For Goro Miyazaki, the summer ended on a bittersweet note. This 39-year-old filmmaker had the pleasure of seeing his first movie, the animated feature Gedo Senki, or Tales From Earthsea, blossom into the biggest hit of the summer in Japan, as it rose to the top spot and took in more than US$61.4 million by the end of last month.
But even his success brought inevitable reminders that he is, after all, the other Miyazaki. His Oscar-winning father, Hayao, regarded by many critics as the greatest director working in animation today, has earned much more with his own hits. Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the popular Earthsea novels, on which the new film was based, went out of her way to make the distinction on her Web site, calling the father “a genius of the same caliber as Kurosawa or Fellini.” She went on to complain about the liberties Goro and his new film took with her work.
“Of course a movie shouldn't try to follow a novel exactly — they're different arts, very different forms of narrative,” she wrote. “There may have to be massive changes. But it is reasonable to expect some fidelity to the characters and general story in a film named for and said to be based on books that have been in print for 40 years.”
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
So the younger Miyazaki can be forgiven a bit of weariness. “Sometimes I wish hadn't entered the same profession as my father,” he said, speaking through an interpreter during an interview at Studio Ghibli, headquarters of Hayao Miyazaki and the director Isao Takahata, in this suburb of Tokyo. “I realized for the first time how difficult it is to be the son of Hayao Miyazaki. If I weren't involved in animated filmmaking, I would just have a simple, quiet, normal life.”
The film received an enthusiastic response at the Venice Film Festival this summer and is set for an eagerly anticipated European release in 2007.
Miyazaki based Gedo Senki primarily on The Farthest Shore, the third book in Guin's series, in which Ged, the Archmage, and Arren, Prince of Enlad, must defeat an evil sorcerer whose efforts to cheat death are destroying the balance that governs the realm of Earthsea. But Miyazaki added elements from the other novels and changed some aspects of the story. In the opening of the film, the darkness falling over the world causes Arren to stab his father; his quest for an escape from his crime leads him to Ged and the eventual confrontation with the sorcerer.
As a teenager Miyazaki read the Earthsea books, and he originally planned to make a faithful interpretation. “But as I continued on the project, I realized that adapting the story exactly was not really what I should do,” he said. “In order for me to speak to younger audiences, some changes had to be made because of the gap between when the book was written and when I made the film. I feel that metropolitan culture is becoming a dead end and there's nowhere to go. I can't just shout, ‘Return to nature,’ but we need to rethink how we can live in cities yet remain close to nature.”
Le Guin offered a balanced response, saying: “I thought the moral lectures in the film were spoken eloquently. In fact they were often quoted pretty directly from the books. But I didn't see how the action of the film justified them. They felt pasted on to me. I did not understand why Arren stabs his father, nor how and why he earned redemption.”
“I get roundly scolded on my Web site by younger Japanese people for not understanding the movie. These people don't know the books, so they're not confused, as I was.”
Toshio Suzuki, Studio Ghibli's president, acknowledged that the film had drawn some unfavorable responses. “The reactions from some animation fans have been very negative,” he said. “They compare Goro's work and his father's, just as fans of the novels complain that the film is different from the books. I discovered that many fans of Hayao Miyazaki cannot accept anything else.”
The younger Miyazaki said it was Suzuki who initially persuaded him to take the considerable risk of following in his father's footsteps.
“I had never thought about becoming an animation director,” he said. “I was deceived by Suzuki, who was very clever about making me feel I could do it.”
A slim, soft-spoken man, the younger Miyazaki has not yet said whether he will direct another animated feature, though his father and Takahata, the principal directors at Studio Ghibli, have been looking for younger directors for years, saying the organization needs new blood.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled
RSS