This month, I'm concentrating on my favorite stories, trying to figure out why they mean so much to me and what I can learn from them about storytelling and about myself as a storyteller.
The first installment was on a series of novels by Patricia McKillip. Today I look at two works of visual art; one is a film, the other a picture book.
Overall, the theme is stories that bring us into worlds of their own. Why do they work, how do they do what they do, and why do they have such a hold on our imagination?
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Studio Ghibli, 1986
 | |
|
If I feel like I need to be cleaned of some bad feeling, I'll watch another personal favorite, Princess Mononoke. If I feel heartsick, or worn down by life, I go for the matchless Spirited Away (this one is also handy if you're trying to convince someone new to this sort of movie that they can be worthwhile). But more and more often the feeling I need to dispell by revisiting my collection is of being stumped, stymied, unflowing, or dried-out. In a word, uninspired. When I feel this way, the movie I watch is Laputa, released in the U.S. as Castle in the Sky.
It's not as simple or noble-spirited as Princess Mononoke, or as sympathetic and poignant as Spirited Away, and it's not as well-drawn as either (coming earlier in Miyazaki's career). The characters are hammy, the plot is labored and extremely well-used (especially if one has ever seen an Indiana Jones movie), and dialogue, especially in the Disney-produced English dub is often so ludacrous it seems baffling.
So why is it a favorite?
Over and above any flaws and more important than any meticulously rendered sequence of animation is what I find to be the film's heart: its beautiful simplicity. Though the story takes a new twist in almost every other scene, the plot is an insolubly simple one: it's a race. Both the plucky, under-prepared heroes and their imposing military rivals do anything and everything they can to be the first to find a hidden floating island, the last remnant of a powerful lost civilization, and to claim the mysteries their for their own.
Everything in the story is built with this adventure in mind. The goal is in the air, so the theatre of operations in the air. The evil army's weapons of choice are airships, the handy pirates have a steampunk clubhouse with wings and buzz about on thin-winged flying bumper cars. All this is easy to believe in once you posit a million tons of old stonework and forested parks sailing endlessly around the earth at the heart of its own eternal hurricane. The movie is ridiculous, but it seems to know it's ridiculous, it doesn't claim not to be ridiculous. Its only claim is to be original and fun.
How does it succeed in being original and fun?
Three key reasons: the spirit of the characters, the world of the story (and the art that brings it to life), and the stakes of the action.
As I get older, when I say spirit, or refer to matters of spirituality, I generally refer to morale. That is, the general long-term feeling of a person or people. It's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about above that requires the watching of one of these films in the first place. Life is beautiful and too short; it is also, as any grown up has had to learn, an arduous and costly ordeal, full of delays and disappointments. It gets us down. Where do we turn when nothing seems to work out, or even to be worth the effort? Friends, family, good places, fond memories, new experiences, clean clothes, soulful music, good food. And good stories with characters who never give up, who keep going no matter what, and who always do the right thing in the face of insurmountable odds. Spending a little time in their world is often just the boost I need to see my own world not as a broken-down, washed-out mess, but as a clean, blank page to work with however I choose.
And what a world.
If nothing else, Hayao Miyazaki (and his team at studio Ghibli) is a consummate master of creating imaginary places from the smallest details up. Everything from the curve of the airship's wings to the way the characters eat breakfast has been considered, and is presented in a way that fits with the design and feel of the rest of the world. Cars, planes, tanks, trains, furniture, grenados, costumes, treasures, robots; everything has a touch of the same simple, well-proportioned, clean-lined and practical design. The story is built out of pieces that could be real and work plainly and easily in our real world, but would belong to another world, the invented world of Miyazaki's story. And the further we go into the story, the greater the degree and wonder of the invention grows, until
The story is intended as a thrill ride, and therefore is at its best when it seems to be a half a step ahead of total disaster. But what keeps us in our seats, and gives the spirited characters a meaningful world to struggle through, are all the wonderful little details of thought and execution that
What stakes are the characters fighting over? The fate of the world, of course, but that's not important. That's what's always at stake in a story like this.
Why do I bring up the stakes as an important point?
