Nausicaä do Vale do Vento

The first thing to establish is that this is a science fiction epic. It has more in common with 'Dune' or any number of SF novels - Brian Aldiss's 'Hothouse' springs to mind for one- than it does with a typical western animated children's film. Therefore one's expectations should be a little different, and ultimately it was the SF aspect which gave the movie such a high grade in my books. Whereas it didn't have quite the emotional clout that I look for in an animated feature, it was a stupendously told SF story.

Technically not a Ghibli film (Miyazaki actually used the studio which did most of 'The Last Unicorn', and which more or less became Ghibli when 'Laputa' was made a couple of years later), 'Nausicaa' is a far-future SF story with a princess/warrior/nature-lover heroine and strong environmental themes. There's also an opposing princess/leader trying to use technology to overcome the apparently hostile environment. If you're starting to think 'Princess Mononoke', you'd be on the right track. In some ways 'Nausicaa' seems like an early stab in the direction of 'Mononoke', though the latter would delve far more into spirituality and mythology, eschewing the SF aspects.

There aren't really any major weak points in Nausicaa - unless you count the frustrating 12 drawings per second animation which I constantly complain about in Japanese animation. The backgrounds aren't as amazing and the animation not as good as the last few Ghibli films, but for 1984 it was plenty good enough. I have a fairly trivial complaint in that the character of Kuratowa is drawn in a slightly more 'anime' style, ala Lupin III, whereas all of the other characters are done in a realistic style. He just seems a little out of place, though he's quite delightfully drawn.

The really strong points of the movie are its pacing (at least until the very end. Miyazaki was unhappy with the end too), its story telling, which manages to be sophisticated without being impossibly complex, its engrossing background drawings and settings, - and most of all in the amazing attention to detail in the fully realized post-apocalypse SF-fantasy world in which the story is set. Every little thing is worked out and placed such that you find yourself admiring inventions, ideas, structures, creatures, etc which don't draw attention to themselves, but simply exist as part of the backdrop of the movie. Of course 'Nausicaa' had existed for several years as a serialised Manga, so Miyazaki no doubt knew its universe inside-out.

There's a very clever plot, which I won't give away, but which involves humanity's relationship with the Earth and nature.

It's the sort of movie which you can get thoroughly caught up in, and which will stand repeated viewings. It really is a film which is perfectly pitched at both a young and an adult audience. As Miyazaki's second feature film it is also, rightly or wrongly, usually considered the start of Studio Ghibli, and is arguably worth watching for historical reasons, too.

Not the very best from Miyazaki or Ghibli, but an auspicious beginning.

PS, in case you didn't know, there was a heavily butchered US version floating around called 'Warriors of the Wind', which is universally reviled as a disgrace. Just to make it confusing, some of the Japanese copies are also called 'Warriors of the Wind'. The thing to look for is the 116 minute running length. If you get that, you've got the right one. At the moment the only way you can get the film is in Japanese dialog with English subtitles. Personally I'd go ahead and do that, rather than wait while Disney squats on the US distribution rights (Amazon gives it a release date of 2010 for God's sake). You can always replace it later.

Good stuff.

The name of Nausicaä belongs to Greek mythology; she was the Princess who saved Ulysses from drowning. And the "Valley of the Winds" was loosely inspired from the tragedy of Minimata Bay and the way it maintained its ecosystem viable despite the pollution. "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds" finds the perfect balance between the theme of nature always finding its way and the dramatic struggle of a heroine saving humanity from "drowning" in belligerent wickedness.

I'm mentioning Minimata but the tragedy of Fukushima could have inspired a similar intuition that technological advances could only lead to the downfall of humanity inasmuch as men continue to display the same carelessness and arrogance. In his "Nausicaä", Hayao Miyazaki doesn't warn us but rather confronts us to a plausible future, a future with a few survivors driven to the last corners of Earth where wind and water prevented a toxic jungle name Fukaï from spreading.

