Flying Dragons? Patricide? Prince and Princess (unaware of the others’ identity) meeting-cute, escaping the slave trade, then rediscovering each other while working incognito at a country farm? (The prince also running from his own avatar.) A wandering, wise, wistful wizard as mentor? Who needs GAME OF THRONE or HOUSE OF THE DRAGON when there’s this debut anime from Gorô (son of Hayao) Miyazaki? Set to a slow boil, and with a painfully depressed hero barely able to lift his head at times, this deep-dish philosophical fable about how life can only be lived with an acceptance of death in the future, dances to the tune of a sorceress who’ll go the ends of the earth (and dragons in the sky) to negate the idea and capture the secret to eternal life. Maddeningly opaque and extraordinarily compelling in equal measure, it’s quite an audacious (and beautiful) opening statement, especially for the son of anime royalty! Taken from a novel by late West Coast American Ursula K. Le Guin, the ideas so natural to Japanese culture that the film, in spite of a starry alternate English-language track, plays far better in Japanese. Fortunately, there are excellent subtitles on the GKids edition. Always worthwhile, at times enthralling, with revelatory use of light levels on the largely superb animation. (NOTE: Another Family Friendly label that's not for the kiddies. - 12 and up more like it.)
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Miyazaki shows remarkable range following this with star-crossed high school romance set in a changing Japan during the lead up to the 1964 Summer Olympics in his insightful/delightful FROM UP ON POPPY HILL/’11. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/12/kokuriko-zaza-kara-from-up-on-poppy.html
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