Mark Kermode on… director Hayao Miyazaki, who speaks to the child in all of us

Is Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki “the greatest family entertainer of our time”? That was the conclusion I reached about the writer-director behind such animated wonders as Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) when reviewing Miyazaki’s 2008 charmer Ponyo in this paper. A few years later, while compiling a list of the 25 best films for children – a list that ranged from Chaplin’s 1921 classic The Kid to Nora Twomey’s 2017 beauty The Breadwinner – I wrote that “it’s hard to decide which of Hayao Miyazaki’s matchless animations to include in this list”.

Born in Tokyo in 1941, Miyazaki joined Toei Animation in 1963 and co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, creating a stream of world-beating animations, any one of which would have been a worthy contender. In the end I plumped for My Neighbour Totoro (1988; Netflix), the beloved Studio Ghibli gem about youngsters befriending forest spirits that retains a special place in viewers’ hearts, not least because it perfectly embodies the pan-generational appeal of Miyazaki’s finest work.

Now, My Neighbour Totoro is back in UK and Irish cinemas, offering audiences raised on Studio Ghibli DVDs and Blu-ray box sets, or watching on Netflix since 2020, when most of the back catalogue hit the streamer, the chance to see the film on the big screen for what may well be the first time. The highest-ranking animated feature (joint 72nd place) in Sight and Sound’s 2022 poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, it gave Studio Ghibli its mascot logo – a giant furry creature with rabbit-like ears and a beige belly whose rounded shape resembles that of an inquisitive owl. The image of Totoro standing half in shadow at a bus stop next to a young girl holding an umbrella has become one of the defining images of modern animation, along with the flying elephant from Disney’s Dumbo, or the figures of Woody and Buzz from Pixar’s Toy Story. Today, you can find the unmistakable figure of Totoro adorning the lunchboxes and backpacks of millions of kids around the world – and a fair number of adults too.

While Miyazaki’s feature credits date back to such early works as Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), my own first encounter with the maestro’s films came fairly late, in 2003, when Radio 4 asked me to review Spirited Away in an English-language dub overseen by Toy Story creator John Lasseter. Disney had signed a deal with Studio Ghibli in the 90s to increase the international reach of Miyazaki’s work, but had demurred from releasing the impressively violent Princess Mononoke (1997) under their own banner, instead issuing it through Miramax into mainly arthouse cinemas. Spirited Away, however, promised to have wider appeal. I vividly remember watching it with my five-year-old daughter and being utterly baffled by this heady tale of a young girl whose parents turn into pigs, and who encounters a dizzying array of spirits on her quest into a world of bath houses and beyond. It scrambled my head, and yet my daughter was transfixed – as if the film was speaking more directly to her than me.

This, of course, is the true genius of Miyazaki’s movies – that he works in a universal language of imagery that transcends national boundaries, and speaks directly to the child in all of us. (“I believe that the tool of an animator is the pencil” says the director, whose painstaking attention to hand-drawn detail rings through every frame of his work.) Over the years, I would learn much about the appeal of the director’s films through watching the effect they had on my kids – an enriching experience that subtly recalibrated my understanding of animation and, more broadly, the world in general. Crucially, while Miyazaki’s outlook may be embracingly pantheistic, his features have never shied away from the harsher elements of life, which he believes that children both want and need to address through the miracle of animation.

Intriguingly, Miyazaki’s most “grownup” feature, The Wind Rises (2013), was declared to be his final film – a breathtaking dream of flying inspired by the life of second world war Zero fighter plane designer Jiro Horikoshi, and the writings of Tatsuo Hori (the film is dedicated to both). Despite being a “work of complete fiction”, The Wind Rises seemed to possess autobiographical details for aviation devotee Miyazaki, chronicling a man whose devotion to his dream seems to possess “an element of madness… yearning for something too beautiful can ruin you”.

Related: ‘I’m really serious this time!’: have Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli made their final masterpiece?

For fans of Studio Ghibli – which took its name from a hot desert wind that became the popular nickname of a plane – The Wind Rises felt like a melancholy swansong for Miyazaki’s career. Yet last Christmas, UK cinemagoers were treated to a brand new Miyazaki feature, The Boy and the Heron (2023; not yet on streaming), a typically invigorating adventure with another sumptuous score by Miyazaki’s regular composer Joe Hisaishi. Storyboarding for The Boy and the Heron began while Miyazaki was working on the short film Boro the Caterpillar (2018). A decade after announcing that he was serious about retirement, the 83-year-old Miyazaki seems to be as creative as ever. Hooray!

All titles in bold are on Netflix unless otherwise specified.

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