Smith MONONOOOOke

Princess Mononoke is a pleasant flick to watch. In terms of both production and and story, Mononoke's value is is immediately apparent. In the fashion of all great directors, Miyazaki couples his film's intrinsic soundness with a slightly more elusive message about the nature of humanity and its relationship with the rest of the natural world.

My favorite of Miyazaki's devices is his method of personifying the animal's of his world.  As a human, the animals portrayed in the film are discomforting.  Miyazaki cuts the human advantage in the circle of life by giving the rest of the animals not only an obvious increase in size, but also a cognitive capacity which mirror humanity's quite closely. In an even more outlandish twist, the animals are also able to communicate verbally with humans.  Not only are their mechanisms of speech similar those of humans, but also they communicate with the same vernacular.  By giving the animals such substantial advantages in the circle of life, Miyazaki presents the natural order with an invaluable opportunity for peace.

The unfortunate reality is that nothing really changes between humans and beasts.  Even with the ability to communicate solutions and intentions, the animal world remains vicious.  The blame does not fall solely on the humans, however, they are certainly characterized as the common enemy of the animal world.  Even under the oppression of their universal adversaries, the beasts continue their own struggle for dominance by fighting in species-related conflicts.

I would like to think that Miyazaki personified his creatures thusly in order to illustrate the true wilderness of humanity.  I believe that humans have really really lucked out in terms of evolution.  It is my opinion that any number of animals could have risen as the dominant species of the world, but our environmental conditions called for thumbs and a bipedal gait.  Consequently, we were given the the physical capability and the environmental pressure necessary to develop efficient communication an universalize intellectual content. It could have been any animal. I wish horses ruled the world. I would dig that so much. Everything would be pretty.