The “god” of cinema Tilda Swinton would happily die watching: “Just play the music”
If you don’t know of Hayao Miyazaki, there is a fair chance you do know his 2001 animated classic Spirited Away. Alongside Paddington 2, it is probably the kids movie that you are most likely to hear an adult tell you is the best film ever made, usually while sitting in a vegan coffee shop in a trendy part of London before they pedal away on a penny-farthing.
But to give the Japanese anime legend his due, Spirited Away is actually considered one of the finest pieces of animation in cinema history, taking home the Academy Award for ‘Best Animated Feature’ in 2003 and being rediscovered by kids every year since, thanks to it usually being available to stream on Netflix.
It seems that the beauty of Miyazaki’s work, certainly in Spirited Away, is that even in creating magical worlds, he doesn’t shy away from realism. The kids in his films are portrayed as children are in real life, complicated, emotional and sometimes selfish. Often, his movies do not have good versus evil narratives or villains in the most obvious sense. And they are twinned with soundtracks that are almost ASMR-like in their ability to instil peaceful feelings.
Miyazaki founded Studio Ghibli back in 1985 with two friends, ostensibly to produce hand-drawn animated works, an art form that has been disappearing post-Toy Story in an age of computer animation. In the 40 years since, the studio has produced several internationally acclaimed films, and four of its efforts are now among the highest-grossing Japanese films in history.
One of Miyazaki’s earlier films for the studio is My Neighbour Totoro, a 1988 animation that sees two young sisters living in post-war Japan encounter spirits in local woods. Like Spirited Away it won multiple awards and is considered one of movie history’s finest examples.
Oscar-winning actor Tilda Swinton is certainly a fan. When asked by W magazine what makes her cry, Swinton replied: “Oh, pretty much anything by Hayao Miyazaki. When I met (him) – I’m so happy and proud to be able to say this sentence – when I met Miyazaki I told him with not a word of a lie that he’s a household god in my family.”
Swinton is no stranger to the world of whimsical of course, having starred in several Wes Anderson films as one of his cartel of preferred regulars in addition to making some oddball movies in the past few years like Problemista and Three Thousand Years of Longing.
Hers is a face that many movie lovers almost immediately imagine when considering fantasy in the medium, perhaps not a surprise when you consider her body of work over some five decades. She has appeared as ‘The Ancient One’ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, stole an entire movie as the terrifying ‘Minister Mason’ in Bong Joon Ho’s brilliant steampunk romp Snowpiercer and made for an all-too convincing White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia.
She has also made several contributions to the world of animation, including Anderson’s Isle of Dogs and Guillermo Del Toro’s recent adaptation of Pinocchio. So it is perhaps not a shock that she feels such affinity with Miyazaki’s weird and wonderful escapist worlds. Within them, she can even imagine either slipping on or off this mortal coil, adding: “If someone’s feeling, you know, low for any reason, I always say that if ever I’m in a coma, just play the music of My Neighbour Totoro and I’ll come around, you know? Or rather, I’ll slip away, one or the other. I don’t care, because that’s where I want to be”.
Swinton concluded, “I want to be on a Miyazaki hillside with a blue sky and those clouds going over, and that music.”
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