ANIMATION
OF THE YEAR
The Boy and the Heron, which heralded the great master
Hayao Miyazaki's magnificent return to cinema after a decade, made its
international premiere at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival as the
opening film on September 7, 2023. And thus, it made history as the first
animated film to open the Toronto International Film Festival. Oscar-winning
director Hayao Miyazaki, one of Japan's greatest animation directors, created
this animation based on Genzaburô Yoshino's 1937 "How Do You Live?" Inspired by his
novel. This production grossed $167 million worldwide and was honored with
numerous awards; It received the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Feature at the
77th British Academy Film Awards, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated
Feature at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, and the OSCAR Award for Best Animated
Feature at the 96th Academy Awards. The entire production, signed by the famous
animation company Studio Ghibli, was hand-drawn by a team of 60 people, and
with a budget of 50 million dollars, it has the potential to be the
highest-budget production among Japanese films, anime and live action
productions to date. Production timeline; It takes an average of 7 years,
including 2.5 years for pre-production activities and approximately 5 years for
the production phase.
English Voice Cast; Christian
Bale, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Karen
Fukuhara, Mark Hamill and Willem
Dafoe.
STUDIO
GHIBLI AND MASTER MIYAZAKI
Although the animations produced by Studio Ghibli, which
was founded by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki in 1985, vary in
terms of content and tone, their main theme is environmentalism, that is, the
way human beings interact with nature. In addition, the company,
Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism, that is, the use of characters in animal
form, are the basic characteristics of Ghibli films. These uses, combined with
the process of metamorphosis, indicate changes in character and meaning. These
motifs and themes underlying the story remind us of the psychological studies
on behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, an American social philosopher, psychologist
and psychologist who was a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. In
his concept of Radical Behaviorism, which carries the belief that animal
behavior can be usefully studied and compared to human behavior, B. F. Skinner
argues that experiential factors play an important role in determining the
behavior of many complex organisms and that the study of these issues is an
important field of research in itself.
THE
JOURNEY OF THE GHIBLI CHARACTER
Another detail is that the main character of Ghibli films
is generally either a child or a young adult. The reason for this is that,
unlike the materialism that surrounds their parents, children are more
vulnerable to facing serious danger because their ability to perceive the
threat and be affected by it is not developed. In addition, the fact that the
leading actor is a child makes the young audience identify more with the film.
In the movie The Boy and the Heron, we see that these common elements and
themes are adhered to. Master artist Miyazaki; Through surreal characters, it
allows us to discover a secret world that exists within us but that we are not
aware of, and once again conveys to the audience the fantastic and spiritual
dimension that adult rationality cannot capture due to logic and reason, by
turning it upside down through the eyes of a child. Described as partially
autobiographical, The Boy and the Heron has parallels with Hayao Miyazaki's
life. The hospital fire in the film's opening sequence has personal parallels
with Miyazaki's loss of his mother, who was known for her strong views and is
believed to have inspired many of the director's female characters. In the
film, we see that the theme of war in the works of master director Miyazaki is
repeated once again, in the story set during the World War II period; It
touches on historical events such as the Battle of Saipan (Operation Forager),
which took place on the Pacific front of the Second World War between June 15
and July 9, 1944.
COLOR ANALYSIS IN MIYAZAKI'S CINEMA
When the main character,
Mahito, finally finds his stepmother in the other world, it turns out that her
room is not a "birthing room" as the other characters say, but is
actually a tomb. The white paper strips surrounding his stepmother attack Mahito.
The reason for this is that these stripes are Shide (Shinto). It is used in
Shinto rituals in Japan to separate and purify religious and sacred areas. We
see that white paper strips contain different meanings when viewed from a
semiotic perspective. Another important detail in Spielberg’s cinema is that
white has a visually important place in the color palette. French philosopher
Roland Barthes is the master of thought and writing of the XX. century and one
of the founders of European semiotics. Barthes influenced the development of
schools of theory, including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design
theory, anthropology, and post-structuralism. Barthes, together with the Swiss
philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure, known as the 'father' of twentieth-century
linguistics, and the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce,
enabled the development of the boundaries of semiotics, on which he laid the
foundation. The great French essayist and
critic Barthes states in his work 'The Semiotic Challenge' that the color white
conveys a certain idea about luxury and femininity. The white stripes, whose
purpose in the movie is to keep death away from the grave and protect Natsuko,
actually protect and defend a kind of purity and innocence. The distinctive
color palette in Miyazaki's cinema is especially evident in the use of harsh
tones. The aesthetic lines of cities and villages are separated from the
natural framework by clear lines. The dominant colors White and Gray were used
by the Spanish Golden Age painter Diego Velázquez, who used them in a way that
no other painter had used before him, and It reminds us of the color
perspectives in the works of El Greco, who is considered the pioneer of
Expressionism and Cubism.
COGNITIVE
LAYERS
Studio Ghibli founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata
are prominent members of labor unions at Toei Studios, and their commitment to
social justice is also evident in the societies that adorn their films.
Socio-political and social issues such as War, Industrial Revolution, Consumer
Society, and the contradiction between technological progress and natural life
are conveyed to the audience with a socialist observation. In this movie,
during the Pacific War in Tokyo, Mahito loses his mother in a hospital fire.
