NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (1984), dir. Hayao Miyazaki

A Princess Stuck in the Valley of the Suck

Quite possibly the best animated film made during the 1980’s, “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” crosses science fiction with war scenes of palpable emotional impact. The end result is more ambitious than expected, as the movie reflects on the hypocrisy of war, and mankind’s capacity of terrible acts during times of conflict. Even without too much graphic human suffering, “Nausicaa…” leaves a mark the way “Apocalypse Now” and “The Deer Hunter” left theirs. Yes, the movie also contains flying airships, strange creatures, and psychic powers, but writer/director Hayao Miyazaki merely uses them as context for the issue that’s really preoccupying him.

The movie takes place one thousand years after a fiery cataclysm decimates humanity. All remnants of the human race have dispersed, and a “Toxic Jungle” serves a natural barrier between nations. This enchanted forest contains giant insects, trees that would dwarf the redwoods, and plants that release strange white spores. Inhaling the spores over long periods of time can prove fatal, as the people of the Valley of the Wind, who used to live closer to the “Toxic Jungle,” know all too well.

In hopes of finding a cure for the lethal powders produced by the flora, Princess Nausicaa, pride and joy of her people, makes regular journeys to the “Toxic Jungle.” A top gun behind the controls of her jet ski/hang glider hybrid, the princess is even more likable for how much she clearly cares about her subjects. When she stumbles across the abandoned shell of an Ohm, an elephantine mollusk whose shell features translucent skylights for “eyes,” Nausicaa’s first thoughts have to do with the potential benefits for the valley. Unfortunately, casual activities such as this, and saving her friend from a ticked-off insect that chases him halfway across an adjacent desert, eventually give way to a more serious story. Very soon, war arrives at the doorstep of her home.

The kingdom of Tolmekia does not formally declare war on the Valley of the Wind. However, some very important cargo crashes down nearby, and their army rushes in to secure it. The siege leaves Nausicaa’s father, the king, murdered, and her people inducted into the Tolmekians’ master plan. Unfortunately, Tolmekia’s main enemy, another relatively advanced kingdom called Pejite, cannot separate unwitting foes from genuine ones, so they plan to wipe out the entire valley using a very clever strategem.

Miyazaki, who has addressed the topic of war in other features (most recently, “Howl’s Moving Castle”), paints the conflict in “Nausicaa…” as a potentially endless cycle of atrocities. Ironically, those who inflict there terrible deeds, the director argues, sincerely believe that humanity will benefit from their actions. For example, the Tolmekians plan to use the cargo, which they stole from Pejite, to destroy the “Toxic Jungle” once and for all. The way Princess Kushana, the officer in charge of the Tolmekian army, sees it, the forest must be destroyed, or mankind will spend the rest of eternity living at the mercy of the insects.

On the flipside, Pejite is ready to unleash a glowing, red-eyed Hell upon the Valley of the Wind. Their main purpose, however, isn’t preventing their rival’s machinations, but getting the cargo back, so they can level the “Toxic Jungle” themselves. Like the Tolmekians, Pejite also wants to return mankind to its former, loftier position. However, they are deathly afraid of Tolmekia being the sole possessor of a power as destructive as that cargo. To Nausicaa, who spends time as a prisoner of both kingdoms, the mutual willingness to kill innocents to achieve a goal makes Tolmekia and Pejite equals in her eyes. But Asbel, a vengeful young pilot/prince from Pejite, takes umbrage. “All the Tolmekians want is to take over the world,” he says. “We are nothing like them.” His words only serve to underscore his naivete. After all, since when does any participant in a war not view themselves in a superior moral light compared to the enemy?

Luckily, Miyazaki constantly reminds the audience what “fighting a just war” really implies. As the conflict between the two nations draws in creatures from the “Toxic Jungle,” it’s the weak who suffer most, while those in power get to indulge their most sadistic impulses. Whether it’s images of women and children huddled together, hungry and scared, while the menfolk prepare war plans; the old adage “burning a village in order to save it” brought to startling reality for heroes returning home; a battlefield littered with the corpses of soldier dragonflies (an allegorical shot that’s just as potent as what Miyazaki intended them to represent); or, most appallingly, a display of near-unbearable cruelty visited upon an innocent life for the expressed purpose of stirring up its comrades, trust that in “Nausicaa…,” war contains enough pain for everyone, regardless of gender, age, or species.

