Studio Ghibli Thoughts: My Neighbor Totoro

 

Considering the esteem and cultural reputation of My Neighbor Totoro, as well as the large fandom around it, it is amazing to consider it struggled to get financed initially. In fact, it would not have been made had Ghibil's star producer, Toshio Suzuki, not linked it with the much different (and quite bleak) Grave of the Fireflies. 

If I try and watch the movie while being as distracted and uninterested as possible, I could understand why it was a tricky proposition to pitch the film. Its a slow, sometimes pondering film about two girls moving house and missing their mother. Not much "plot" happens in the movie, with even the titular Totoro appearing little, and doing little when it appears. You could watch the movie this way, and if you do, you would be watching it wrong.

It should be a litmus test of sort, watching My Neighbor Totoro and engaging with it being a proof of humanity at some level.

Here is a movie that, if you remove your cynical adult self that was battered by life's miseries, will transport you into the viewpoint of childhood through its own lens of Mei and Satsuki. Its a movie about the BIG feelings of children and how they navigate the world around them. A movie where the Totoro creature can represent almost anything you want it to represent, including the pure imagination of children coping with life.

Its pastoral colors and brilliant soundtrack bring the Japanese countryside to a life that transcends the country, and becomes the backdrop of childhoods everywhere. I remember seeing Totoro as a child, and I hope to keep on to that memory, to keep the value of empathy and life. For both what it does and represents, My Neighbor Totoro is a Top-Tier Ghibli film.

P.S: Remarkably, the My Neighbor Totoro play by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican center (London) turned out not only good, but exceptionally brilliant. I was mesmerized when I watched it, and I am amazed at how it both equals and sometimes exceeds its source.