Valley of the Wind
Recently I watched the “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” a film by Hayao Miyazaki. With the release of Miyazaki’s latest movie Ponyo, I wanted to take a look at some of his other films. I started to watch Nausicaä and realized I had seen it years before. Looking back I did not get the full impact of the movie until now. Partly because the original American release was missing 20 minutes and titled “Warriors of the Wind.” Hollywood/Disney did not think Americans would get it.
This movie is beautiful. Not only is it aesthetically wonderful, but the story is compelling on many levels. It takes place in a time unrecognizable to us today. The world has been completely changed due to an apocalyptic event and the birth of a poisonous forest dominated by giant insects. The source of these epic problems is man and his need to consume. I have read and seen several apocalyptic style books and movies over the last couple years. The great ones being “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy and “I am Legend” (original book) by Richard Matheson. These stories are dark and gritty and show the struggle of humanity’s last days. The next phase of the Earth is desolate and empty of what we humans consider to be beautiful.
What Nausicaä shows is that the earth will continue on and it could very well be beautiful without us. The poisonous forest teem with a brand new life looking like an alien landscape that is deadly to humans. It gives a glance of how humans would struggle with a new paradigm of our own creation. What we see as antagonistic like a poisonous forest and giant insects, are a way for the Earth to bring balance back to its’ ecosystem. How do we fit into this? Do we continue to struggle for our normal way of life? Do we find a way to have a symbiotic relationship with the evolution? Nausicaä does a great job of showing how hard those decisions are and how we can be completely blind to the environment around us. Often times those answers are sitting right in front of our faces. Let us hope it does not take a thousand years for us to figure it out like in the movie.