Princess Mononoke

Hayao Miyazaki’s enduringly popular 1997 animation
Analysing an animated films visuals always slightly uncomfortablw; pretending its about shots, we can say we have simple, often vertical movements, with a lot of still takes, except for fast horizontal following ones.
Edited in a very much classic action/ Hollywood manner. Indeed, this is really a narrative driven action-adventure picture, very much in the Hollywood tradition. Though the shots are often longer, a lot of fast back and forwards, changing the angle, a bit of shot/ reverse work. Better directed and edited than the rather repetitious (for all its other qualities) ‘Spirited Away’.
Generally it does not focus on characterisation, everything is narrative-driven, the breaks-off are largely for comic relief. This can make much of what it does slightly jarring, quickly moving from premise to conclusion.
What it does is follow a narrative structure on one or more step; one more step. One of the fun things about Miyazaki’s worlds is his constantly ad-hoc adding of something, always taking something a bit further, always extending to the next phase. This keeps us involved because he doesn’t dwell, doesn’t every dwell on the sheer weirdness of it; it is all very matter of fact.
His creations are largely either completely unknowable or anthropomorphic. Individual scenes are beautiful in the same way a (perhaps slight) drawing is. It is of course impressive, and touching, with the flowers that grow and the walking on water. These are not so much experienced as depicted, so they don’t have a huge force, but are welcome and delicately beautiful in their insertion in the narrative.
Looking at the plot, it tries to strike a middle point. Humans are bad (there is a rather worrying equation of working women with this domination), but nature too is irrational and nasty. The attempt to find a middle way rather deconstructs itself; it is unsuccessful ,everything goes wrong, even if the narrative seems to decide at the ridiculous end that everything is fine. Usual Hollywood attempt to patch things up, forgetting about the debris of destruction it has left behind. Note also the pacifist hero of course really only doing the business when he temporarily forgets things and gets the swords out.
The theme of a primeval nature dominating, human dominating, and the lack of solution to this, is at least an interesting path, even if Miyazaki notably fails to make an intelligent comment on it. This film is certainly fun to watch, and he creates a nicely hyper-real world (or rather, ad hoc bits tacked together; one doesn’t get the sense of much outside of the frame) with a narrative that takes itself always a step further. If he doesn’t great cinematic images, he is led to create quite new ones in his meldings of non-human liquid forces, that does result in a genuinely different cinema and, for short periods, image production.
This is when Miyazaki is at his best; when almost forced to make new things with his images because of his remorseless narrative logic. This only happens for short periods, but it ultimately makes this film at least perhaps his most worthwhile. These aren’t masterpieces, but neither are they null.