Theatrical Release Review: Princess Mononoke

It’s Ghibli Fest 2023, and yesterday I got to see Princess Mononoke in the theater! I’m kind of new to Ghibli and Miyazaki: I’ve heard of them, of course, but never actually watched any of their films until a few weeks back when Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was also in the theaters. (Coincidentally, I also rewatched Jurassic Park that same weekend. So it’s been intriguing for me to stack these three stories side by side and compare them. I’d also love to compare Princess Mononoke to Disney’s Pocahontas, though that might be slightly hampered by the fact that I’ve never actually seen the latter.)

For those who don’t know Princess Mononoke: A prince from an all-but-extinct branch of the Ainu saves his people by killing a demonic boar creature that attacks his land. In doing so, though, the prince’s arm is cursed: it becomes super strong, but the curse grows in it infection-like and threatens to kill him soon. The prince is exiled and seeks a cure. He arrives at a town where the people are working to turn iron into guns, and gets caught up in a three-way struggle between the townspeople, the local samurai, and the nature creatures and gods who object to their forest being destroyed. The titular Princess Mononoke is a young woman named San, abandoned by her parents and raised by wolves; hence she sides with Team Nature. The prince falls in love with San at first sight (even though she’s been drinking wolf blood), and tries to work out a peaceable solution for everyone. That’s the stage for the main conflict of the film.

Review: There’s a lot—a lot—to unpack in this film. Early on, Jigo the priest(?) comments, “Life is pain and suffering.” I immediately thought, “Oh, here we see a Buddhist influence on the film.” A moment later, though, he added, “The world and everyone in it are cursed, and yet we want to live.” That struck me as a very Christian idea (though not exclusively Christian): it describes the world after the Fall, in which the world and humanity are under the curse of sin, and hence pain and suffering, but yet everyone by and large wants to keep living and seeks to avoid death. Later on, we meet a handful of lepers, and one of them tells the prince, “I’m cursed too.” But this is a story about breaking curses, and so this is not the end.

(Spoilers from here on out!) Near the end of the film, the Deer God (an entity far more powerful than even the other gods in the film) is killed. Even as he dies, though, his power seeps into the ruined landscape and revives it, with plants and flowers growing supernaturally fast all over. And if you watch closely, you can briefly see one of the lepers inspecting herself and realizing that she is healed. The prince declares, “The Deer God can’t be killed. He is life. He is the god of life and death.” Again, this reminded me of Christianity: Jesus was seemingly killed, yet in that death he cured the curse; he’s also called Life itself in the Bible. And, of course, the Jesus of the Gospels cured lepers.

That was just one strand of analysis that I found as I was watching. There were many others, and I would be here all day if I were to list them all. I’ll just give a brief summary of some other key points: The film is Ghibli-made, and it shows. The art is gorgeous, the characters are fun (though not as fleshed out as in Nausicaa, I felt), and the plot is innovative. The prince and princess don’t get their happily ever after, but at least they can live near each other and maybe have a romance after all (which I’d love to see, and I’m sure there’s fanfic about this out there!). The themes of ecology and colonialism are at the fore, which should be no surprise if you know Miyazaki’s work.

And Princess Mononoke herself? I love, love, love her character! It’s one of the best fleshed-out in the film, and she’s so unique! She’s a powerful action girl, yet she straddles two worlds (wolf and human), and it’s tearing her apart. You can see the agony and the power raging side by side in her. And the scene where she chews up the prince’s food and feeds it to him mouth-to-mouth was so sensual and yet so pristine and innocent. I was in awe. At the end of the film, I wanted more: more of the story, more of the magic, but most of all more of Princess Mononoke!