Distributor: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Release Date: November 18, 2014
MSRP: $36.95
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Film: A / Video: A / Audio: A- / Extras: B-

What must it have been like to see Princess Mononoke in the fall of 1999 in American theaters? Even with an English-language cast including Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, and Billy Bob Thornton, it’s hard to imagine an animated film even remotely similar in theme or tone. Plus, within the first 10 minutes, there’s been a beheading. (Accidental, sure, but a beheading is a beheading.) The message of the film falls in line with director Hayao Miyazaki’s pacifist streak; the violence around it is frequently shocking, made more affecting because of how rare it seems when compared to Western animation. The destruction captured on screen is singular because it can’t be ignored, because there is no reset to a status quo. There is, in the closing moments, a mild sense of renewal, but the human world’s domination of its natural surroundings is still powerful and unstoppable.

Princess Mononoke is one of Miyazaki’s best films, in part because it continues to remain so singular. (There are a few films that clearly owe a debt to Mononoke, such as the closing number of Disney’s Fantasia 2000, which depicts life, death, and rebirth in the forest surrounding a tempestuous volcano.) The ostensible hero of the piece, Prince Ashitaka, is overcome by a demonic curse in the opening act, which he can only hope to remove if he travels west, to where the demon that now possesses part of him and gives him superhuman strength once resided. His journey leads him to Iron Town, where the citizens (all outcasts of a sort, from lepers to women who used to work in brothels) are in constant conflict with the gods of the forest, who are angered by Iron Town’s insistence on robbing the world of its natural, non-renewable resources.

What could easily be an environmental polemic is a wholly captivating and thrilling piece of cinema that remains unparalleled in animation. The sense of legitimately epic (in the actual meaning of the word) grandeur that permeates the story is matched by Miyazaki’s generous and complex characterization; the antagonist of the piece, Lady Eboshi, fights against the forest gods for honest and understandable reasons, not just to be a mustache-twirling villain. And the relationship that Ashitaka strikes up with San, whose nickname grants the film its title, is a true star-crossed romance, one that earns its pathos instead of forcing it. (What’s more, with that element along with the impressive and intense action sequences, it’s not hard to grasp why this film was Japan’s highest-grossing film of all time until Titanic came along.) Films like Princess Mononoke are so rare, and yet they prove so forcefully what animation can accomplish with the right minds at the helm. From the opening action sequence to the awe-inspiring and terrifying final act, this is a true wonder.

A/V

Just as Princess Mononoke is one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most beautiful films, so too is this Blu-ray. The A/V transfer is mostly quite exquisite; the colors of the forest in which San lives with the wolves, contrasted with the mechanical browns of Iron Town, are immaculately revived in HD. And although this film included some digital-based elements, the transfer doesn’t ever appear overly smoothed out, or generally unnatural relative to the original print. The audio comes across as equally impressive; the cacophonous noise created by the many tendrils of the monstrous demon is appropriately disturbing and nearly deafening in certain moments.

Extras

As much as Disney impresses with its A/V transfer of Princess Mononoke, there’s only one special feature of note on the disc, and that’s the original storyboards. Getting to watch the film again in this rough cut is plenty fascinating, of course; however, it’d be nice if there were literally any new features here. Instead, there are a handful of features from the “classic DVD,” including a documentary of Miyazaki traveling to North America in the fall of 1999 to promote the film, all the way from the Toronto International Film Festival to Los Angeles. There are also a handful of Japanese and English trailers and TV spots, as well as a quick featurette focusing on the cast of the English-language dub, but really, this is pretty much a letdown aside from the storyboards.

Overall

Princess Mononoke remains one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most startling films, a grand epic in the style of Akira Kurosawa that ends up a polemic about the destructive force of humanity against the pristine beauty of the natural world. Though the special features are woefully lacking, simply because it’s the film’s first time on Region A Blu-ray, this disc is a must for any Ghibli fan.