So I was particularly interested to see how he closed his career out with The Tale of Princess Kaguya. I knew it was based on an old Japanese folk legend that I knew the basics of, but that template only told me so much about the way Takahata would bring that legend to life. What kind of story would this master tell to put a final exclamation point on a life full of question marks? I came in expecting both nothing and everything, both certain I wasn’t prepared for what this movie had in store and certain it would fascinate me every step of the way. In that sense, I was right on both counts.
But in another sense, I wasn’t prepared at all.
I wasn’t prepared for The Tale of Princess Kaguya to become my new favorite Studio Ghibli film of all time.
Believe me, I am just as shocked as you are. Had you told me prior to starting this movie that I would end up ranking it above Spirited Away, Ponyo, and Miyazaki’s own swan song with The Wind Rises, not to mention Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Naussicaa, and Princess Mononoke, I would have considered getting you professional help. There’s no way that’s possible, I would’ve told you. Takahata, of all people, overtake Miyazaki’s pedigree, when the latter speaks to my love of storytelling so directly and the former often barely grazes it? When even the best of Takahata’s past works always felt like they held me at a certain distance I just couldn’t cross? When pigs fly, my friend. And yet, here we are, so expect to be shooting some fresh-caught bacon down from the skies before much longer.
Because The Tale of Princess Kaguya didn’t just sweep me away, it caught my heart in its tender hands and sent it soaring into the light of the full moon, blinding me in a brilliance so subtle that I barely even noticed it until it was fully illuminating my vision. It struck chords in me I didn’t even know existed to be struck, hit me with feelings I wasn’t prepared to feel, and overwhelmed me in ways I’m still trying to process as I write these words. I was spellbound, awestruck, enchanted, moved, transported, elevated, healed, torn apart, sewn together, and left with the sensation that I had just witnessed a miracle in action. I almost don’t even want to write about it. Putting these feelings into words feels like I’m stripping away the magic of the unexplainable, like I’m intellectualizing something that can’t be intellectualized. The Tale of Princess Kaguya defies any easy attempt to categorize or define it, to pin it down to a single definition or sensation. Ask me on a million different days and I could give you a million different ways I fell in love with this fairy tale. But for now, I only have this one day, and I only have this one post. So let’s do the best we can at putting a definition on the undefinable and doing justice to a story I could never do justice to.
Based on the traditional Japanese folk tale of the old bamboo cutter, the story follows a husband and wife in ancient Japan, simple farmers and bamboo cutters, who make a miraculous discovery one day: a little baby girl inside a bamboo stalk. Considering it a blessing from heaven, they take the baby in as their own, and she starts growing at an exceedingly rapid rate. Before they know it, she’s a free-spirited little girl tumbling about the forest and getting into all sots of mischief. And the blessings keep coming, with the husband finding even more treasures inside the bamboo stalks he cuts, gold nuggets and fine clothes. Eventually, he decides that Heaven must be telling him to make this girl a princess, to give her a status befitting of her miraculous circumstances. So the family sets off for the capital to establish her among the noble class and make her a proper princess, to give her the life they think she deserves. But as you might expect, the life they think their daughter deserves ends up diverging spectacularly from the one she actually wants.
Obviously, this is a story you’ve seen told many times before. Takahata is not breaking new narrative ground with the archetypes and plot devices he’s exploring here. The headstrong girl who doesn’t want to be a proper lady, the disapproving parents, the stuffy traditionalism of the “adult” world, these are well-worn beats I’ve seen explored in countless different ways before. If I’m being perfectly honest, they’re normally story beats I’m not that fond of; I find they tend to make the narrative far too easy. The only real trials to overcome are external pressures that are Obviously Wrong and Bad™, so there’s very little drama in watching our hero struggle to overcome them. And yet, with just a subtle tweak of the sincerity gague, Takahata makes them sing. He understands instinctively why these tropes became so popular in the first place, the reasons they can make for a good story if used correctly. The parents don’t ever act out of malice, and with only a few choice exceptions for impact, the world is never outright cruel. They all genuinely want what’s best for Kaguya, even as they can’t see how deeply those desires are suffocating her. Takahata puts these ideas front and center not because they’re a cheap shortcut to easy conflict, but because these are the best ideas with which he can tell this story.
