My Miyazaki Ranking: Part Two – Princesses & Pigs

by Cláudio Alves

If you've ever seen the Never-Ending Man documentary, you'll be familiar with Hayao Miyazaki's complex relationship with new technologies, in animation and otherwise. The film's most famous quote relates to AI, which the Ghibli co-founder strongly feels is "an insult to life itself." However, there's more to it since Miyazaki has attempted and succeeded in combining the possibilities of CGI with traditional techniques. You can see this in the same non-fiction work as the director unsteadily creates Boro, the Caterpillar, one of those shorts exclusively screened at the Ghibli Park and Museum. Still, even as the result may dazzle, the process to get there is a barrage of frustrations for the old master.

Today's Miyazaki tryptic goes against hybridized approaches. Instead, it finds an embrace of hand-drawn animation in its purest form, divested of computerized witchcraft and the like…

Click to read more ...

My Miyazaki Ranking: Part One - CastleMania

by Cláudio Alves

After its triumph on Oscar night, The Boy and the Heron is returning to cinemas all over the world. To commemorate this theatrical re-release and start closing my chapter of the 2023 film year, I took this opportunity to review Hayao Miyazaki's entire oeuvre. And so, we find ourselves standing before one of the greatest filmographies in the medium's history - animated or otherwise - ready to rank the master's twelve features. I'd love to share my thoughts on Miyazaki's shorts, but sadly, most of them are exclusively shown at the Ghibli Park and Museum. Maybe someday I'll be able to witness their beauty - one can dream.

From times when Studio Ghibli was naught but a dream to its twilight years, spanning half a dozen retirements and the loss of countless colleagues, Miyazaki's gift to cinema is a sprawling wonder. This shall be my personal ranking, not definitive by any means as it's a love letter, an expression of the utmost awe. Ask me in a week, and I'll order the films differently. Today, this is how I see them…

Click to read more ...

TIFF '23: Shadows of Our Violent Past

by Cláudio Alves

Examining troubled history through art can be a necessary confrontation, even a search for catharsis. You can't move into a brighter future without acknowledging the shadows lurking in the past. It's no wonder, then, that countless filmmakers use their skills to make these excavations on the dig site of the screen. For all that Shinya Tsukamoto's Shadow of Fire and Felipe Gálvez Haberle's The Settlers tackle their respective countries' histories, they're not traditional period pieces content to passively restage yesteryears. They bear the weight of an artist's singular vision…

Click to read more ...

TIFF ’23: In “Monster,” we’re all alone and that’s beautiful

by Cláudio Alves

Part of being alive is coming to grips with some harsh truths intrinsic to the human condition. For instance, we’ll never know the other, not entirely, no matter how hard we try. Even mothers can’t hope to fully grasp their children’s interiority, each human being a galaxy unto themselves. You can either fight against that notion in fruitless despair or accept it. We’re all alone, trapped in the mystery of ourselves, but so is everyone else. Reach out, and you’ll come close to the infinite unknown. Look at it right, and you’ll see beauty beyond belief.

The cinema of Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda has long reflected on such ideas, but Monster is still a high mark of cinematic compassion in his filmography. Penned by Cannes Best Screenplay-winner Yuji Sakamoto and set to the sound of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s last score, this film broke my heart…

Click to read more ...

TIFF '23: "The Boy and the Heron" goes into the unknown

by Cláudio Alves

Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron"

Hayao Miyazaki's last last picture before his latest last picture – already being discredited as such by Studio Ghibli VP Junichi Nishioka – saw him take on the model of a relatively conventional biopic. Despite its wavering between reality and dream, the now and the before, The Wind Rises represented one of the director's most straightforward efforts, doing away with the fantasy elements that defined most of his career. Had it stayed his swan song, it would have made for a career's closing chapter shaped like an intersection of culminating obsessions and stylistic disruption. The Boy and the Heron, previously known as How Do You Live?, posits a inversion of those paradigms. Oft-repeated ideas are invoked only to be collapsed, while tone and style return to the land of fantasy and dream logic.

Before reading ahead, A WARNING. This film will probably be best enjoyed by those who go into it blind, similarly to how Japanese audiences received it. If you want that experience, be satiated in the knowledge this is another masterpiece by Miyazaki. If you yearn for more, come with me down to a place that's no place within a time without time…

Click to read more ...