Hayao Miyazaki, “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind / Kaze no tani no Naushika” (1984)
Based on his own manga of the same name, Miyazaki’s film “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” established the style of the Studio Ghibli films with its compassionate young heroine, complex story-telling in which there are no clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and a strong environmental message that humans can and should exist together with nature and not harm or exploit it for short-sighted selfish purposes. The action takes place 1,000 years after our time in a post-apocalyptic world in which Nausicaä is a princess of a small isolated kingdom called the Valley of the Wind (hereafter called the Valley) untouched by pollution. A toxic forest known as the Sea of Decay and protected by giant arthropods called the Ohmu is spreading throughout the world through airborne spores. The princess is engaged in a long-term project to find a way of stopping the spread of this forest and help preserve her kingdom, and in doing so find a cure for her father’s terminal illness caused by the forest toxins.
Into this world an airship from the distant war-like kingdom of Tolmekia, carrying a lethal embryonic bioweapon called the Giant Warrior, crashes after being attacked by giant insects: Nausicaä tries to rescue the dying Pejite princess hostage who warns her to destroy the Grand warrior embryo. Next thing you know, the Tolmekian fleet, led by Princess Kushana and her deputy Kurotawa, moves into the Valley and occupies it, taking charge of the embryo also. Our heroine is taken as hostage and is forced to accompany Princess Kushana back to Tolmekia. The fleet is attacked by a solo Pejite plane and Nausicaä, Kushana and a few other Valley hostages barely escape alive. They all are lost in the Sea of Decay and Nausicaä determines to find the Pejite pilot. She does so but both are swallowed by quicksand and fall into a purified world below the Sea of Decay. Here Nausicaä discovers that the Sea of Decay jungle is cleansing the soil and purifying the water, and realises that the normally hostile arthropod Ohmu are protecting the jungle to stop humans from discovering the new world being born and trashing it before it can realise its potential.
Various other complicated shenanigans ensue, culminating in total war between the kingdoms of Pejite and Tolmekia, using both Ohmu and the Giant Warrior respectively to inflict massive casualties on each other and damaging the Valley’s environs. Nausicaä bravely stops the war but is severely wounded as a result and her life hangs in a precarious balance.
While the animation often leaves a great deal to be desired – Nausicaä looks far too young to be doing the things she does and she and other youthful characters look no different from most other young anime heroes and heroines – the landscapes and backgrounds are at least beautifully painted and detailed, and give an excellent impression of an alien world that partakes of futuristic post-apocalyptic dreamscapes and a prehistoric Carboniferous era of giant insects and forests of fungi. The behemoth bugs look convincing and move as realistically as their ancient forerunners might have done. Details of giant aircraft – a mix of old and new aeroplane technologies are imagined here – are a wonder to behold, especially during the attack scenes.
Characters are credible in their complexity and duplicity. Nausicaä shows unexpected ferocity in avenging her father’s death and Kurotawa is as much of a threat to Kushana as he is towards Nausicaä and her people. Other major characters such as Lord Yupa and the Pejite pilot Asbel are rather more one-dimensional; Miyazaki has never been able to handle male characters, particularly mature male characters, very well. The plot and sub-plots, however undeveloped some of these may be, convey something of the concerns of Miyazaki about the world we live in, in which great powers bluff one another, conduct their wars on smaller and vulnerable third parties’ territories and also engage in constant arms races that have the eventual effect of threatening the survival of the planet as well as themselves and the rest of humanity.
For a film made in the 1980s, “Nausicaä …” has aged very well: some of the electronic keyboard music, distinctively 1980s in sound, actually enriches the film with modern psychedelic melodic tones and ambience. The animated backgrounds and landscapes, and the careful depiction of the Valley’s culture hold up very well; on the other hand, there are very twee moments, during which Nausicaä either experiences anew a distant childhood memory or achieves spiritual union with nature, which deflate the film and risk turning it into a bit of a laughing-stock. The film’s denouement apparently did not satisfy Miyazaki and I suspect he probably preferred something more tragic which wouldn’t have gone down well with most film audiences. There are blunt references throughout the film to the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming of his Kingdom.
There is a strong though very naive (and in parts, wrong-headed) ecological theme: the Sea of Decay apparently has evolved to cleanse the earth of toxins left behind by centuries of human activity and the Ohmu exist solely to guard the toxic jungle so it can do its work. This suggests a utilitarian, even moral purpose for evolution. Such a view reduces the complexity of Nature, its creatures and its systems to a vague and simplistic concept in which everything about Nature is good or moral, and anything that humans create or do which might harm some of Nature’s creations is bad or immoral. The Ohmu play the role of avenging angels that more or less force humans to accept their place in their environment; there is no sense that they, too, might be individual creatures longing in their own way for freedom. The giant arthropods possess a hive mind which knows better than the wayward and often conflicting minds and behaviours of the humans; this also is a very troubling implication as it privileges a mysticism and group thinking without giving good reason why such thinking and behaviour based on consensus should be superior than an array of divergent individual opinions.
For all its good intentions, “Nausicaä …” interprets its ecological message in a way that fails to appreciate the complexity of Nature’s systems, the indifference of Nature towards humans, the possibility that there’s no such thing as evolution with a purpose (let alone a good purpose), that intelligent creatures like the Ohmu might be capable of self-interest and even malevolent and destructive tendencies, and that technology is as much a natural extension of humans as their arms and legs are, and can be used to work with and for Nature. I suspect this narrow view of Nature must have failed Miyazaki at some point later in his films because, as of this time of writing, his recent film meditations (such as “Arrietty”) on Nature show a deeply conservative attitude towards human capacity for change and a pessimism about the future of humanity and its ability to reconcile with the natural world.