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Speaking of classics: My Neighbour Totoro is definitely one of them. It may be by the standards of anime an old film, released back in 1988. It is certainly a product of it's time, and it's setting in countryside Japan of the fifties or sixties makes this even more apparent. Villagers work hard the rice fields and cultivate their own vegetables on their small patches of land. Not each house has running water, only the central post office has a telephone, but where even then the villages were connected to the cities by a well functioning train and bus system.
It is into this picturesque, but also hard-working rural environment that Tatsuo Kusakabe and his two little daughters Satsuki and Mei move. Watching the film with the kids, their first question already a few minutes into the show was - where is the mother? We see the father and his two daughters move into an old, decrepit country house that he has just bought, we see them cleaning up and moving their furniture in, but we immediately sense that someone is lacking.
It is only well into the film that we learned the truth that we have suspected from the start. Yasuko, the mother, is in hospital, a long bike ride from the family's new home. We see the father and his two daughters mount a bike all together to make the first trip to were Yasuko is trying to get better. While we never learn what she's suffering from, her ethereal appearance makes it clear that she's far from well. Illnesses such as pneumonia come to mind that in the fifties - and even today for that matter - could still be lethal.
It is against this backdrop of offer potential loss and even death that the childhood of Mei and Satsuki unfolds. We see how they settle into this center and familiar environment how they strike up her friendships with their neighbours and how they begin to blend into the countryside. We also see very clearly the differences and character and age between the two sisters. Satsuki has aged beyond to the ten or so years that she might have. She is truly the older sister who helps her father in the housework and tries her best to look after her spontaneous and strongly willed younger sister.
Their father does his very best two support his daughters in this difficult situation. Fortunately, his work as university professor in Tokyo permits him to largely work or from home and go to university only one or two days per week, but of course he still has to work and prepare his research. So, especially Mei, who isn't in school yet, has a lot of for free time on her hands. She uses this time to explore the vicinity and of the house and soon discovers the gigantic tree that overshadows sir not only the house but almost the whole village. Even on moving in Mei and Satuski encounter small dust spirits that live in the dark and move out once the family lets light in.
These spirits are visible only to children, and even Satsuki seems at times to have problems seeing them the same way that Mei does. It's not astounding that it's Mei who discovers the secret path into the tree and the hideout of Totoro, a mysterious gigantic bear-like being. She is not afraid of Totoro, who turns out to be a tree spirit if not outright a tree god (kami).
I'll leave it at that with this review. Some things are difficult to describe in words, and Miyazaki's magic painting of the scenery is among them. It shows a childhood that is both happy and sad, full of joy and worry in equal measure - a masterpiece to be experienced, not described.
Official website of the film at Ghibli studio (in Japanese)
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