I choose to. I like believing that a ‘duckling’ can become a swan and all that… I realize this is becoming very fluffy, if not cheesy, but I also realized that I am a very fluffy and cheesy person. I know that, for the most part, life is not a pony ride with Mary Poppins, but I also know that life can be a lot more wonderful if you find magic in the unexpected places. Some people are glass half-empty, half-full people, but I am probably a glass filled with possibility type person myself. If you see the glass full of anything, why should it matter how much or how little of it there is in the glass? It’s there, and that’s what counts for me.

Hans Christian Andersen said this: “Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.” I believe this – surprise, surprise. You’ve got to look for the magic to know where it is, and it can be just about anywhere if you give it a chance. God has given me a love for fanciful things, I’ll grant you, but you have no idea how much it has been a blessing in my life. I find His love in the strangest places, but that’s the way of things, isn’t it? He reaches in a unique, personal and unforgettable way. So, perhaps for some people in awful moods magic is always fleeting, but I must heartily disagree. It takes effort sometimes to find what you’re looking for, but it’s not impossible. And once you find it, there’s nothing quite like it.

“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder.” ~ Charles Morgan

Toodle Pip.

Say it loud, say it

Well, I was going to blog about my cattawampus weekend in Westwood Narnia, but Becca beat me to it. So, while she covered the surface of each day, I'm going to blog about one particular event she failed to mention:

Picture it, one in the morning. Starting with a body splam.

Courtney: "Say 'uncle', Becca! Say 'uncle'!"
Becca: "Uncle! Uncle!"
Courtney: "NOW SAY IT IN SPANISH! SAY IT IN SPANISH!"
Becca: "No- TIO! TIO! TIO!"
Anneke: "..."
Becca: "TIOOOO!"
Courtney: "NOW SAY IT IN ENGLISH AGAIN!"
Becca: "UNCLE!"
Courtney: "Ok then."

Revenge is sweet.

And coming back to school is not... really.