Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Mononoke Hime

Mononoke Hime was an interesting film... thank goodness I was able to watch the Japanese language version of the film with the literal english sub-titles. The few clips from the featurette (basically a 5 minute promo film about how great the english dub version is and how much fun it was to make... gag) reminded me how much the American entertainment industry is in the habit of "dumbing things down" for their viewers (basically, they treat the audience like imbeciles...)... because if they make things too complicated they fear the audience will get lost.

Basically, the dubbed version of the film completely changes the meaning of a lot of the actual Japanese... which I'll get into specifics after I watch it once or twice more (one of the sub-title tracks is, I think, the version of the english dubbed track so I can listen to the japanese and compare it to what the english actors ended up saying).

I still don't completely understand the story though... (or why the hero acted as he did, his motivations for helping who he helped or the outcome that he was trying for). It's almost as if the hero was completely amoral (possible), trying to win the heroines heart at the same time trying to help the people who were destroying the forest... I think there's some historical background that is not made clear in the film that would explain some of this if I knew the era better when this is supposed to take place. I never felt myself rooting for any of the characters in the film other than the hero, and he perplexed me at times.

posted by Wuphon's at 10:43 PM