The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Every year the Animation Branch of the Motion Picture Academy nominates a film or two that I otherwise would have never heard of, let alone seen. There are two such films this year--one of them is the Japanese film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

When the nominations were announced, and The LEGO Movie was not included, some thought it was a rebuff of CGI, and that the members, who tend to be older, wanted to honor hand-drawn films. That may be true, as Kaguya is handcrafted with pastels and watercolors. However, there is no animated film more CGI-based than How to Train Your Dragon 2, which was nominated.

In any event, the film, directed by Isao Takahata and released by Studio Ghibli, is luscious and contemplative, if not a little dull in spots. It is well over two hours long, and could have used a trimming.

Based on a folktale, the film is about a bamboo cutter who one day finds a very small princess in a bamboo shoot. He takes her home to his wife and the little lady turns into a baby, albeit one that grows very quickly. Later, the cutter will find gold and robes coming out of the shoot, and he interprets this as that the baby is a divine presence, and a princess. He takes the gold and moves to the capital, determined to make her into a noble princess.

But Kaguya misses her friends, and the cutter's attempts to be nouveau riche are ridiculed. Eventually other noblemen, impressed by her beauty, seek to win her hand, but she sends them on impossible quests. She is torn by her father's attempts to make her happy, and the simple life that really did make her happy. At the end of the film we discover her true origins, which I won't give away here.

The film resembles a picture book come to life. While so many animated films seek to render every detail perfectly, it's nice once in a while to see one that doesn't pretend to be anything but animation. The story's rhythms and structure are defiantly anti-Western--there's no perfection to it, and that makes it more interesting.

But it does lag at times. I think this would be a tough sit for a small child, even though the subject matter is perfectly appropriate. Perhaps showing it in installments on DVD would work.

The English-language cast is quite eclectic. James Caan, of all people, is the bamboo cutter, Mary Steenburgen is his wife, and Chloe Grace Moretz is the princess. It's always fun to try to guess famous voices--I missed George Segal as a high priest.