The Miyazaki way of ending a movie

The Miyazaki movies have been considered as top-notch productions of the industry. But very often many complain that the endings of those fabulous movies contribute only in undermining the fantastic viewing experience. To many audience, the endings seem particularly rushed and are incongruous with the established atmosphere. Examples include the endings of Nausicaa, Kiki, Porco, Spirited Away and the most recent release of Howl.

Despite of the high praises of Nausicaa, its deus ex machina ending is frowned upon by some critics. While Kiki and Porco end in unexpected ways: so unexpected that the audience fail to realize that the movie has come to an end and was totally surprised to see the ending credits roll. For Spirited Away and Howl, the endings seem to be so much disjointed from other parts of the stories in terms of the storyline, the pace and the feeling.

Some Miyazaki fans try to justify the audience's comments by claiming that "people are just far too absorbed into the mesmerizing viewing experience that they never want to see the movie to come to an end."

I would like to know what your views on this issue are.

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i was already domesticated by Mr.Miyazaki's movie.
i don't understand which part is the part that you called "Ending".
for example.
Nausicaa : Nausicaa stopped Ohmu? or after the revive of Nausicaa?
Kiki : crisis of airship? or after Kiki rescue Tombo?
Porco : Porco vs Curtiss? or after the boxing fight?

Hehe of course your susuwatari friends and you have already been tamed by the magic of our almighty film-maker . Or else how would you be willing to be laboured by him twice, for producing Totoro and Spirited Away (hope you are not the ones squashed by Mei or Chihiro )? As for me, I was far too fed up with acting as a dumb cat. That is why there is no sequel to the Kiki movie.

In my own mental dictionary, an "ending" is a conclusion to the major suspenses and unfinished events in a story. In Nausicaa, the latter part focuses on the fear of having the Valley destroyed by the enraged swarm of ohmu. Therefore once Nausicaa has attempted to calm down the ohmu, the story is close to an end. For Kiki, the major crises are her loss of flying ability and the danger of Tombo. So starting from her bumpy rescue flight, one can see the "ending" has begun.

Nevertheless, I can see where you are coming from. Many people suggest that the "rushy" ending is one of the problems of the works in the Miyazaki canon. That is also exactly why you fail to see where the ending lies. The problem is especially obvious in Porco. There is no single major event that ties up the plot (so is Kiki, but at least I could see where the ending is). And I still expected the movie to run for another 30 minute or so after the fist-fight. The sudden popping-up of Tokiko Sato's theme song was quite a surprise to me . Anyway, in retrospect, the "ending" seemed to start from the dogfight part.

One thing I notice is that, in the two movies that people regard as being very "rushy" towards the end (Kiki and Porco), the final conclusions lie on the epilogues, which are shown after the ending credits. It is a habit of many to hurry to the theatre exits or eject the DVDs as soon as the long list of names show up (which can roll for as many as 10 minutes in some Hollywood blockbusters). Few have the patience to stay. As a result they have missed something.

Even though I always make sure that I have not missed anything whenever I see the movie, I still regard the way Porco ends as very "rushy." Maybe I should justify my feelings with the claim of "being too carried away."

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I like Ghibli Endings, they feel a lot different to normal endings but great nevertheless.

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With Nausicaa, I'll have to agree with Jiji. Don't get me wrong, I love Nausicaa (especially since reading the wonderful manga), but the ending with Nausicaa as a kind of christian martyr has always bothered me. But I kind of understand that Miyazaki was in a really hard situation while making the Nausicaa movie; he had only made the first two parts of the manga and had to make a movie that would work independently from the manga, but still woudn't create any logical problems with the manga. So while I understand that Miyazaki was in a really tight spot, the ending still bothers me. With the rest of the movies mentioned; I kind of like it that the endings are left open, so that the audience can make it's own conclusions. I especially love the ending of Porco rosso, where it's left open if Porco/Marco turns into a man again or not

Post last edited by Heidi80 on 09.24.2011, 05:30 AM.

Good topic. (I'll assume spoilers for the movies are not a problem in this thread )

I don't feel that Porco, Kiki, Laputa, or even Nausicaa had this kind of a "Miyazaki-type ending". The ending felt quite tightly integrated into the story, and arriving as a logical conclusion of its events - this is one of the things I really liked about Porco in particular.

I'm only on part 6 of the Nausicaa manga, so I haven't reached its ending yet, but I have no doubt it's superior (since even Miyazaki-san thinks so). Nausicaa's revival in the movie might be a bit of a deus-ex, but it's not what I would call the kind of nonsensical ending that made Howl so confusing for me.