The film, all in visual splendor, displays the usual Sci-fi and Fantasy archetypes but they don't distract from the environmentalist and pacifist message. We accept them in the sense that the story is set one thousand years after the apocalypse and we expect technology to have produced jet-propelled gliders and flying vessels. But the film also has a Renaissance look à la "Princess Mononoke", it's not an artistic license, the privileged people of the Valley represent a wiser side of humanity that got back to the roots, acknowledging the eminence of nature, a renaissance indeed.

They live in an oasis-like area where the air is breathable, outside; they must wear a gas mask, accentuating the dystopian look even within a natural setting. The hostility of nature is symbolized by giant mutant insects and the Ohm, armored trilobite-like insects whose eyes turn to an ominous red whenever they feel threatened. But Miyazaki never lets us get the wrong idea about these Ohm, understand they're not the most life-threatening creatures out there.

There's a key scene right in the beginning where a little fox-like creature bites Nausicaä, she patiently keeps her finger until its frenzy fades out and then the animal licks her wound. This moment is pivotal because it highlights the real tragedy that caused men's downfall, not violent actions but immediate assumptions of violence causing bad reactions. Only Nausicaä is capable of showing mercy and empathy toward any living creature, she challenges all the common conceptions and even tries to understand the place she lives in, which is the epitome of wisdom.

From the spores taken during regular expedition, she discovers in her laboratory that plants are capable of producing air, later in the film that some jungle plants purify the polluted topsoil and produce clean water. In other words, life always finds a way but humans can't see it. Nausicaä becomes the messianic character that will open the eyes of humanity, and as truth can be stranger than fiction, she's also a pivotal moment in Miyazaki's career, as the first film to have emerged from the fertile soil of his own imagination.

Nausicaä foreshadows all the elements that will define his work: the independent free-spirited heroine, the aerial settings and the environmental and anti-war messages, and more than that, the revolutionary notion that you don't need villains to make a story. Everyone is imperfect and fallible, even the most violent attacks are meant as defensive moves or precautions. The film contains a lot of action, lethal explosions and battles, people die by the sword, including Nausicaä's but Miyazaki couldn't have been more pacifists, every detail says in subtext that violence isn't the answer.

Indeed, how can the cause of the trouble ever be the solution? Miyazaki, a master storyteller, delivers crucial information even in the most unnoticeable moments, even the opening credits show through Roman mosaic and medieval tapestry the fate of the modern world. Seven giants launching immense fire blasts (metaphor for nuclear power?) into modern buildings, it's just as if Hiroshima was depicted like the Pompeii eruption. But what is the tragedy exactly, that history taught men a lesson or that men didn't learn it?

Nausicaä is set at a time that looks like a second chance but people are still fighting for good or bad reasons, from a sword master and father-figure named Lord Yupa, a young Pejite interceptor who respects Nausicaä's actions and the Tolmekian queen who (like Lady Eboshi from "Mononoke") is perhaps the tumultuous counterpart to Nausicaä, mutilated by the creatures, she believes in violence as the language of the force, illustrating its dangerously communicative effect, the never-ending spiral that killed the world… or that might lead to a third worldwide conflict.

And in the midst of nihilistic violence and desolation, Nausicca emerges as a beautifully inspirational heroine. There's a hypnotic flashback (with a so-catchy playful tone) where Nausicaä's father kills a baby Ohm, on the basis that human and insects can't live together. The whole conviction of Nausicaä is that every creature has its place on Earth; it's not just about empathy but the unshakable faith on Nature's equilibrium. It is very significant that the most beautiful images from the film, all in golden yellow, are provided by the Ohm's tentacles, weren't they supposed to be the ugly monsters?

Yet, at the time of its release, the film was badly edited for foreign audiences and lost into translation to become some Manga adventure in the air, and the Ohm were indeed hostile creatures. It's just as if Miyazaki was ahead of his time and it would take one decade and half before people would come back to their senses and realize that this isn't "Flash Gordon". Nausicaä is about conviction and goodness, pacifism and environmentalism deprived from any political innuendo.

