Totoro for Two

[steepholm]

I went with my brother to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican last night - an early birthday treat from him. It was an excellent production, which I can't show you any pictures of, on pain of being smothered by soot sprites, but can assure you was wonderfully inventive, visually and aurally.

Why I am I taunting you like this? Well, it's just that having the show broken into two halves brought home to me how much "tighter," from a plot point of view, the first half of the film is than the second. Up to the point where the girls and Totoro make the seeds grow, it's really hard to fault. And then we get the formal climax, or double climax, first with the mother being reported to be dangerously ill, and then Mei going missing as she tries to walk all the way to the hospital carrying some healthy corn that she's just picked, and being believed to have fallen into a nearby pond when the search party finds a slipper like hers.

Except that it's not her sandal, as her sister Satsuki quickly confirms. Mei is actually fine, if temporarily lost. And the mother, when they eventually reach her, turns out not to be that ill either - it was just a cold.

It seems to me there's an obvious alternative plot, which I find it hard to believe that Miyazaki didn't at least consider. In this version - which is also basically the version in Mei's head - the mother really is in danger, and the children save her by bringing her some needful medicine or charm, perhaps carried to the hospital by magical agency. This is the plot of The Magician's Nephew, where a winged horse plays the part of the cat bus, and of many other stories besides. (Likewise, Mei could have fallen into the pond and then been rescued.)

Was Miyazaki holding back on the 'mild threat' with a view to his very young audience? Or was his restraint a more purely artistic decision - a distaste for crude plot trump cards? I don't know, but I report it as I found it.

Comments

[larryhammer]

Hmph. I think you're taunting us just to flex.

And if I mention you saw this, Eaglet will agree. In between bouts of shouting, "I NEED TO GO TO ENGLAND!" at the sky and "WHY?! WHY?! WHY CAN'T WE?!" while shaking my arm.

[steepholm]

One thing I can perhaps report (because it's not much of a spoiler) is that, during the minutes before the beginning of the show, the words "My Neighbor Totoro" are displayed on the stage curtain in big friendly letters. But that, just before curtain up, an animated 'u' budges in between the 'o' and 'r' to correct the spelling (from a British point of view). This earned the first round of applause of the night.

[larryhammer]

Heh.

[asakiyume]

Interesting questions.

I feel like maybe he wanted the valor of both Mei (in attempting to bring the corn to her mother) and Satsuki (in going out to find Mei) to be valor on a level that every child can identify with--can have experienced personally. ... I mean, every kid can also imagine fighting dragons to bring a magical remedy, and as a kid I loved those sorts of adventures, but it wasn't something I'd actually *done*. Whereas I remember leading my grandmother on a long walk from our house to the shopping plaza when I was four years old. It was a long journey--I was so proud of myself for being (so I thought) in charge of getting us there. I like that in the story Miyazaki is telling, there is magic, but the courage and human acts are totally in line with what's possible in the real world.

But maybe that aspect is less engaging when translated to the stage?

[steepholm]

I think this may well be right. A plot in which Totoro gave the girls a magic bean that would save their mother would make it a rather different story. It's a tricky balance, though, because as you say, there is magic in this story. Totoro does give them a packet of seeds, but on the other hand they're ordinary seeds that don't grow overnight like the beanstack (and children and other gardeners will sympathise with Mei's frustration at that fact). But on the third hand, when Totoro intervenes again, that's exactly what they do.

I don't know whether it was the move to the stage, but for me the thrill of discovery (the house, the neigbours, the soot sprites, Totoro) that suffuses the first half of the story was all spent by the second, and what was left seemed rather half-heartedly propelled to the conclusion. The ill mother, whose illness can be turned up and down like a thermostat as the plot requires, seemed more obviously a device - which is no disrespect to the woman who played her, who did what she could with a very static part.

[larryhammer]

I will say, it has been interesting over the years watching Eaglet reactions to the movie, and seeing the age when they changed from identifying more with Mei to more with Satsuki. I note that because the mother's illness is relatively minor (though still a concern to someone with TB), the stakes of Mei's second-half story are less than the stakes of Satsuki's, but the heroism of both is commensurate with their age and agency.

(For background, Eaglet's first screen time was My Neighbor Totoro, and for a couple months gosh darn it, it was the only channel our TV received. They came home to a bedroom decorated with Mei and Totoro and sootsprite wall decals, and have amassed a collection of Totoro stuffies, of which the Catbus gets the most attention these days. They made me a jigsaw puzzle for a holiday gift a couple years ago, from a drawing of our cats, the Catbus, and Totoro. IOW, the movie has been a Big Part of their life.)

[steepholm]

That sounds pretty hardcore!

[(Anonymous)]

Meanwhile I was in Aichi at the old 2005 EXPO Park which is gradually being Ghibli-ized. Having lived in the city where the park is back in the 1990s it's sad to see how first mountains & trees were destroyed for the environmental Expo (which I did visit), and then how it was turned into sports facilities (including using artificial turf rather than more environmentally friendly grass), to now bit-by-bit, it seems, becoming for Ghibli (including getting rid of an indoor pool for locals to be used as a warehouse for Ghibli things). Much of the park is now inaccessible unless you have a specific ticket & the signposting is awful. A lot of construction for further Ghibli things also on-going.

[steepholm]

I'm sorry to hear that, though it doesn't sound an untypical story, but rather of a piece with Japan's way of preserving river banks (i.e. conreting them over). That said, all unaware of this history I've actually just bought a ticket to that same warehouse, and will hopefully be visiting this year.