Totoro on the big screen, a perfect outing for a rainy day. The animé Titan Hayao Miyazaki has produced dozens of big hitters, but Totoro is often considered his greatest. Totoro has the cult status of Winnie-the-Pooh here.
A common theme in his movies is a childish sense of awe at the majesty of nature and the importance of respecting it. He expresses nostalgia for a pre-industrial 1950s Japan, of un-butchered mountains and pristine paddy valleys, when man was more at one with nature. In the wildernesses, magical creatures could live in peace, such as Totoro and his kind; shy, lazy, furry, blobby mammals who fly and have the power to make things grow supernaturally fast. The story is the growing involvement between the two worlds, through the adventures and misadventures of two sisters, where the Human world is shown to be in urgent need of the Magic.
It’s not all sweetness and light however. The children are facing trauma in their family, which requires resilience as they move house away from the city into the countryside, to be nearer their ailing mother who is convalescing in a clinic. Miayzaki weaves together different types of love to help them through, coming from family and friends, both human and magical.
The hit tune is catchy and upbeat, encouraging the audience to hold on to their optimism in life, while the film teaches us nothing is ever perfect. Visually it is stunning, with vibrant colours, and meticulous attention to detail. I love the true-to-life depictions of the Japanese countryside, full of impenetrable wooded mountains and manicured rice paddies. The huge insects, gurgling streams and towering storm clouds reinforce the realism, to make the magical even more magical.
The characters are a joy: the two daughters who play and scrap like any other siblings, their absent-minded lecturer father, the good-natured curious neighbours who help with child-care, the school children who stare gog-eyed at anything and everything because they’re so shut off from the world. I lived in rural Japan in the 1990s and totally love the authenticity.
It’s a film which will etch itself into your family history. I watched it enough times to know it off by heart while my baby son was in hospital in Japan being treated for leukaemia. He didn’t pull through and I couldn’t go near Totoro for years after. My husband booked us into the stage version and I was anxious about how I would react. I just had to let the tears flow when they wanted to. Both my daughter and I.
It’s the most moving, delightful story for children that has come out of Japan.
The trailer
