Saw The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, another brilliant film from studio Ghibli. This one tells the story of a bamboo-cutter who finds a little girl in one of the bamboo shoots, along with fine silks and a supply of gold pieces. The girl grows into a young woman in the span of about two days and the bamboo-cutter decides that she is a princess and is meant for the Big City. In the Big City, she's a hit. Everyone loves her but she clearly pines for the carefree days of her youth, running about with the other children and listening to the wind in the trees.
As in other studio Ghibli films, nature is used as a shorthand for purity and a kind of effortless spiritual fulfillment. It's very nice. The honest woodcutters and such are shown as being similar to the pheasants and foxes in that they too do not wonder about the purpose of their lives or their place in the world. This placement of laborers in with the animals is a little weird, but that's Japan for you I guess.
At any rate, this is a sweet, nostalgic film in the vein of My Neighbors The Yamadas. The art style is loose and impressionistic, looking like an illustrated scroll come to life. I think a few scenes are directly lifted from manuscripts and tapestries. As usual for fancy-anime, this is swooning and lovely. No one is hurt who doesn't deserve it, nothing truly bad happens, and we end on a great crane-shot, zooming out to show the whole of the world, loving and dyning and us humans in with it. It's all a mess, but a glorious one.
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