Indeed, like most modern war movies, “Nausicaa…” is a veritable minefield of moral transgressions. Even the titular heroine commits one. It’s out of character, of course; through most of the movie, she shows nothing less than absolute respect towards all living things. This one action becomes a blemish, something she spends the rest of the movie trying desperately to redeem. Interestingly, Miyazaki won’t excuse her simply because it is wartime. Human beings are not animals, he seems to be arguing. Our ability to rationalize, to accept the complexities of a given situation, sets us apart from the beasts, who are slaves to their baser instincts.

These baser instincts, such as the need for revenge, cause Nausicaa’s people to take up arms against the Tolmekian invaders. It seems that their doomed airship carried spores from the “Toxic Jungle,” spelling the end for a beloved orchard. Can Nausicaa save her people’s souls, lest they become beasts, or worse, standard-issue characters from a war flick? Miyazaki’s other films during the same decade (“Castle in the Sky,” “Kiki's Delivery Service”) tended towards happy resolutions, so don’t expect the writer/director to deviate this time, either, even if that makes “Nausicaa…” less tragic, and radically different, from quite possibly every war epic that came before.

Overall rating: **** (out of ****)

THE LADY VANISHES (1938), dir. Alfred Hitchcock

…but the ‘Master of Suspense’ Makes his Presence Felt

Imagine waking up and discovering that someone you know had disappeared. Worse, imagine trying to convince other people, only to be told that the person never existed.

It sounds like the premise of the recent thriller “Flightplan,” but it actually describes a Hitchcock film made more than sixty years earlier. In “The Lady Vanishes,” written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, Margaret Lockwood plays Iris Henderson, an American travelling abroad who stumbles across a conspiracy.

The missing person is a retired governess named Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), whom Iris befriends while staying at a hotel in a small European country. The next day, Iris takes a bump on the head, and Miss Froy comes to her rescue. But shortly after their train leaves the station, the kindly old woman disappears.

Miss Henderson insists she had a companion on the train, but the others in her drawing room recall no such person. Neither can the porter, nor anybody else, from the paranoid banister (Cecil Parker) to the fellows hurrying home to see a cricket match (Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford). Only Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a cadish musician who made a terrible impression the night before, reluctantly believes Iris’ story. While he has never met Miss Froy himself, a particular clue persuades him that foul play is indeed afoot.

As for the reasons that motivated Miss Froy’s kidnapping, let’s just say there is more to her than meets the eye, even as the movie itself has less substance than we might expect. Like some of Hitchcock’s best movies—“North by Northwest” springs to mind—the plot merely serves as a delivery system for the director’s particular brand of thrilling cinema. For a man with such prodigious artistic gifts, Hitchcock certainly had a great instinct for giving the audience what they wanted. In the case of “The Lady Vanishes,” he gives them suspense, laughs, images that linger in the mind. He even throws in a charming romance between the seemingly mismatched Lockwood and Redgrave.

A brain doctor (Paul Lukas), rendezvousing with a terminal patient in Prague, tries to convince Iris that Miss Froy is really a figment of her imagination. Is it possible Iris created her, that she is the result of her bump on the head? Or perhaps, considering those upcoming nuptials with an aristocrat in England, Iris is simply preoccupied. Could she be distracting herself, the better to ignore her dread? She admits to not loving him, but her father wants to put his coat of arms next to the company name.

For a while, Hitchcock teases us with the possibility that Miss Froy is indeed a figment of Iris’ mind. During the first scene, which takes place in the hotel lobby, she enters, briefly interacts with the hotel clerk, and then exits through the front door. Hardly anybody seems to notice her. Stranger still, Hitchcock has one of his technicians—probably sound man Sydney Wiles—turn off the boom mikes so that the music and some select noises overlap any spoken dialogue.

The effect is slightly eerie; and the director, superlative craftsman that he was, orders the actors to stay relatively still until Miss Froy leaves. Ultimately, he manipulates image and sound to completely undercut Dame Whitty’s presence. But something about her lingers in the moments after she leaves, like the remnants of a faded memory. Then the rest of the actors start moving, more sounds appear on the audio track, characters recite their lines, and things pick up.

Meanwhile, any doubts we may have about the disappeared woman’s nature only persist to a certain point, then the race to find her begins. Naturally, villains toss in a few unexpected curves to throw off the amateur sleuths, such as a doppelganger for Miss Froy. While her facial features don’t bear much resemblance, she wears a similarly colored outfit, and claims to be the one who helped Iris earlier. Iris insists that this newly emerged woman is not her friend. However, the train has yet to take on new passengers, save for the doctor’s patient in a gurney, and the manifest shows the same number of people.

