Film and Totoro
Lauren Wilford makes the case that not only children’s film, but film in general needn’t always follow narrative, that doing so is a restriction of its potential. More in her piece Towards a True Children’s Cinema: on ‘My Neighbor Totoro’:
As cinema grew up and learned to talk in the 1930s, it developed more rules and conventions. And as children grow, they learn how a movie is “supposed” to go; they internalize the beats of the structure. Most people spend the rest of their lives watching a type of film they were taught to enjoy in their childhood. Those who venture into the world of international film, art film, and counter-cinema may find that it’s not just about developing a taste for the slow or unusual, or getting out ahead of our desire for traditional narrative—it’s about getting back to our cinematic state of nature. Perhaps our mistake is in wanting to use films, to have them cater to us and keep us from boredom, rather than to see them, love them, and respect them as the free, precious, ephemeral things that they are.
All this may make it sound like I’m making an “eat your vegetables” argument for watching My Neighbor Totoro. I do think that most children’s entertainment has been pumped with a kind of spiritual and aesthetic corn syrup, in a desperate effort to make it go down easy. But I think the desperation is unnecessary, and has resulted in a sort of “Dorito effect” in children’s media: louder, faster, higher-stimulus, partially-hydrogenated entertainment is addictive, and tends to crowd out quieter pleasures.
And this sums up a scene that, after 1.5 viewings has already stuck fast in my mind, far better than I can:
I remember how Mei first met the giant Totoro—innocently, awkwardly climbing onto the belly of this unknown beast, but somehow sensing in the cadence and rumble of his powerful breath that he was good. As I watched Mei’s delicate physical and emotional arc over the scene—she goes from giggling delight to apprehension to full-throated roaring to, at last, a deep and peaceful sleep—I could feel love emanating from the frame. Love for Totoro, love for Mei, love for the forest, love for the viewer.