Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
It came out 13 years prior to “Princess Mononoke,” but Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” covers similar ideas as “Mononoke” in terms of the relationship between man and nature, and the destructive forces of human war on nature, but in a way that feels more fanciful, and less grounded, than that film. I might be a bit biased because “Mononoke” was my first Miyazaki film, but “Nausicaa” just feels a bit too slight- there’s nothing wrong with that, as it remains a wonderful treat from one of the great filmmakers of all-time, but given the subject matter, it feels like a filmmaker still weighing how much pathos and feeling should go into his movies.
The film begins with text describing the events that brought us to the film’s present- a deadly war known as the Seven Days of Fire destroyed civilization, and created a poisonous forest with giant, mutant insects. In the film’s opening scenes, a princess of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaa, is exploring the forest, known as the Toxic Jungle. She has a way of communicating with the creatures of the jungle, including the gigantic Ohms. Her purpose of going in and exploring is a hope to figure out a way for the jungle and humanity to co-exist, but the way the Ohms are behaving make that feel less that likely. Later that night, a cargo plane from the nearby kingdom of Tolmekia crashes, and the crew dies, but not before something in the cargo hold leads Nausicaa on an adventure to try and stop the plans of the leaders of Tolmekian, which involve a giant, mutant warrior that could be used to destroy the Toxic Jungle.
“Nausicaa” is adapted from a manga Miyazaki himself wrote, and the film’s convoluted narrative feels like a story that came from a much more wide-ranging narrative medium than cinema allows. I will be honest, my eyes kind of glazed over trying to follow the story and the minutiae it involves, and it doesn’t help that Nausicaa feels very thin as a main character- she doesn’t really seem to have a personal, emotional arc she goes on like other Miyazaki heroines, and indeed, “Nausicaa” is the work of a filmmaker and storyteller still trying to find his voice, and how he is going to blend it with images. The images are absolutely beautiful, as we would expect from Miyazaki, and the character design on Nausicaa, the people in her valley and the kingdom matches the sense of wonder in nature and the creatures- the Ohms and her little companion creature are exceptionally well-designed and memorable, and the image of running Ohms is as powerfully striking as anything Miyazaki has ever done. The film builds to a finally that will be familiar in its hopefulness for Miyazaki fans, even if it lacks the resonance of his best films. It’ll be worth revisiting in the future to see if it sticks with me more than it did here.
