Hayao Miyazaki, “Gake no Ue no Ponyo” / “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” (2008)
As always with Studio Ghibli films, and especially those SG films made and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, this fantasy tale of a goldfish who becomes a human girl is visually lavish, detailed and colourful, yet for all the care taken in its making, the film comes as a disappointment to those who value character and proper story development. Even though this film is aimed at families, and families with young children, its characters tend to be flat and rather stereotyped; and though the film’s plot centres around a natural disaster and its effects on a seaside community, its lack of conflict, drama and memorable characters renders it uninteresting, even boring.
Loosely based on or inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Little Mermaid”, the film follows the adventures of Ponyo, the goldfish who, curious about the world outside her own hermetically enclosed space enforced by her wizard father Fujimoto, escapes his guard with the help of her sisters and ends up captured by a fishing trawler. Trapped in a jar, the goldfish is discovered by Sosuke, a five-year-old boy living in a seaside town who cracks open the jar with a stone. Some of the glass cuts his finger and the goldfish licks the wound, healing it instantly. Sosuke names the fish Ponyo and, promising to care for it, takes it home which is a house on a cliff-top overlooking the ocean where Sosuke’s father Koichi is out at sea as captain of a submarine.
Eventually Fujimoto does track down Ponyo and recaptures her, putting her back into her bubble with her sisters and leaving them behind in his lair while he goes to consult with Ponyo’s mother, Gran Mamare. While he is gone, Ponyo (having tasted human blood) transforms into a human herself and breaks out of the lair to return to the seaside town to find Sosuke. The magic unleashed by Ponyo into the ocean causes a storm and a tsunami, the latter carrying the transformed goldfish back to the town. Ponyo is reunited with Sosuke and his mother Lisa who happen to be racing back home to escape the storm and the flooding. Lisa accepts Ponyo into her home and family, and then returns to the town to check on the residents of the nursing home where she works.
In the morning, Sosuke and Ponyo discover that their cliff-top home has now become an island surrounded by an ocean wherein dwell ancient Devonian-era fish. The children decide to search for Lisa in Sosuke’s toy boat made bigger by Ponyo’s magic. In the meantime, Fujimoto and Gran Mamare have conferred together and decided that Ponyo can live as a human, and the balance of nature restored, if Sosuke can pass a test – otherwise Ponyo will turn into sea foam.
The film carries messages of Nature as both a loving mother figure who gives freely and unselfishly, and as a monstrous force of destruction. If humans respect Nature, and seek not to exploit its bounty, the environment (extending to the sky and beyond to the moon and the planets) will be balanced and stable. Unleashing supernatural forces, especially through a medium too young and inexperienced to handle such forces, may lead to chaos, destruction and suffering. Other themes that are addressed – some of them on a very superficial level, admittedly – refer to family relationships, and the responsibilities involved in caring for older people and for children. The responsibility that is foisted on Sosuke to care for and love Ponyo is onerous indeed, given that he is only a five-year-old boy, and this climactic event – even in a fantasy story – transforms “Ponyo …” from a story of wonder and transformation into silliness and ridicule.
In its details of plot and character, the film leaves much to be desired: Fujimoto turns out to be not much of a villain (if he is supposed to be one) at all, and his line about restoring the Earth to a primeval oceanic paradise is forgotten. In order for the tale to resolve its contradictions and conflicts, a lot (presumably) happens off-screen, with Lisa apparently accepting the test set for her son by Gran Mamare and Fujimoto – even if that might mean her relationship with Sosuke’s workaholic father heads for the divorce courts. (It is disappointing to see that Lisa, with all her resourcefulness in looking after a remote home and equally remote husband and a preschooler son, working at a nursing home, and driving narrow, spiraling mountain roads with the aplomb of Formula One racers between her roles, meekly melts back into a submissive stereotypical Japanese-mother role – though having seen most of SG’s works, I shouldn’t have expected anything different.) Other potential sub-plots, such as the part played by the elderly women in the lives of Lisa and Sosuke, or Sosuke’s early encounter with a classmate, amount to very little. The children’s characters are flat and one-dimensional, with Ponyo not much more than a surrogate younger sister for Sosuke. Imagine the future family dynamics with Ponyo becoming a spoilt brat and Sosuke afraid to put her in her place in case she turns into sea foam! Having a five-year-old boy as the hero definitely poses problems for a story that should have some drama and conflict: a five-year-old realistically cannot be expected to face major trials without suffering some trauma, or needing help, and yet the film itself can’t really work without such trials.
The film could have worked much better if the main characters had been reconstructed as older children, able to face and to handle whatever fate, Nature and their own capricious parents throw at them.