Miyazaki drew the original Manga so the film could be made, showcasing as much confidence as his heroine. In a way, Miyazaki was the Nausicaä of animation, a man with a vision, spirit and guts.

... and it's only got angrier since this epic critique of the damage and destruction the human race affects against the flora and fauna of the place we call home, as well as upon itself. Visionary, prophetic, disturbing and heartbreaking, often concurrently, a testament to future generations that we were fully aware of our impact and neglect, that we chose to do very little about it and that what we did do was long after the horse, the fish, the insects (especially the bees) had bolted.

Princess Nausicaa has to convince her people to rise up, and defend their world a destructive force, that threatens to strip their planet of its natural resources.

There is a charm about this film that just resonates, I first saw this in a history class, a teacher that always loved to put on Japanese films, I have fond memories of this one, and whilst I don't think it's quite as good as the incredible Princess Mononoke that would come years later, it's still a fine film.

Somehow my eyes are telling me that it's a film from the 1980's, but my brain is telling me that it's a film that's just been made, how much more of a relevance does this film have in 2023 than it did back in 1984, to think of the damage that man has done to the planet, it's just extraordinary.

I tried watching it with English dubbing, I couldn't, fortunately though it is on Netflix in its original form, well worth seeing in its original Japanese.

The animation holds up quite well, I thought those opening snow covered scenes looked very beautiful, the following crafts, action scenes and characters also looked very nice.

Powerful.

8/10.

Director Hayao Miyazaki won a place in my heart after I saw his 2001 film Spirited Away. I'm in no position to claim to be an expert on Miyazaki (I've only seen three of his films), nor am I really a big fan of Japanese animation; but I can safely say that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is one of the very best animated films I have ever seen. The beauty of the animation is stunning, with its close attention to detail--every frame is constructed as a work of art--and the story is enthralling. As with other Miyazaki films, the majority of characters are much more three-dimensional that you typically get in Western animated features, and nearly all of them aren't exactly what they seem to be.

Nausicaä, which is based on Miyazaki's gargantuan Manga series, is set in the distant future, after fires destroyed much of the earth. The world is being consumed by the Sea of Decay, a toxic forest that spreads through airborne spores and is protected by giant insects called ohmu. The Valley of the Wind is one of the last pure places on earth, and its Princess, Nausicaä, is a strong-willed yet free-spirited young woman seeking to solve the mystery of the Sea of Decay. A nearby nation, which claims to have harnessed the power that allowed humans to rule the earth a thousand years before, takes over after a plane carrying a mysterious living cargo crashes in the valley. What follows in the film is a struggle, not of good versus evil, but of man versus nature. The story is complex, as is its message, and Miyazaki has ingeniously spun deep complexities into the animated characters: what look like foes may not be, and what look like friends may be a bit more dangerous.

The animation is colorful, sweeping, expansive, and beautiful, as are the plot and characters. There is an immediacy to the story that makes a big emotional impact and makes us question how we handle our position in nature. As one of the characters in the film asks, have humans become but a tribe destined to be swallowed by the Sea of Decay? It is ultimately a film about compassion in the face of violence and war, which is what makes it so different from Western features.

Disney's recent DVD release is excellent. The film can be watched either in the original Japanese audio or Pixar's dub with Patrick Stewart and Uma Thurman, and there are separate subtitles for each language track--a literal one (hallelujah!) for the Japanese track, and a more closed-captions style set for the English track. The film is so stunning in the Japanese that I have never considered watching the dub, though a fellow film buff has said that it is "not so bad." After this film was released in the US in the 1980s in a completely mangled version called Warriors of the Wind, Miyazaki suspended all US rights of all his other films until the distributor would honor the stipulation that they be released without any editing. The fact that Disney, which is known for watering down nearly everything it touches, has done this with such a non-Western-style movie is amazing.