Miyazaki Madness, Part 6: "Porco Rosso" is one of my favorite movie memories
An aerial anti-fascist marvel of a movie
On Thursdays, I’m publishing reviews of classic movies, including pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). In this series, we are examining the filmography of my all-time favorite movie director - and newly minted two-time Oscar winner with his win for The Boy and the Heron - Hayao Miyazaki! We will be looking at all of his theatrical feature films along with the movies he wrote but did not direct, for a total of 15 weeks of Miyazaki Madness! The series continues today with Miyazaki’s 1992 anti-fascist aerial joy-ride, Porco Rosso. Enjoy…
Porco Rosso
1992, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Originally written 2012 and 2013
Many of my favorite Ghibli memories involve discovering the studio’s films alongside my father, who loved many of these movies just as much as I do. When I was watching through the films for the first time, Dad usually watched them with me, and it was always a tremendous pleasure to discover these masterworks alongside him – like all great works of art, they are better experienced communally then alone, after all.
The last Ghibli film we watched together before his death last year was Porco Rosso, which happened to be the final Miyazaki-directed film for Studio Ghibli neither of us had yet seen. Seeing it for the first time with my Dad, who was absolutely blown away by the power, artistry, and sheer fun of the film, is among my most treasured cinematic memories. Perhaps that biases my opinion of this particular film, but I tend to think not. The more I watch it, the more I feel Porco Rosso is a masterpiece, one that is gorgeous and stirring and incredibly inspired at every turn, a film that deserves to be celebrated and discussed alongside the very best of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki’s output.
Every time I watch Porco Rosso, I try to discern the best way to describe it, which is a difficult task when the film manages to be so many wonderful things at once. A character study, an adventure film, a comedy, a period piece, etc. – Porco Rosso is all of these and more, but the overall impression I get from it, from my latest viewing at least, is that of a tone piece, a film that is more about expressing the atmosphere and emotions of a particular time and place than it is about telling a concrete story or conforming to any set genre conventions. Set in the Adriatic sea, in and around Italy post-World War I, the film depicts the final days of an era, one not only of ‘freedom, flight, and adventure,’ as is literally stated in the film, but also of post-war self-discovery and social adjustment. Porco may have the face of a pig, but he struggles with the same survivor’s guilt, aimlessness, and nihilism as many soldiers faced with finding a purpose at the end of a longstanding conflict. In telling this story, Miyazaki illustrates not only the simultaneously joyful and melancholy emotions associated with expressing one’s freedom in the waning days of peace and transition (Porco is set during the rise of Italy’s fascist regime), but also the extreme difficulties that come with learning to live in a rapidly changing world – and what it means to live for something when so much of what one sees, including oneself, is ugly and despairing. The film is sometimes said to be partially autobiographical, and if one reads Miyazaki’s writings, the film’s themes of developing one’s passion in a world with increasing limits on expression seems particularly personal.
This is but a broad thematic overview, of course – within this framework, Miyazaki touches on many character- and social-oriented ideas, which intersect most clearly in the character of Fio Piccolo, the young, female airplane designer who joins Porco on his adventures. The Piccolo seaplane workshop is the source of one of Miyazaki’s most overt and compelling feminist studies, as the elderly owner of the shop, finding Milan bereft of men due to both the war and a growing economic crisis, is forced to employ a large group of local women, including Fio, to do what was traditionally a man’s job. Both he and Porco find themselves flabbergasted, bemused, and slightly offended by the situation, and the pirate groups Porco is at odds with find themselves confused by Fio’s presence as well when first confronted by her. But Fio’s will, intelligence, and skills are such that these men are forced to find some measure of acceptance – humorously extreme, in the case of the pirates – and in her lively, youthful character (one of many Miyazaki figures who represent how much younger generations have to offer the world), Fio is emblematic not only of post-war women who started asserting themselves into society, but of a positive side of post-war social change. It is through her that Porco finds a sort of redemption, an indicator that there is good left in the world, and good yet to blossom – and good, perhaps, deep within himself, because her respect and admiration for him is immense.
Themes typically converge and intersect and build off one another like this in Miyazaki’s films, and much of what Porco Rosso has to say and to offer, textually, visually, and artistically, is exemplified in a stunning flashback sequence, where Porco recalls seeing the souls of deceased pilots gliding silently to heaven in their planes. It is one of the most purely emotional, raw, and powerful scenes in Miyazaki-san’s filmography, and one of the all-time great movie moments. The immensity of sadness, confusion, and loss conveyed in that sequence seems to transcend the limits of art itself. I remember viewing the moment with my Dad, our jaws agape, thinking with a mixture of grief and wonder that we too would soon reach a similar existential juncture. I now picture my dad flying a plane of his own, one I cannot follow, and I marvel at Miyazaki’s ability to capture that searing, painful, bewildering feeling with nothing more than pen, paper, color and camera.
Of course, Porco Rosso is not, on the whole, a depressing film, which may be the impression I have given here. Far from it – Porco is one of his most overtly comedic works, and part of what amazes me about the film is how seamlessly it blends its drama and comedy, to the point where a scene like the one described above and coexist with Porco and American pilot Donald Curtiss engaging in a ridiculous, impromptu boxing match at the film’s climax. The film is masterful in everything it sets out to achieve – the aerial combat scenes are among the best such sequences in film history, animated or no – and leaves a lasting impression stronger than most movies could ever dream of.
NEXT WEEK: Miyazaki writes and storyboards, but does not direct, the underrated 1995 classic Whisper of the Heart…
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