Because Princess Kaguya is far more than a simple movie about a girl bucking against her parent’s wishes to become her own woman. It’s a movie that explores the agony of restraint, of feeling closed off from the things you want to do, from the feelings you want to feel, from the life you want to live. It’s a movie about pressure and weight, of feeling constricted from every side of you, even from within, as you struggle to figure out how to forge your own path through a world where everyone has their own plans for you. But it’s also a movie about freedom, the joy of running through the grass with the wind at your heels, the almost catatonic giddiness that fills your soul when you finally feel the bonds on you loosen. It’s a tale of yearning against what boxes you in, reaching for the open air, breaking free and rushing along the whirling river of life, only to be yanked back in and have the door slammed shut on your face. That push and pull is at the heart of every conflict across the film; Kaguya’s desire to be free, desperately bracing against a world that unknowingly muffles her voice and constricts her breath, a stifling presence that even comes from within her, asking her whether she truly deserves to be free.
The result of this push and pull is, no joke, one of the most breathtaking exercises in tension and release I’ve ever experienced. It’s a film that builds on itself, with every ounce of freedom Kaguya earns met with an equal tightening of the bonds around her, so each new step on the journey is just a little bit more joyful, then a little bit more painful, then a lot more joyful, then a lot more painful, then stunningly joyful, then stunningly painful, until the tears finally start flowing and they do. Not. Stop. Ever. Once the dam breaks, it never gets shorn back up; I can’t remember the last time I film gave me such raw, wrenching emotional whiplash on a near constant basis. One moment you’re sobbing with joy as Kaguya spins in a field of cherry blossoms, awhirl in giddiness and light, and the next moment you’re wailing with fury as she crumples before an old friend, too scared to face him again in the light of who she thinks she’s become. Feelings circle back and redouble, growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment, until whatever grip you might have had completely loosens and the tide sweeps you away. There were so many times over the course of this film where I legitimately felt helpless, like I was a puppet with all my strings cut being tossed on the ocean of heartache. It’s the kind of experience that leaves you shaking, unable to fully process what’s happening until it’s already over.
And the stunning animation, drawn from traditional minimalist Japanese art, emphasizes every single break and burst. The pale watercolors and white space can feel constrictive, limiting, old and stuffy and outdated like the world that crushes Kaguya down. But they can also feel joyous, expressive, flowing and sketchy and unchained by boundary and form, erupting with Kaguya’s emotional outbursts, positive or negative, into a flurry of dazzling color and light that gives the impression of an unbound force of feeling tearing through the formality of the old and ripping it to shreds. My Neighbor the Yamadas also made strong use of this watercolor style, but the way Takahata pushes it to its limit here regularly left me breathless. There is so much humanity in every single movement, every single frame, every single splash of color. It doesn’t just feel like a stuffy old folk tale, it feels like a folk tale brought to life, ripped straight from the old page it was written on and let loose to dance in the atmosphere. This movie tells a very, very old story, but it makes every second feel as fresh and vibrant as when the ink was still wet on the page.
Still, while all that explains what makes this movie great, it doesn’t quite explain what makes this movie my favorite. It doesn’t explain the stranglehold The Tale of Princess Kaguya has over my emotions, how utterly it overwhelmed and subsumed me into its essence. In truth, I don’t know if I can manage one true answer as to why this movie hit me so hard in comparison to all of Ghibli’s work up until this point. Like all good fairy tales, there’s a certain intangible essence about this movie, a feeling that you can’t quite place, that exists in the netherworld between understanding and sensation. It’s the classic Isao Takahata question, the essence of his work that leaves you with unresolved tension as to how deeply you let it affect you. But whereas Takahata’s questions in the past have at best fascinated me and at worst bored me, the spiritual ambiguity at the core of Princess Kaguya electrifies me like few films or shows have been able to approach. It hits me so raw and powerfully that I feel like I lose control of myself experiencing it, like I have no choice but to accept the power it leaves me with. I cannot ignore this film. I cannot turn away from the sensations it left me with. And I never want to.
