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

[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.