-Written by John Cajio.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a film that does not suck. It is a film that embraces themes of loneliness, empathy, and discovery, while serving as a warning of the potential effects of warmongering and nuclear warfare in a fantastical setting.
One thousand years after a devastating apocalypse known as the Seven Days of Fire perpetrated by Giant Warriors—immense, nigh invincible beings capable of tremendous destruction—a young woman sets out on a journey of discovery that winds up being fraught with more peril, drama, and loss than she originally bargained for.
Writer and Director Hayao Miyazaki wastes no time establishing the desolate wasteland that much of the earth has become in the last thousand years. Shimmering waves of heat, floating lethal spores, and a lone shadowy figure in the distance let the viewer know that the world has been turned upside down for quite some time. Those first frames immediately draw the viewer in.
There is so much worldbuilding compacted into the film’s 117-minute runtime and it all makes sense within its own context. We learn that the world was effectively destroyed in the Seven Days of Fire apocalypse by the Giant Warriors. It is strongly hinted that the humans of the time were on such a crash course towards war with one another that they created the Giant Warriors responsible for their own destruction. In the aftermath, the survivors had another problem to contend with: a Toxic Jungle that is spreading rampantly all over the world, lethally poisoning all it comes in contact with, its spores and massive insects do not hesitate to attack anything that disturbs them. The survivors have banded together into a series of separate small kingdoms and city-states, attempting to stave off inevitable destruction by the ever encroaching Toxic Jungle. All, that is, except the surprisingly idyllic Valley of the Wind—immune to the encroaching Toxic Jungle and its oversized insectoid denizens via a strong, constant coastal wind blowing inland. We learn all of these things and much, much more over the course of the film. The worldbuilding only serves to draw the viewer in more.
The Kingdom of Pejite discovered the still-living embryo of a mythical Giant Warrior within its borders and the aggressively warmongering Kingdom of Tolmekia wanted it for themselves. The residents of the Valley of the Wind have lived peacefully and simply for generations until a massive Tolmekian airship carrying the embryo crashes in the quiet kingdom, leaving no survivors save a captive Pejite princess, forever changing the Valley of the Wind. This is the precipitating event that kicks off the story. Our heroine, Nausicaä (Sumi Shimamoto/Alison Lohman)—a highly respected princess of the Valley of the Wind—must now save her kingdom from annihilation on multiple fronts, unite her people against multiple foes (each of whom have different aims, which Nausicaä deftly handles), and uncover astonishing truths about their world.
A number of other things besides the excellent worldbuilding drive Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Complicated character motivations and character arcs that are surprisingly human stand out. Tolmekian war princess Kushana (Yoshiko Sakakibara/Uma Thurman) is a great example of this. I don’t want to spoil it (even though it’s a forty-year-old film), but suffice to say that Kushana engages in a series of contradictory behaviors that on the surface don’t jive with one another, but make perfect sense when taken as a sum whole of what Kushana is. The same applies to the Pejite prince, Asbel (Yōji Matsuda/Shia LaBeouf), that Nausicaä encounters on her adventures. Settings are highly detailed and vibrant. There is even a sense of vibrancy in the desolace of many shots. The score by Joe Hisaishi is an early high watermark in his storied career with eerie organ ostinatos, sweeping strings, and haunting work by the cellos and double basses.
The only significant complaint that I have is that the final act of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is too long. I’m not certain anything could really have been done about it without destroying some other aspect of the film, since all of those scenes are important to the final resolutions of the film. That sudden sense of sluggishness, however, does hold the film back in the end – just a tad.
Writer and Director Miyazaki deftly created something magical with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. This is an excellent entry point into Miyazaki’s legendary oeuvre, highlighting his early collaboration with composer Hisaishi, and serves as an excellent entry into the works of Studio Ghibli as a whole.
Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Starring Sumi Shimamoto/Alison Lohman, Gorō Naya/Patrick Stewart, Yōji Matsuda/Shia LaBeouf, Yoshiko Sakakibara/Uma Thurman, etc.
8.5/10 = WORTH RENTING OR BUYING (IT DOES NOT SUCK)
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