Perhaps it’s by virtue of this being Takahata’s final film that he was able to reach so deeply into it like never before. While it lacks the obvious life-imitates-art narrative arc of The Wind Rises, it still carries a powerful sense of melancholy that imbues every hard choice with an air of aching finality. And the further you get into the film, the more it starts to feel like a farewell letter, one last goodbye from a man who never thought he’d get the chance to say goodbye on his own terms. It’s the kind of film where it grows increasingly difficult to let go the closer it gets to its conclusion, where the bond it forges with you is so tender and intimate that the inevitable farewell grows increasingly more painful to think about. And perhaps recognizing that fact, without spoiling anything, the narrative itself becomes about goodbyes, about the complicated, uncertain, painful feelings of coming to the end of a connection and suddenly realizing that all you ever found there is all you’ll ever find.
And it’s that feeling, above all else, that sticks with me long after I’ve actually finished the film. Kaguya struggles for so long and goes through so much pain and joy over the course of her simple, remarkable life, but what is left to be said when it’s all over? How can she- or I- make sense of it all when all it ever was is all it’s ever going to be? Nothing in life lasts forever, after all; seasons change and life is replaced by life, the old is always fading way for the new. In the end, was I free enough? Did I love enough, laugh enough, run enough, fight enough, cheer enough, cry enough, feel enough to say it was worth it? Or were the pains and aches and bondage and heartbreak and sorrow and self-hatred all that remains in the end? Or more likely, is it somewhere in the middle, perhaps skewed to one side? I don’t know, and I don’t know if I’ll ever truly know. I doubt Takahata knew when he was writing this film; every fiber of it aches with the pain of not knowing, of facing the end of a long journey and wishing you could make better sense of it, wishing you could say for sure that you did everything you ever could, that you made the most of what was offered you. It yearns for closure, but it’s not certain if it’s able to find it in the end, and the ache of that not knowing makes every single emotional thread over the course of the film resonate at a fever pitch. It asks you to grasp on tightly to every moment of joy, every moment of sorrow, to hold onto to the crazy, frustrating, painful, exhilarating, momentous life you’ve been given, because only then can you say it was worth it in the end, if it’s even possible for anyone to say that for sure.
And I do hold on. I hold onto every shard of radiant laughter, every splotch of gut-wrenching teardrops, every happiness and sadness and fury and wonder and chaos and order and shame and awe of Kaguya’s ordinary, extraordinary journey. I hold onto the tapestry of her life, written in white and black, because I want to believe it was all worth it. I want to believe this extraordinary girl found her meaning in the end, even if I can’t be sure. Because Kaguya herself is, without a doubt, one of the most remarkable heroines I’ve ever encountered, bursting with life and passion and wonder and determination rendered so palpably by the animation that I feel it almost as viscerally as my own. I feel the joy in her wild, inhibited spinning and tumbling. I feel the anguish in her clenched teeth and shaking fists as the world closes down around her. I feel the deep ache in the slow loss of everything she tries so desperately to hold onto, and I feel the majesty in her finding it again. I feel the soul of her bright, piercing, joyous laughter bubbling up within myself every time she opens her mouth in happiness, and I feel the brightness of her smile in my own, brighter and purer than perhaps any other smile I’ve encountered over the course of watching anime. Yes, really, the exuberance this girl carries within her is that fucking powerful. And it makes me hold onto every last scrap of it, hoping against all hope that I can carry her voice over the treetops and into the distance, as far and wide as I can possibly travel.
Because I refuse to let her tale be in vain. I refuse to think it was all for nothing, even as I know I can’t be certain that it wasn’t. I refuse to give up on living the life I want to live, on carrying her spirit in how mightily she fought against everything that tried to tear her down, even when her strength was on the verge of giving out from within her. Other Ghibli films have inspired me, elevated me, stunned me, awed me. But no other Ghibli film- hell, possibly no other film, period- made me lay my soul this bare. No other Ghibli film sent me home feeling so raw, so awake, so in touch with myself and everything I wanted to be. It took us a lifetime to get it, but it was absolutely worth the wait. Isao Takahata’s final film, the end of an era for one of the greatest animation studios on the face of the planet, a deeply personal expression of universal anguish and empathy, The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a masterpiece unlike any other. I know most of you probably haven’t seen it yet, so believe me when I say, you have to fix that now. Don’t let this one fly under your radar; it deserves to be celebrated for the crowning achievement it is.
