orco Rosso announces its playful, harmless tone early on. A band of air pirates hijacks and robs a ship, taking 15 young schoolgirls hostage, and a famed bounty hunter is hired to deal with them, in a scenario that sounds like the start of a grim action movie. But the schoolgirls are clearly delighted by the outing, and they gleefully run roughshod over the friendly pirates, who take the whole unmanageable group rather than a handful of them because "it's not nice to separate them from their friends." No one is hurt or even seriously frightened as the bounty hunter Porco Rosso (Keaton) saves the day and then tries to deal with 15 happy, wiggly, independent children who utterly disregard his orders.
But this isn't exactly a lighthearted comedy either. Set around the Mediterranean circa 1930, "when seaplanes ruled the waves," Hayao Miyazaki's 1992 animated film follows the personal adventures of a wanted Italian Air Force deserter, a gruff, appetite-driven pilot who also happens to be an anthropomorphic pig. Early on, Porco's old friend Madame Gina (Egan), a well-respected restaurateur and singer, mentions the curse that changed him; she still remembers his human days. But little more is said about the event, and Porco himself shrugs dismissively when asked how he might be made human again. He makes no secret of his bitterness as he repeatedly uses the excuse "I'm a pig, not a person" to justify his chronic bad behavior—and possibly to punish himself for it.
He's a lousy hero, but an excellent pilot, as the air pirates of the Adriatic know well. After their latest defeat at Porco's hands, they band into a loose, competitive federation and hire an arrogant American (Elwes) to shoot Porco down. After an inconclusive battle, Porco takes his badly damaged plane to an old Milanese friend named Piccolo (Stiers), but the repairs are turned over to Piccolo's eager 17-year-old granddaughter, Fio (Williams-Paisley). As set in his ways as Porco is, Fio's energy and faith begin to make a difference in his life.
Disrespectful meddling
Porco Rosso is an unusual project for Hayao Miyazaki; apart from Castle of Cagliostro, it's his only feature that centers on a fully adult male, and apart from Porco's porcine visage, it has virtually no fantasy elements. It's also one of his most shapeless movies; while it does follow a contiguous series of events, it's not particularly plot-driven. It's more an excuse for a rapturous visual investigation of one of the director's favorite subjects—flight—than an adventure in Miyazaki's usual sense. Which may have something to do with the film's origins as an in-flight short for Japan Air.
Still, Porco Rosso has all the hallmarks of a Miyazaki film: Charming, energetic, driven characters, a set of evildoers who are basically lazy good guys at heart, a rapturously optimistic worldview and terrific animation, particularly during the dynamic aerial dogfights. Miyazaki movies all show his fascination with things that soar through the air, from dragons to witches' brooms to skycraft, and this film particularly focuses on the mechanics of airplanes. The visuals are beautiful, and as charming as the story itself.
Disney's release leaves a few things to be desired: The voices are exaggerated and cartoony, with silly, overdone accents, and the English dub has been needlessly rescripted. Sometimes it's unnecessarily mean-spirited: When Porco re-encounters a familiar trio of old ladies, he affectionately says, "Grandma! The angels haven't come for you yet?" in the subtitled translation, but smirks, "Are you girls really still alive?" in the dub; when he asks if they've come to help fix his plane, they nod and say, "To buy things for our great-grandchildren!" in the sub, but cackle, "Yeah, we need to get some poker money!" in the dub. At the same time, references to violence are softened to a laughable degree. It's good to see Disney finally making Miyazaki's stellar, memorable works available to the public, but it's still a pity they don't respect the source material as much as they might here, and that someone thought snideness and censorship would somehow improve Miyazaki's uniquely innocent and joyous tone.
Watching Porco Rosso and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind back to back, I was struck by how much Fio resembles Nausicaä. Like Disney movies, Miyazaki films have a distinct look, and characters often resemble each other somewhat, but Fio and Nausicaä could be long-lost twins, in attitude as well as looks.
— Tasha
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Also in this issue:
The Cat Returns
and
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
