The iconic status of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 Studio Ghibli animation was recently underscored by a smash-hit stage adaptation in London, and now the movie itself gets a theatrical rerelease. This inspirationally lovely and gentle film has a real claim to be Miyazaki’s masterpiece, or first among equals in his collection, with a simple hand-drawn design whose innocence only becomes more beguiling with repeated viewings, along with its bright, expansive, Gershwin-esque musical score. It’s the one whose realist situation is least cluttered by exotic fantasy creatures.
My Neighbour Totoro is about the enchantment of childhood and, as so often, presents us with a supernatural world which has made visible to children because of some pain or trauma in their ordinary lives, a world which exists midway between hallucination and reality. University lecturer Tatsuo (voiced by Shigesato Itoi) has brought his two young daughters, 10-year-old Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka) and four-year-old Mei (Chika Sakamoto) with him to a ramshackle rented house in the farm village of Matsugo, 25 kilometres from Tokyo, so that they can be close to the hospital where the girls’ mother is now a patient.