So if the woman isn’t Miss Froy, why does she pretend that she is? And how did she manage to board the train in the first place, without either Iris or Gilbert spotting her? This is the most satisfying mind-bender in the entire movie, but to Hitchcock’s credit, he finds a way to explain it satisfactorily.

Another thing he does well is portray Iris and Gilbert as “everyman” heroes. Regular joes can show formidable intelligence, but the brain must serve as their primary weapon. The director seems to understand this; whenever the two stars have to get physical, Hitchcock boxes out the action in a clumsy, slapsticky, but believable way. If an exception exists, it is the sequence towards the end, when Gilbert climbs out the window and makes his way along the side of the train.

The camera shoots him from outside the locomotive. As he dangles between two windows, an oncoming train nearly smashes him. While this seems a bit forced, given that Redgrave’s character is primarily funny and romantic, one cannot argue that the resulting shot is a jolter. Hitchcock, who would create some truly memorable compositions and juxtapositions in future, better movies—a few of which also involved trains—was definitely on the right track this time.

“We’re not in England now.”

Indeed, the characters in “The Lady Vanishes” have boarded a train to Hitchcock-land. Here, unspeakable acts occur in places associated with “safe” feelings by the audience. Remember “Psycho,” and the notorious scene of Janet Leigh getting stabbed in the shower? It took theater audiences completely by surprise, since no one expected such a deed to occur in a clean bathroom setting. It’s not exactly a dark alleyway, where people get killed all the time.

Throughout his career, the effectiveness of Hitchcock’s suspense movies have had to do with confounding the audience’s expectations. The same way that the virginal white porcelain of the Bates motel held a certain unspoiled purity, the passenger rail in “The Lady Vanishes” gives off a cozy, hospitable vibe. In a place such as this, travelers and business-people enjoy comforts resembling home. One can purchase a drawing room with cushioned seats, or drink hot tea in the dining car. And someone like Miss Froy, travelling across the European continent, regularly finds yourself in the company of fellow British citizens.

As viewers, we are meant to ask ourselves, How can someone disappear from a place like this? Especially considering the presence of other subjects of the crown, who are also away from the sovereign state. One would expect countrymen to look out for one another, that nothing nefarious could befall an Englishwoman in the near-constant presence of her own brethren.

But herein lies much of the “The Lady Vanishes”’ humor: How these British civilians—even when they’re no longer in England—expect a certain standard of decorum to be upheld. As a result of their stiff upper lips, Miss Froy’s disappearance doesn’t arouse any outrage. After all, why should they waste their rancor on something that simply cannot happen to an English citizen? Like twits, they assume she must not be real, otherwise she would be taking her tea in the dining car, not causing a ruckus throughout the train.

This type of naivete especially applies to the pair of cricket enthusiasts, who hide in their cabin to avoid being questioned by Iris. These two played no part in the actual scheme to disappear the lady. However, they fear any answers they give will only lead to further inquiry, which might prevent them from reaching their cricket match.

Therefore, even though they had a conversation with Miss Froy, they agree with the brain doctor and Iris’ cabin mates, who say the missing woman must be a figment of the poor girl’s imagination. As one of the gentlemen puts it, “An Englishwoman doesn’t just disappear into thin air.” Indeed, Miss Froy did not. However, these two cricket buffs have the equation all wrong: it is possible for Miss Froy to be missing, and still be an actual person; it is possible for Miss Froy to be an Englishwoman, and to have disappeared from the train. But neither gentleman believes that one or the other condition can exist independently.

*** Warning! The following contains information of a SPOILOUS nature! *** Even after the vanished lady returns, they refuse to accept what happened to her. Iris and Gilbert try to explain, and the old woman herself clearly looks worked over. But their reply is fairly dismissive. “My dear chap, you must have gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere,” says one.

“Yes, these things just don’t happen,” says the other.

This misguided sense of immunity nearly leads to comic tragedy. Prior to the film’s climactic scene, Gilbert tries to warn everyone in the dining car that they have been detached from the rest of the train, and are now headed towards a trap. But even the most obvious evidence, such as how the car is rolling backward in the direction they just came from, fails to have an effect. “There’s nothing left of the train beyond the sleeping car,” Gilbert insists.

“There must be,” one of the cricket enthusiasts replies. “Our bags are in the first class carriage.”