Mahito's father, Shoichi, an aerial munitions factory owner, marries his late
wife's sister, Natsuko, and they move to stepmother Natsuko's rural estate
(just as director Miyazaki's family was forced to migrate from the city to the
countryside during the war). Here the character Mahito encounters a strange
gray heron who leads him to a sealed tower, the last known location of his
stepmother Natsuko's architect great-uncle. This meeting is actually the most
important breaking moment in the story, the Plot Point. Because the Gray Heron
(sort of taking on the role of the Rabbit in the Alice in Wonderland story)
takes Mahito out of the real world and takes him into the depths of the dream
world. While the story initially follows a tragic and dramatic structure, as it
progresses, we see that it takes steps towards a cosmogonic and chaotic
parallel world, based on a classical fairy tale archetype. However, we see that
this enchanted and magical world is actually a deconstructed post-modern
universe of signs loaded with layers of meaning (in the words of the French
post-structuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida). Today's leading philosopher
and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han, in his philosophy book titled "The
Best of Fun"; “While entertainment claims to aim only to entertain and
please, it shows its effect by infiltrating cognitive layers.” He states that
he achieved this thanks to his semantic and cognitive structure. The cognitive
layers mentioned by Byung-Chul Han; We see that the animation and the characters
in it reach the audience.
COGNITIVE
LAYERS
Studio Ghibli founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata
are prominent members of labor unions at Toei Studios, and their commitment to
social justice is also evident in the societies that adorn their films.
Socio-political and social issues such as War, Industrial Revolution, Consumer
Society, and the contradiction between technological progress and natural life
are conveyed to the audience with a socialist observation. In this movie,
during the Pacific War in Tokyo, Mahito loses his mother in a hospital fire.
Mahito's father, Shoichi, an aerial munitions factory owner, marries his late
wife's sister, Natsuko, and they move to stepmother Natsuko's rural estate
(just as director Miyazaki's family was forced to migrate from the city to the
countryside during the war). Here the character Mahito encounters a strange
gray heron who leads him to a sealed tower, the last known location of his
stepmother Natsuko's architect great-uncle. This meeting is actually the most
important breaking moment in the story, the Plot Point. Because the Gray Heron
(sort of taking on the role of the Rabbit in the Alice in Wonderland story)
takes Mahito out of the real world and takes him into the depths of the dream
world. While the story initially follows a tragic and dramatic structure, as it
progresses, we see that it takes steps towards a cosmogonic and chaotic
parallel world, based on a classical fairy tale archetype. However, we see that
this enchanted and magical world is actually a deconstructed post-modern
universe of signs loaded with layers of meaning (in the words of the French
post-structuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida). Today's leading philosopher
and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han, in his philosophy book titled "The
Best of Fun"; “While entertainment claims to aim only to entertain and
please, it shows its effect by infiltrating cognitive layers.” He states that
he achieved this thanks to his semantic and cognitive structure. The cognitive
layers mentioned by Byung-Chul Han; We see that the animation and the characters
in it reach the audience.
THE
QUEST FOR FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE
However, when viewed within the framework of existence,
the problem of freedom and the story arise in direct proportion. In this new
life where Mahito moves and starts a new life, he searches for a kind of
freedom in the hope of breaking his ties with the past. Looking at its essence,
Mahito's character creates an idealistic personality profile. When we look at
the history of philosophy; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the greatest name of
"objective idealism", Descartes, the representative of "subjective
idealism", Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, who rejected the
concept of "transcendental self" but put the principle of
"intentionality" (Intentionnalité) at the center of philosophy, and
"phenomenon-noumena" dualism completely. Within the framework of
critical idealist Immanuel Kant, we observe different types of idealism in the
history of thought. When we look at The Boy and the Heron through the character
of Mahito, we see (just like Sartre's path in the history of philosophy)
arguments such as the priority of "being-in-itself" over
"being-for-itself" and that consciousness has no content of its own,
and almost the opposite. We see that he has adopted a "conscious
idealism" with an orientation.
EFE TEKSOY
REFERENCES AND SOURCES
BARTHES, Roland. (The Semiotic Challenge), Göstergebilimsel Serüven, Mehmet Rifat-Sema
Rifat, translate İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları press, 2018
Colin Odell, Michelle Le
Blanc, Studio Ghibli: Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata Films (Stüdyo Ghibli:
Hayao Miyazaki ve Isao Takahata Filmleri), Barış Baysal, translate, İstanbul:
Kalkedon Yayınları press, 2011
GOFFMAN, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life (Günlük Yaşamda Benliğin Sunumu), Barış Cezar, translate, İstanbul: Metis
yayınları press, 2020
HAN, Byung-Chul, Good Entertainment: A Deconstruction of
the Western Passion Narrative (Eğlencenin İyisi: Batı Sanatında Ciddi/Eğlenceli
İkiliği), Haluk Barışcan, translate,
İstanbul: Metis Yayınları press, 2023
SKINNER, B.F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Knopf.
SARTRE, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness (Varlık ve
Hiçlik: Fenomenolojik Ontoloji Denemesi), Turhan Ilgaz, Gaye Ç. Eksen,
translate, İstanbul: İthaki Yayınları press, 2011.
SARTRE, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism
(Varoluşçuluk), Asım Bezirci, translate, İstanbul: Say Yayınları press, 1985.
SARTRE, Jean-Paul. The Transcendence of the Ego: An
Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (Ego’nun Aşkınlığı: fenomenolojik bir
betimlemenin taslağı), Serdar Rifat Kırkoğlu, translate, İstanbul: Hil
yayınları press, 2018
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