VENICE, Italy - Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki foregoes reckoner graphics and returns to the pencil and crayon for his latest photographic film, an East-meets-West nod to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid."
Already a strike in Japan, "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea," open Sunday at the Venice Film Festival, where it is competing for the coveted Golden Lion.
"Ponyo" tells the story of a goldfish world Health Organization longs to become a girl after getting a glimpse of the human world when she is rescued from a jam jar by five-year-old Sosuke, a boy who lives on a cliff to a higher place the ocean. As in "The Little Mermaid," Ponyo's transformation is opposed by her father, an underwater sorcerer wHO was once human, and she moldiness make a sacrifice, in this case her magical powers, to become human.
Only true sexual love can warrant her transformation.
The film draws easy comparisons to "The Little Mermaid" and "Finding Nemo." But unlike "The Little Mermaid," Miyazaki's netherworld setting is not pristine. And dissimilar "Finding Nemo," he doesn't create an environment that approaches realism.
"The sea is something that is so very complicated. I simply thought it would be great to draw it by crayon," Miyazaki told a news conference Sunday. While he said that digital techniques are useful, they suffer at times become excessive.
"I think animation at times needs the pencil and needs man's drawing hired hand," Miyazaki said.
Miyazaki's animation depicts layers of sea life history churning one over the other. Waves transform into fish and back again, schools of fish surge as if a wave. Details keep it real and modern: a passing frigate in the background, a knocked-over flowerpot in a storm, a wiped out piece of ramen bonce on the coffee table.
Miyazaki acknowledged inspiration from the Hans Christian Andersen story, but said the law of similarity was only glancing. He said he was always bothered even as a child that Andersen's mermaids were deprived of souls.
"Ponyo" is adjust in modern-day Japan and Ponyo of course is no mermaid. She is a carassius auratus, with human face, whose transformation into a female child is evolutionary: first sprouting hands and feet that resemble those of a chicken and become more human as the warmheartedness between her and Sosuke grows.
Ponyo is all individual, showing her human side as she clings toddler-like to her first human possessions - a profane bucket, a towel and a lamp - and interacts tenderly with a human infant.
The movie's last message is one of absolute, unconditional love and acceptance. In the end scene, the five-year-old Sosuke pledges his love to Ponyo, be she pisces, human, or something in between.
"Ponyo" has been reported to be the 67-year-old Miyazaki's last film, simply he suggested other projects were in the workings, adding that he would rely more and more on contributions from his staff.
"I am 67 years old, when I do my side by side work, I'll be more than 70, so I probably volition have to have help from the younger generation," said Miyazaki, who took home the lifetime achievement award from Venice in 2005.
In Japan, Ponyo had taken in the equivalent of about C$112 jillion from its July 19 opening to Aug. 24, which its distributor aforementioned was behind the pace of Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning "Spirited Away," which reportedly took in about $293 million.
"Ponyo" is being distributed in the United States by Disney, but no release date has been set. It will start rolling out in European markets toward the end of the year.
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