Monday, 5 July 2004
Kiki's Delivery Service
Any country that produces cross-gendered super-powered teenage heroes, hero-worships a giant, rocket-powered, flying turtle or considers deadly-venomous blowfish the height of fine dining by needs must be deemed - and let's be honest here - not too right in the head. But like Jerry Seinfeld's wacky neighbor Kramer, the Japans of this world serve to make life more interesting.
Well, Kiki steps up to the plate and swings a homer: her mere presence makes other people's lives interesting. Of course, that's sort of what you'd expect when you consider that she's a pre-teen apprentice witch who makes broom-express deliveries while accompanied by her talking black cat.
At times, I had the impression that good ol' Kiki was a little soft in the head. But her work ethic and gentle perseverance ruled the day: the big city that she loves so much ends up loving her back. You couldn't get a better-spun morality tale if the Pope himself had written the story (though probably without so much of a flying-witch-and-talking-cats angle).
But this is Hayao Miyazaki's movie and it wouldn't be complete without all the trimmings. Sort of a cross between Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, this is a man who I'd want as a neighbor. Even his evil robot clone would be welcome to come knocking down my door to borrow a cup of sugar.
With Kiki's Delivery Service, we see the elements that will make Princess Mononoke so powerful and Spirited Away so... perfect: A world where the supernatural is taken for granted (and yet remains special), anachronisms that are oddly at home (a visiting Zeppelin, but no world war), and cultural references that feel so right and yet so wrong (some sort of a Utopian German town with Anglo and Nippon attributes thrown in). All wrapped up in a story obviously made for children but which doesn't take them for simple fools.
If there's one skill which Miyazaki possesses that I admire most, it's the ability to convey the feeling that he is speaking to the children directly. Parents (and other adults, like myself) are tolerated, even welcomed. But in a perfect turning of the tables, they are the outsiders who are treated with a certain loving condensation - much like the sleepy child who wanders in on his parents' late-night party. Is it any wonder, then, that the Japanese and French children alike - living their highly regimented lives - would flock to his films like they might to a pied piper?
Overcome your initial urge to be condescending: you can't help but eventually be seduced by the weird aura of charm radiated by Miyazaki's films, and many other products of their odd country. I, for one, would voluntarily trade my own world for Kiki's or Totoro's or Pazu's, or even Mononoke's - and most definitely for Chihiro's.
4 /5 - not Miyazaki's best - not by far - but has loads more of the childlike wonderment that Disney's cynically produced marketing extravaganzas lack