Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze No Tani No Naushika) (1984)

Runtime: 117 minutes

Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki

Starring: The voices of such people as Sumi Shimamoto, Goro Naya, Yoji Matsuda, and Yoshiko Sakakibara

From: Several different companies

Here is something different from me, a review of an animated film, and an anime from Japan at that. I am trying to correct an embarrassing hole in my world of movie-watching. I explain it all below in my Letterboxd review:

While I have seen a wide variety of films in my lifetime and there's a cloud of knowledge I have when it comes to that form of entertainment, there are various holes, things I have little to no knowledge of, or just haven't had the opportunity to explore for a variety of reasons. Sad to say one of those holes was Hayao Miyazaki. That's just how things have worked out. I haven't watched much anime in general. Of course I've known of him and the outstanding quality of his work for years but when there's no easy legal streaming options for his movies in North America... but really I should just purchase the films on disc as I am quite confident I won't be disappointed with any of them.

I figured I should start this in order and thus I saw this movie, based on a manga Miyazaki did and this was technically before the much heralded Studio Ghibli began. The plot is a post-apocalyptic setting and Earth has gone to hell; it's one thousand years later and much of the Earth is covered in a jungle with toxic air and it's filled with many strange insects. The title character is a young princess of a land away from The Sea of Decay. She is awesome as a kick-ass heroine who has a special bond with nature and yet she is like the rest of the denizens of her village... they prefer to be pacifists. Yet, things change when warring factions enter the picture and they plan on using a special weapon to try and eradicate The Sea.

This is a highly compelling and just very good. The animation is high quality and so is the at times wacky and always cool musical score from Joe Hisaishi, which I did appreciate when it got 80's-riffic at times. But it's the story and characters which make me rate this highly. Nausicaa is a very interesting character who flies about on a glider and is a great leader for her people. Things aren't spelled out so throughout you were able to see her positive attributes. The fact that she isn't saddled with a stereotypical love story is refreshing.

The rest of the characters were interesting also and things are ambiguous, where things aren't always so clear-cut and you don't fully hate the other factions and you understand their actions. The tale is quite captivating and the messages about nature are clear yet thought-provoking.

While I've never seen it I do understand that New World Pictures released a cut version of this movie on the big screen and on VHS, cutting out about a half hour and making it stupider for us Dumb Americans as we possibly couldn't understand ambiguity as children... it's after this that Miyazaki made sure no foreign versions of his movies ever are cut like that again. I have a perverse desire to see how they ruined it but at least this original cut is not hard to find and English speakers can watch it subtitled, as I did.

As I know his movies only get better from here, I know I will love going through the catalog of Hayao Miyazaki.