Awareness of our effect on the world's ecology has been growing for a good few decades now. One of the best examples of a director influenced by this is Hayao Miyazaki. Any of you who have seen his immensely popular movies might have noticed that he is a fellow tree hugger: Princes Mononoke, Laputa Castle in the Sky and my personal favorite Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
These all have as a core theme man's conflict with nature, and the importance of recovering and maintaining that link. Obviously the thing that makes them work as movies is the awesome animation, music, characters, plot and general conceptual imagination, but Miyazaki's passion for the subject is evident.
As mentioned before only good movies (as certified by me) will make an appearance, so
Wall-E
Avatar NO!
You've probably noticed these are all kids movies. I will endeavour to find adult examples, but I think the point is that for older people these messages come across as too preachy. Anyway...
Nerdy Analysis:
Princess Mononoke: Set at a time where industrialization is just starting to flex it's muscles and guns are in their infancy, the fantasy addition of massive talking god-beasts is a very cool way to personify the anger nature would feel if it had sentience. The best thing about this is the ambiguity of the character types, apart from Ashitaka the heroic prince who is the clear sanctimonious good-guy (perhaps making him a bit one-dimensional), the literal conflict between the Princess (the hippee) and Lady Eboshi (the business type) and Ashitaka's time spent with each one shows everyone's argument as valid. The addition of the cursed demon arm on Ashitaka does make him a more interesting character, but I guess the moral is that conflict begets conflict soo...
Spoiler alert: Ashitaka's desire for peace is acknowledged by the ultimate personification of nature 'the Forest Spirit' when it removes the curse. The final demise of the great animal gods at the hands of the Forest Spirit and the destruction of Iron Town are showing the error of extremism in the debate over environmental conservation. Through Ashitaka's example and the Forest Spirit's death everyone learns to sit somewhere near the fence, kiss and be friends (cue vomit). Nice happy ending and though a little contrite Miyazaki's probably right.
Nausicaa: A very early Miyazaki work, this was a labor of love and he had to make a whole manga series before he could convince someone to give him the money for this. Its a post apocalyptic world a thousand years after a massive war using ridiculously powerful giant warriors (nukes) which led to a toxic jungle filled with massive practically invincible insects called Oms. It's a world of 80's electronic music and weird flying machines. Humans live on the edge of the toxic jungle spiraling towards extinction as the jungle and its poison spreads. Nausicaa is the princess of a small valley protected by wind coming in off the the sea which blows away the jungle's poison. The analogy is almost literal in this anime: if you pollute the world you will damage the systems we rely upon to the extent that we can't survive. This movie also shows a relatively even handed approach to characters, although the Tolmekians are clearly the baddies (note: weird how the baddies in a Japanese movie are from the far west and 'warlike' and the baddies in a western fantasy e.g. Lord of the Rings are from the far East: the 'Easterlings'). Though this is a kids movie it doesn't insult intelligence or dilute truths the way a lot of kids movies do. The general level of detail and imagination here is also phenomenal even if the animation is not as good as his later movies.
Spoiler alert: The discovery of a giant warrior egg presents humanity with a final choice, to make the same mistake again by using this unnatural power to destroy the jungle or to rescue a baby Om and make a sacrifice by way of apology, as Princess Nausicaa does by showing willingness to sacrifice herself. Her sacrifice is rewarded by being saved and fulfilling some ancient prophecy. WE NEED ANOZER BUCKET.
Avatar: I know I said Avatar would not feature but I feel the need to justify that position.
When Avatar came I out I was in Vietnam and even if there was a cinema showing it I didn't want to use up my time there sat indoors watching a Hollywood blockbuster. However I was excited by the prospect of a movie set on an alien world with amazing special effects (this was before everyone got bored of 3D again), and when I heard that it was about environmentalism too I thought great! Being honest I am a sucker for amazing visuals (although Michael Bay is slowly changing that) and when I finally returned to Blighty and watched Avatar I thought the conceptual design and look of the movie were amazing. At the half way mark I even thought James Cameron might have finally grown up. Blowing things up isn't the answer and the embodiment of nature, a mother earth goddess called Eeywa (or something), doesn't take sides.
As the story went on I could forgive the one-dimensional cliche of an army general bad guy trying to blow up the blue cat's home because I thought there would be some kind of intelligent resolution.
Of course I could not have been more wrong.
Spolier alert: Sam Worthington's character proves to all his disillusioned aborigine mates that he is in fact the guy to save them all because... he's got the biggest dragon. Then when the bad guy turns up to destroy them all and it looks like they're going to loose the battle, the 'impartial' earth-mother goddess sets all her beasties against the naughty humans. This final development just feels like convenient way to make the final scene flashy, regardless of whether it's internally consistent. There's no interesting middle ground here to hold any baring over the debate back on planet Earth, only black and white. In the end the message is (if anyone cares between each million dollar explosion) that mining for resources in nice habitat and destroying indigenous people's homes is wrong. Thanks for that Jim.
Wall-E: Animation in all it's forms (stop animation, hand-drawn, computer generated) still appeals to me. The attention to detail and close mimicry or exaggeration of observed movements from the real world is surely art. With that in mind Wall-E wins lots of points in my book. For some the essentially silent nature of this film is tiresome, but clever ways to tell the story are used instead (e.g. video boards, relics of society). It depicts a post apocalyptic future where man has run away from his problems and left Earth one huge rubbish dump. The huge towers made of ft-cubed blocks of rubbish by the solitary working robot Wall-E illustrate the length of time the world has been deserted, and the length of time Wall-E has been alone (but for a friendly cockroach).
The tack this film has taken is an intimate and amusing story to deal with a depressing global issue. The situation as it is presented - generations of humans becoming more useless under the control of a sinister auto-pilot, the protagonist left alone on a poisonous planet - could very easily be too tragic for a Pixar film to manage but it was pulled off with finesse. This kind of apocalyptic-sci-fi-comedy is usually the realm of British work (Red Dwarf, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) so much respect.
The environmental message - though prior to release Pixar tried to play it down (they've still got to get paid after all) - is pretty blatant, so I won't look into that too much, but the ultimate message is much more constructive than Avatar or Bambi. It doesn't say, 'leave nature alone!' like those movies did, it says 'look after nature because you've made it your responsibility'.
heh maurice. this is fascinating stuff. keep em coming... leon
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