My Neighbor Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki is a delicate painter of scene and story. His films are made for entertainment and operate within genre confines, but the differences between his films are so unique and simple that only a skilled artist like Miyazaki could make them important.

Consider My Neighor Totoro. A beginning and an end exist in two girls moving to the countryside with their father and then a rescue of the youngest girl who inadverteningly runs away to visit her mother who is in the hospital. Miyazaki has the basics of a three act structure, but he isn't compelled to follow it.

Miyazaki breaks the film into two parts where one ending deals with the girls jubiliation for finding sanctity with friendly spiritual creatures. The second story ends with the girls dealing with the pain of a sick mother and a desperate flee of the youngest to see her again.

I'm not even sure if the film is a true two story structure. It is hard to characterize the film because it is so deeply committed to the power of individual scenes. There are loose ends to the plot that a more practical filmmaker would have taken notice of, but Miyazaki allows the loose ends to become markers of the personality of the film. If the term can be applied to an animator of film, Miyazaki could be described as an impressionist with his films.

My Neighbor Totoro gets a lot of notice, but it isn't great because it is just a good wholesome kids movie. Critics love that one film can marriage geniune quality to a story that doesn't integrate troubling subject matter into it, but My Neighbor Totoro is another wonderful fantasy work for Miyazaki. The details to why the film is good are in the scenes.