This movie doesn't seem like a step to the side, but more a step backward. If I had to arrange Miyazaki's movies chronologically without knowing the order, I would have put this one before Kiki, before Totoro, maybe even further back. Everything explored in this movie was done better, and earlier. I just don't know what to say.
The whole pig thing seems like a big distraction, or some attempt to skirt around commentary about humanity without taking it on directly. And the epilogue adds more cars to the train wreck, by adding a whole pig population to the end of the film. By the point at the end where they are hinting Porco has become human again, and is hiding out in Gina's garden, I just don't even care anymore.
I don't mean the movie is a train wreck at all. Its still worth watching, its still funny and charming and moving in many of the ways that other Miyazaki movies are. I know that sometimes big ideas can't just be pills shoved down the throat, and you need to use a little symbolism or metaphor to get those pills down smoothly. But it didn't work here. Did someone lose a drunken bet? Can this be something lost in translation? Doesn't feel like it.
Speaking of other odd things, I never really said much about Grave of the Fireflies, other than it was really sad. That's what everyone seems to say, soul rending level of sad. And its been a while since I've seen it now, but I still remember that terrible sense of doom that followed the children to the bitter end, and beyond. I know it wasn't Miyazaki that directed that movie, but it was his studio, so he must have had some hand in it. I've been getting a growing sense that many of his subsequent products are almost a rejection of that, in that there are no more unhappy endings. And most especially, terrible things don't happen to children.
Some time after I saw the movie something hit me - that movie is not really about the war, or the stupidity and tragedy of war. Those kids were basically killed by their own society, in what might be called a moment of distraction. It doesn't really matter what the tragedy was, but their aunt (or whoever) didn't have to throw them out into the street, without any knowledge of how to take care of themselves. It's like an evil step-mother story, that gets out of hand. A distracted and disorganized society is too busy with the war to notice them, and they slip through the cracks. Their plight is just as tragic, but the war seems so big an issue, that it is easy to forget that the war had no direct hand in their death.
After I realized that, the tragedy remains, but their deaths seem even more pointless. There's no message here, other than humans can be fatally careless and neglectful of their fellow man. I don't need or want movies to tell me this - the real world provides daily examples. And that makes me wonder if all I'm in it for is the mindless escapism. No, I'm in it for little more than just happy storybook endings, but I'm also in it for more than just watching two kids abandoned to starve to death.
Like Porco, Grave of the Fireflies is still worth watching. There are some moving moments, but there's nothing for you to keep, like with some of the other movies.
