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Reviews
Tonari no Totoro (1988)
A nearly perfect movie
This is really my daughter's movie, and while she's watched it dozens of times I'm always happy to watch it with her one more time. I've seen many Miyazaki movies, but this is far and away the best. In fact, one of the best movies I've ever seen.
It's hard to explain what makes it so good. Somehow, every scene, every frame of the movie fits perfectly into every other. The story is simple and straightforward, yet dreamy and otherworldly, and at the same time realistic.
Two girls and their dad move into a country house. Mummy is in the hospital. Weird things happen in and around the house, suggesting the presence of supernatural, but benign creatures. The girls squabble, the neighbour boy is shy, Daddy is forgetful, Mommy is loving and remote, neighbour old woman becomes accepted as substitute Granny.
Gradually, tension rises, because mommy is not getting better, and the girls must cope on their own. The older girl has to learn to be a substitute mom, and it's not easy. The younger girl starts acting out, and eventually gets into difficulties. But Totoro knows how to help.
This must be the sort of movie that makes directors cry with frustration. It's so close to perfect, and yet it's impossible to see how they did it. It's simply a great movie, one of the best ever. Literally the sort of thing that makes you smile when you see the cover, even though you've seen the movie dozens of times.
But obviously you can put off the joy of discovering this gem for a while yet. It will wait for you.
Heftig og begeistret (2001)
You never saw a movie like this
This is the only movie I ever watched twice in a cinema. The first time I recall being confused at the end, being unable to tell if I was laughing or crying. Never, ever, did I have a movie experience like this.
Unfortunately, if you are not Norwegian, and you can't understand what the people in the movie are saying you will necessarily lose out on a lot. (A lot of inexplicable value and detail is in how they talk.) Also, if you don't know much about Norway and the arctic region there are lots of things you won't understand. As a an example picked at random, if you're Norwegian, the first 30 seconds are a pretty poignant meditation on the poverty of state charity in the richest oil nation on earth, but if you are not Norwegian it will be utterly incomprehensible. (On the other hand, it's only 30 seconds, so if you're not Norwegian you can just watch that floating past and ignore it.) What I really loved about the movie is the way it shows normal people (for Northern Norway, which means they're not really normal at all) not going about their normal business, but talking openly and honestly about the things that matter the most to them in their lives. The scene where the communist (at 70 degrees north near the Soviet Union during the cold war this actually meant something) ruminating about his freewheeling former life as a punk rock singer while brushing himself in the bathtub is priceless. 2-3 minutes of that alone is worth the price of buying the movie, watching it 5 times, *and* learning Norwegian so you can understand what the hell the guy is saying. ("Thinking back it often makes me sad. *leisurely stroke of the brush* Oftentimes it was just pure lust. *brushing soap out of his beard* You know, being the vocalist, you would be the most attractive. *breaks off, stares at soapy water*) This may sound ridiculous, but watching the movie it is painfully clear that for the guy in the tub, what he's talking about is the high point of his life, and here he's offering it freely, with no reservations, in the movie. It's only a few minutes altogether, and it alone is worth more than I could tell you. You may laugh, or you may cry, or you may not know which.
And so it goes, throughout the entire movie. The characters are frequently hilarious, frequently murderously honest (the drug addict talking about how he'd meet the coastal ferry on the quay every day in the hope of a talent spotter spotting him; the church organist on how the Luftwaffe put a metal plate into his head; the drug addict on the joys (and troubles) of having his own apartment for the first time; the convinced communist crying at a war memorial across the Russian border; the whole choir wordlessly aghast at the environmental destruction at the metalworks in Nikel...), and never anything less than absolutely riveting.
I think I could probably retell this movie frame by frame, despite having watched it only twice. Most parts of it are indelibly etched on the insides of my eyes. Forty years from now I may have forgotten the names of my grandchildren, and still remember the guy who keeps the photo of his first sweetheart (from when he was 16) on the living-room wall, despite his wife's disapproval (shhh! he tells the camera (the CAMERA!), and who still brushes his hair for best effect (with water) at 75, vain as a peacock, and who doesn't care at all that the whole world gets to see all of this.
And so it goes, on and on, throughout the entire movie. These people lay their lives bare in details so poignant and telling that the mere thought of it fills me with awe, and the end is sad because it means the end of the movie. It's touching, ridiculous, painful, and unforgettable. If I could only keep one movie out of the hundreds I've seen, it would be this one, and I would consider the loss of all the others pretty cheap.
If you can't understand Norwegian dialect, multiply the above by 0.8, as much of the nuance of what is said will be lost on you.