Overall rating: **** (out of ****)

ROUGE (1987), dir. Stanley Kwan

A Ghost's Chance of Rekindling an Old Flame

In “Rouge,” a ghost from fifty years in the past returns to Hong Kong, searching for her lost love. No, this isn't a goofy romantic-comedy, even if the premise sounds awfully familiar. Instead, it's a highly-effective melodrama from director Stanley Kwan, as well as a star vehicle for Anita Mui, the late Cantonese pop singer. As Fleur, a beautiful courtesan who died tragically with her lover, Mui gets to sing, dress up in period costumes, and otherwise command the screen.

The story: Fleur's spirit somehow fails to be reunited in the afterlife with that of Chen (Leslie Cheung, from "The Chinese Feast" and "Happy Together"), her earthly paramour. Assuming he has been reincarnated, she patiently waits in the underworld until August 11th, 1987. Why that date? According to a diviner, whom she consulted while still alive, that is the soonest they can meet again on Earth. Fleur wants to see Chen one more time before returning to the land of the dead, where she will be reborn herself.

Of course, Hong Kong has changed a lot by the time she returns. Fleur requires a guide, and a meek ad man named Yuen (Alex Man) takes pity on her. At first, he doesn't know that she's a ghost; he dismisses her as a harmless eccentric, only to discover her true nature during the bus ride home. After that tense, appropriately creepy revelation, he still takes her back to his apartment, which he shares with his reporter girlfriend, Chor (Emily Chu).

The writers of “Rouge,” Tai An-Ping Chiu and Bik-Wa Lei, cut back-and-forth between Fleur and Chen, and Yuen and Chor, telling parallel stories. With the former couple, we witness the tale of their sad fate, which may not be as clear-cut as Fleur made it sound. Meanwhile, the other couple tries to figure out what really happened to Chen, why his spirit, after he died, was never able to find Fleur's. Relying mainly on Chor's journalistic skills, they locate several clues in places Fleur and Chen used to frequent. Ultimately, these lead to a surprising plot twist or two, which casts everything we were told in a different light. Friend turns against friend, lover against lover, and the climactic Peking opera movie set seems oddly appropriate, as the present literally comes face-to-face with the past.

But solving a fifty-year old metaphysical mystery, compelling as it ends up being, isn't the sole aim of the filmmakers. They use the two time periods, and two couples, to juxtapose love in the 30’s with the 80’s, to show how some aspects are different, while others have stayed the same.

At one point, the old-fashioned Fleur asks Yuen why he hasn't married his girlfriend. He replies that he doesn’t feel any pressure. After all, they live a staid, comfortable life already. They are even past the point of buying each other love tokens. In an earlier scene, when Yuen “surprises” Chor with a gift, it turns out to be an eminently-practical, but not exactly romantic, pair of sneakers.

By contrast, from the moment Fleur and Chen lock eyes, everything about their love affair vibrates with urgency. He publicly declares his affection for her after just one encounter, and showers her with gifts large and small (such as the ornamental make-up box from which the movie’s title derives). After Chen's wealthy family disowns him for refusing to call off the relationship, they continue their desperate clinging. Cinematographer Bill Wong accentuates their passion by infusing the 30's time period with lots of reds and golds. Meanwhile, he adopts conservative colors for the 80's, thus creating two very distinct moods.

But this does not mean relationships in previous times were better, even if the people involved may have shown more passion. Clearly, Fleur is more desperate about her man than Chor about her own. But a woman's role in 1980's Hong Kong has also changed dramatically since the 30's. When Fleur was a child, her parents abandoned her; she became a professional courtesan at the tender age of 14. She knows she must marry in order to become a "respectable" woman. If she does not accomplish this, especially while at the height of her beauty and popularity, she might be stuck at the brothel forever. A modern career woman like Chor never has to worry about suffering this kind of fate.

Perhaps, because love can be viewed more as a luxury than a necessity, Chor’s relationship with Yuen isn't nearly as urgent. Even so, both couples still have aspects in common, such as the need for physical intimacy. Indeed, during one scene, Fleur peeks in on Yuen and Chor while they make love. As she watches, the footage of one couple intermingles with images of the other. They become a montage of affection.

On the one hand, this sequence functions as psychological filmmaking, merging point-of-view shots with memory. But at the same time, it argues that love in the 80’s only seems staid and comfortable, that underneath, the passion that comes from feeling close to someone remains alive and kicking.

Overall rating: **** (out of ****)