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| Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 118 |
| Public Rating: 8.47 (30 votes) |
Director: Hayao Miyazaki |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Animation/Fantasy |
Year: 1984 |
| Writer(s): Hayao Miyazaki |
| Distributor: Disney Studios |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Hayao Miyazaki’s science fiction/ecological fable, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind ("Kaze no tani no Naushika"), based on a sprawling, seven-part, thousand page manga penned and drawn by Miyazaki himself, is the near-perfect synthesis of ambitious, epic storytelling, compelling, multi-faceted characters, and breathtaking action sequences, most of them in the air, or combining ground and air action. Science fiction fans might notice similarities to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Frank Herbert's Dune, but those similarities are superficial at most, and do little to detract from Miyazaki's accomplishment. Certainly, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind isn’t without its flaws, due to the need to compress and prune a complex storyline with multiple characters, subplots, settings, scenes and dialogue into a two-hour feature-length film, and Joe Hisaishi’s misguided forays into eighties synth-pop and world music, including the egregious overuse of an Indian sitar for the theme music for the film’s non-human antagonists.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is set in the distant future, as the earth and its remaining inhabitants recover from the effects of a devastating world war and centuries of environmental pollution. The Valley of the Wind is a small, but thriving, enclave modeled on an agrarian monarchy, with Princess Nausicaä (voiced by Alison Lohman in the English-language dub) the heir apparent to the ailing King Jil. Nausicaä’s friends and allies include Lord Yupa (Patrick Stewart), a sword master whose lower face is covered by an enormous, bushy mustache, and Mito, her gruff, but loyal, second-in-command (Edward James Olmos). The sea on one side and the forest on the other protect the kingdom from interlopers and a vast, fungus-covered forest that has covered most of the earth’s surface. Giant, winged insects and the Ohmu, armor-plated larvae-like insects, protect the fungus-covered forest (the Ohmu resemble the larvae stage of one of Godzilla's recurring antagonists, Mothra). The humans in the valley and the insects live in an uneasy truce, aided by Nausicaä’s intuitive understanding of the natural world (she can read the Ohmus' emotions and soothe them). Nausicaä's abilities also extend to her innate ability to ride the winds in her glider (giving Miyazaki the opportunity to capture Nausicaä’s soaring in flight over the verdant fields of her valley kingdom, and in energetic dogfights throughout the film).
Two nearby kingdoms, Torumekia and Pejite, see the encroaching forest (and the insects) as a threat that must be eliminated, despite repeated failures to burn or otherwise destroy the forest. The Toremekians, led by the vengeful, warrior princess Kushana (Uma Thurman), have set in motion the final battle between the humans and the insects, with Nausicaä's kingdom caught in the middle. Princess Kushana foreshadows a similar character, Lady Eboshi from Miyazaki's later film, Princess Mononoke (in Miyazaki’s films, men do not have an exclusive premium on aggressive, destructive impulses), both in her warlike impulses and unwavering faith in technology to solve large-scale problems. In the first of several reversals, a Toremekian airship crash-lands in the valley, leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. Princess Kushana arrives in full battle gear with a massive fleet of airships, tanks, and infantry to search for the cargo of the fallen airship. Nausicaä's peaceful, lightly armed kingdom offers little resistance.
With Nausicaä's fragile world in tatters, Nausicaä must leave the valley to search for help to stop Kushana’s plans for total war. On her adventures, Nausicaä encounters a gunship pilot from a rival kingdom, Asbel (Shia LaBeouf), whose own people, the Pejite, have suffered at the hands of the Toremekians. Circumstances dictate that Nausicaä and Asbel spend time together in the poisonous forest, where Nausicaä makes a startling discovery about the relationship of the insects, the forest, and the earth itself. But a series of obstacles await Nausicaä and Asbel, in the sky and on the ground, with human duplicity and hubris undermining whatever chances of peace still exist between the opposing forces.
In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki’s recurring, obsessive, concerns with war, environmental degradation, and human nature are raised from the level of subtext to text, sometimes heavy-handedly. Thankfully, Miyazaki keeps the sermonizing to a tolerable level, allowing his themes and ideas to organically emerge from the central conflict between radically different worldviews, as represented in Nausicaä, who favors accommodation and reconciliation, and Kushana, who prefers confrontation and conflict. Even then Miyazaki's sermonizing through his characters rarely distracts from the sweep of the main storyline or from the traditional, hand-drawn animation. The animation here emphasizes detailed, fully realized world, inventive character (human and non-human) designs, and acrobatic action sequences. Following traditional Japanese animation, however, the female characters are drawn simply (and tend to resemble one another), followed by the more complex, distinct male characters and the non-human characters (e.g., the giant flying insects and the armor-plated Ohmus) and objects (e.g., the warships and gunships). Miyazaki's inclination to sermonize aside, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind indisputably places him in the front rank of visual storytellers, whatever the medium or the genre.
© Mel Valentin, 8th March, 2005
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 Printable Version
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* Available subtitles: English
* Available Audio Tracks: Japanese (Dolby Digital 2.1 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 2.1 Surround)
* Original Japanese 117 minute version in both Japanese language and new English soundtrack
* Behind the scenes of the English voice recording
* Complete storyboards
* "Birth of Studio Ghibli" featurette
* Japanese trailers
* Number of discs: 2
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