![]() A busy museum environment was never going to be the right place for me to experience Miyazaki, and maybe that’s okay. In the end, the Shinto principle that we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything is communicated through the visual capabilities of animation to create a. My most vivid experiences of watching Miyazaki are alone - whether curled up in a tiny dorm room bed in college or watching from my couch after a long day of work. Miyazaki explains that In my grandparents’ time it was believed that spirits existed everywhere in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. I like to experience Miyazaki best with solitude and quiet space to reflect. What motivates this man to devote his life to creating hand-drawn worlds, despite CGI technology? How does he feel to see humans ravaging planet Earth, despite his film’s warnings about ecological devastation? Where does he draw the line between art and politics? The museum’s walls offer up brief quotes from Miyazaki as an attempt to answer these questions, but they only scratch the surface. Unanswered questions still linger in my mind. Reading the poem alongside the movie clip, I felt like I had gotten my first “real” glimpse into Miyazaki’s mind.īut ultimately, I wanted to come away knowing more about the complex man behind the legend, and in that sense, the Miyazaki exhibit couldn’t help but disappoint. Here is a place where Miyazaki says no human should pass, but two humans enter, and we intuitively understand the course of the story will change forever. It was a scene I had seen countless times, but the poem gave the moment so much more meaning. Imageboard, Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke (1997) (© 1997 Studio Ghibli – ND)Īs I was reading the poem, a clip from Princess Mononoke - when one character, San, brings her wounded friend Ashitaka to the Forest Spirit to try and save him - played on loop nearby. Through these storyboards, we get a sense of how much careful planning went into every single frame of Miyazaki’s movies, from Porco Rosso (1992) to Ponyo (2008). ![]() Yet, much like Miyazaki’s films, the exhibition’s greatest strength lies in its quieter moments, such as the animator’s storyboard panels showcased under glass. In the center of another room sits a patch of grass where you can lie down and look at a calming blue sky - a backdrop to countless Miyazaki movies. In one dark room, glowing kodama, or tree spirits, from Princess Mononoke (1997) disappear and reappear around a life-sized sparkling tree. Other rooms feature similarly engaging immersive experiences. Hayao Miyazaki, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (photo by Joshua White, JWPictures/ © Academy Museum Foundation) The exhibition’s opening room features angled walls filled with clips from different Miyazaki films, and the sound from each of the films bathes over one another, creating a remarkable effect. It’s clear the Academy Museum put great care into showcasing Miyazaki’s lifetime of work - a daunting task for any curator. It’s the absence of these kinds of critical details that left me feeling vacant and craving more as I walked through the crowded exhibit. This forgotten act of defiance is an incredible detail that reveals insight into the complex man that is Miyazaki - but it isn’t one you’ll find at the Academy Museum’s Miyazaki exhibition. Instead, the museum simply features replicas of the filmmaker’s two Oscars statues for the 2003 Best Picture award and the honorary award Miyazaki received in 2014.
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