By that point, we had already seen earlier in the movie the Ohmu's ability to heal wounds, and Nausicaa's uncanny ability to calm their anger, so it ending like it did was not just out of the blue. There was only one device that could be seen as thrown in for no reason, which was the God Warrior appearing, failing to do anything significant, and then melting. But that's okay too, because the God Warrior had already been established as the motivation for the conflict. That's why there was an attack on the Valley in the first place.

So I feel that Nausicaa's ending did have a really tight logical flow, with events happening sensibly.

I feel like Princess Mononoke, on the other hand, despite being essentially a feudal adaptation of Nausicaa, had a much more "Miyazaki-type" ending of the kind that Jiji describes. So I think it serves as a good comparison.

In Mononke, it is established that the god of life is also the god of death. It plays a role very similar to the Ohmu in Nausicaa. But whereas Nausicaa establishes the Ohmu's destructive ability early on, with Asbel describing how Pejite was destroyed, there's nothing similar in Mononoke. So it comes completely out of left field when Lady Eboshi shoots it and suddenly, it pops, and turns into these bubbles that kill everything they touch. The rest of the movie from then forwards sort of hinges on this, but the viewer had no way of expecting it.

So suddenly, the conflicts that had been very well grounded up to that point in the movie -- the Emperor vs Iron Town, the wolves vs Eboshi, and Ashitaka vs the demons -- all of these disappear and are replaced by a new, "run for your lives! And tell that monk to give its head back" conflict. In this sense, it's nothing like Nausicaa, where the Ohmu-tsunami was a direct result of the style of warfare that the humans were waging against each other, and very much an extension of that conflict.

I think that it's very sad that Mononoke went that way, because the conflicts that had been set up were so realistic that a more convincing resolution could have been very inspirational. Part of the joy of watching the story unfold is to see how the conflicts will be resolved, and it's not really fair to dissolve all the conflicting parties with toxic jello and leave the protagonists to pick up the pieces.

I still really like Princess Mononoke, of course, but I am quicker to recommend Nausicaa to other people, in part because of the above.

So Princess Mononoke is, in my view, a very classic "Miyazaki-type" ending, which is not as satisfying as some of his other works.

I also think Howl suffers much more from the same, but I haven't watched it enough times to go on an in-depth analysis.

But Porco? I'm surprised that anyone would have issue with the ending of Porco. It seemed to be quite perfect, and fun. In Porco, the conflicts aren't all left resolved, and we don't exactly find out how everything turns out. But that's very different than trashing the conflicts to end the movie in time. A lot of books and movies end without saying exactly what happened, and when it's done well it enriches the experience instead of taking away. I think Porco was done well, and I'm glad it wasn't all spelled out for us.

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Post last edited by Mush on 09.24.2011, 01:59 PM.

"The Miyazaki way of ending a movie "... I'd say it's a "Miyazaki" thing indeed, but that it's rather "The Miyazaki way of creating a movie". He appears to base the whole conception of a movie on some strong visual scenes and characters, that he afterwards (during the movie development, for the most part) asembles into a movie script; he tends to lack a global clear perspective of the story, and hence his endings feel to some extent improvised. Sometimes (in my view, frequently) he has luck, inspiration (or Suzuki's help, or whatever) and the ending is good and round (I don't agree with Porco Rosso, I like that ending), sometimes it feels rushed, hesitating or unsatisfying (Mononoke, Nausicaa, Howl)

It's has been already mentioned that Takahata is the opposite in this regard, he seems to have a much more strong "architectural" view of the movie creation, he seems sure about the development of the script, and his endings are always very well rounded.

From the script of the Ghibli museum, an interview between Takahata and Goro Miyazaki:

quote:

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-Miyazaki's design[of the musem] approach surprised me. He started with the rooms. First, he designed each room according to its purpose. The entrance, the windows, everything. Usually architects do an overall plan... ...and design individual spaces afterward. Miyazaki approached the design from the opposite direction. That was extremely interesting.
-Yes, I can see a lot of evidence of that. The rooms aren't simply partitions of a building. They're actually museum exhibits themselves.
-Shuichi Kato once said that Japanese architecture... ...is based on adding parts together to create a whole. In the West, architecture starts with the overall structure. Then they decide how the whole should be partitioned. I personally feel Miyazaki's films are very Japanese... ...even though a lot of them take place in Europe. He creates a wealth of different parts. Then he combines them to create his story. This museum is similar. It works fine here, because it's a museum. I think his approach worked very well in this case. With your own films, I feel the opposite approach.

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quote:

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Originally posted by leonbloy
"The Miyazaki way of ending a movie "... I'd say it's a "Miyazaki" thing indeed, but that it's rather "The Miyazaki way of creating a movie". He appears to base the whole conception of a movie on some strong visual scenes and characters, that he afterwards (during the movie development, for the most part) asembles into a movie script

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regardless of HOW they end, for some reason I always enjoy the movie.

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