The recent theatrical success of his two most recent films, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, make Japanese animator Hayao Miyazake one to watch. Thing is, he always was, ever since his ’80s eco-epic Warriors of the Wind. While which of his films is his finest is up for debate, his best work for young kids (possibly the best kids’ flick ever, period) is unquestionably My Neighbor Totoro, at long last seeing DVD release.

The film is infused with a sense of gentle wonder—ominous at times, but never scary (there is absolutely no violence in this flick). It’s an exquisitely animated children’s movie that will inexorably draw in parents as well, spinning the patient, poetic yarn of two young girls taken to the countryside to be spared their mother’s convalescence. Exploring the nearby woods, they come across a trio of iconic-looking woodland spirits, one tiny, one kid-sized and one a big, fuzzy behemoth. Then the fun begins.

There’s an important scene in which the girls join the forest spirits in a ritual summoning up a gigantic tree from a handful of seeds. It’s a direct and deliberate inversion of the ubiquitous, atomic-angst anime climax, the mushroom cloud. Like the tree in this scene, the entire film is a humble yet irresistible explosion of life. :

» Rupert Bottenberg