Porco Rosso

I'm still making my way through the films of Hayao Miyazaki, and I've come to his 1992 film, Porco Rosso, about a great airplane pilot who happens to be a pig.

Miyazaki has shown repeatedly that he is fascinated with airplanes and other flying machines (his last film, which I'll get to shortly, is another), and this one is full of fantastic scenes of aerial daring-do. It is not set in Japan, but rather Italy during the 1930s. A great war hero, the title character, was turned into a pig by a magic spell, but still works as a bounty hunter, battling pirates. He has the kind of deadpan wit of a Raymond Chandler character (and is voiced gruffly in the English-language version by Michael Keaton).

An arrogant American flyer (Cary Elwes) comes along and puts Porco into the drink, forcing him to head to Milan to have his plane rebuilt. He's surprised that his usual mechanic's granddaughter (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) will rebuild and redesign the plane, and the two rivals will have a spectacular dogfight to settle who is the best.

As Miyazaki's films go, this one was rather slight and barely interesting, unless you're really into planes. It owes a lot to old films, such as having a scene with a beautiful singer (as the voice actress, Susan Egan, pointed out, she's an American actress playing an Italian character in Japanese film singing in French). But there's just not enough conflict to keep the thing sustainable.

I watched this film with captions, and was fascinated by how they didn't match the English that was spoken (for instance, Elwes says he is from Texas, but the caption says Alabama). I wonder how these things are done? Perhaps the captions are straight translations of the Japanese, while the spoken is an adaptation that does not translate strictly?