The other two films I've mentioned above are identical to the qualifications of Castle I've listed so far. Both are wonderfully well-executed imaginary worlds, and both are powered at their hearts by the indominable, even dogged perseverence of spirit of the characters. In fact, Mononoke and Spirited are in many aspects superior films: if Castle has a moral message, it is certainly not as clear or imperative as Mononoke's, and if it's believability is grounded in the real-life feel of its details and struggles, Spirited has it beat by miles in both these aspects and many others. So what makes this movie stand out?
Weirdly, it's just its imperfections that render it so appealing to me.
It isn't a movie that sets out to prove anything, it's not concerned with being overly realistic in tone or in grounding what happens in the smaller feelings of real life. It's big, it's loud. It's completely ridiculous.
It has lower expectations, and its story, relative to its sister stories, is considerably lighter without the baggage of excellence.
It also has the corners worn off: what decides whether a detail is in the story or not is whether it makes the story more interesting, more engrossing, more thrilling, more fun.
The premise it employs its invincible little characters towards is a constantly renewed "let's go see." No more, no less. For this, it retains an enormous value of durability.
It has lower expectations, and its story, relative to its sister stories, is considerably lighter without the baggage of excellence.
It also has the corners worn off: what decides whether a detail is in the story or not is whether it makes the story more interesting, more engrossing, more thrilling, more fun.
The premise it employs its invincible little characters towards is a constantly renewed "let's go see." No more, no less. For this, it retains an enormous value of durability.
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time
James Gurney, 1992
 |
| image courtesy of jamesgurney.com |
Illustrations are cheating, as everyone knows.
Perhaps no clearer boundary exists between the stories of our infancy and those of our elder childhood than whether the books we read have pictures in them or not.
"How can you READ this? There's no pictures!"
So what do we make of James Gurney's unrivaled masterpiece? I know of very few books like this book (Aaron Becker's Journey, Wil Nuygen and Rien Poortvliet's Gnomes, and the works of Chris Van Allsberg come to mind), and none that succeed better on their own terms than this.
In principle, it's barely a story, the action of the whole book can be summarized in two short sentences: explorer and son are shipwrecked, they wash up on a beach. They explore the island they've landed on. There is no marked problem to overcome, unless it be whether they are truly marooned on the island or not, and there is no villain or drama, other than the mysteries and riddles of coming to rediscover and understand this magic kingdom.
I say magical kingdom because this is a fairy tale, a fantasy as surely as is anything dreamed up by Tolkien or Disney. What sets it apart is its wonders all bear the weight and shadow of real people, real animals and objects. The whole world of the story bears an incredible feeling of believability, through the incredible detail of its execution and the simplicity of its ingredients.
But what are its ingredients?
People and dinosaurs, living together in peace. No more, no less.
Gurney's secret is in what he calls in another book, imaginative realism: using light and color and all the practical knowledge at his disposal as a master of visual arts to render what doesn't exist as realistically as he can.
In the process of doing this, he lets all the little surprises of invention flow naturally from the central premise, and speak for themselves; architecture and philosophy, arts, crafts, manners and customs and costumes and legends and cities and swamps. An entire world in full color right at your fingertips and pressed between the covers of a book.
The work is presented as the travel log and sketchbook of Arthur Denison, who as described above, arrives at the island by mistake from the 19th century we are familiar with. The spirit of the narrative is of exploration and the delight of sheer discovery, in the spirit of the Time Machine, Out of the Silent Planet, or A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
There can be no doubt that illustrations are a shortcut in storytelling. There is nothing wrong with praising an author for rendering a scene, using words alone, so vividly that we feel as though we've lived through them ourselves. Knowing what things to describe and how to describe them is in many cases what separates good stories from bad, and the truly great storytellers from the merely very good.
Here, the pictures are more than just an aid to the story. In a very real sense they are the story, and the words and dialogue written between them are the illustrations of the action that join them together into the narrative. If there were no words printed in the book, the drift of the narrative and its meaning would remain largely comprehensible.
It's Gurney's overwhelming talent for invention and incredible competence as a visual artist that make the story real.
We don't need the tension of a problem to solve or a villain to overthrow. The story can get by on the wonder of exploring the world, because the world is so wonderful as to warrant exploring.
No comments:
Post a Comment