owen-watts

History's greatest throuple is the backbone of one of the most endearing Western's ever made. Structurally it's a bit stop-starty but the dynamite charisma of the leading men carries the thin surrounds into flight like a plastic bag dancing in the wind. There are some great set pieces dotted through this, some beautiful cinematography and a classical physicality that really works. It's interesting to see this was derided at the time, but it's aged a great deal better than most of the contemporary po-faced cowboy fare. The score can be a bit jarring but you can see what it illustrates quite clearly: outside of their escapades they are existentially adrift, but when they're together there is harmony.

I saw this first nearly twenty years ago, I was slogging through Empire's list of the 150 greatest films. The only Ghibli I'd seen before was Spirited Away and this lumbering allegorical nature epic lost me entirely. I thought it was intricate and beautiful but it washed over me like the sea. Pull forward in time and rewatching it with my infant daughter (clutching a stuffed tree spirit given to her by a Ghibli scholar that once lived in our building) Mononoke swept back into my life like an old friend. Crammed with almost an indecent amount of political nuance for a film that also features so much lopping of heads, it really is the complete package, it absolutely is a masterpiece by any definition. Ghibli, the legendary figurehead, and a huge number of their dedicated workers conjured something up in the 90s that really has very little equal. It could only have been made by those people at that time and it'll echo onwards forever. How it manages to forge narrative clarity from so many warring and disparate parts is a work of incredible craft and is still terribly moving. As we all fall over ourselves and bash seven shades out of one another, the earth is aflame around us, we all fight to rule the charred remains of what once went before. Our real villain is and will always be our hatred, not death itself, nor even greed. What a film. As my toddler waved to the film when the credits rolled, as is their fashion, they sadly said "Bye Bye Kodama" and I felt this terrible pang of grief. I'd never experience this film the same way as this and the old friend had left my life yet again.

Actually fairly solid for a Pocket Men film. The alien Deoxys is an intriguing creation with it's shifting modes and the central plot (and b-plots) all work well together. The Munchlax side plot is pretty smartly laid out and he's a cutie. Some good set pieces and also a few cheaper bits with the climactic cube deluge looking particularly dated.