Over the months of perusing the various offerings on Netflix, two of the movies that made their way into our queue based on descriptions and/or creative teams were the 2014 French digitally animated film "Mune," and the 1979 Japanese entrant, Myazaki's feature directorial debut, with a title not for the faint of heart: "Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro."
I'm still not sure how I want to have this discussion (with myself), so I'll just jump in. In reverse order of viewing...
For some reason the description of Mune, coupled with the Netflix-art (which is rarely the movie's poster proper) of the titular character's blue face and long ears, convinced Corrie to put it in our queue. I'm not sure I'd read it, but one day, for some reason, Cass wanted to watch it. The voice cast seemed reasonable, and Corrie had judged it original enough, so we hit play.
Our Netflix account is through our DVD/Blu-Ray player, which is a Sony. At some point in the recent past, our remote for the Blu-Ray player has met its demise. If you have now, or have had in the past, a toddler, this news is not shocking. Our television is also a Sony, and the remote for it works mostly for our Blu-Ray player.
I mention all that because one of the features that our Blu-Ray player's remote may have had would have been for language, and out television remote does not have this feature ability---to toggle between given recorded languages when there are more than one on offer.
I mention that, because our version of Mune is in the original French and subtitled in English, and we can't change it over. The French sounds beautiful, so there's that...
Anyway, the movie starts with a hand-drawn animated sequence, maybe thirty seconds long, setting up the this planet's mythology: It started out a dark planet. Then the first hero of the sun harpooned a star and dragged it into proximity to the planet. The master of dreams then went into the dream world and returned with a crescent-shaped carved moon. This achieved balance on their planet, and two jobs were created: guardian of the sun and guardian of the moon.
I thought that was a nice metaphor for harmony, and then the first scenes in the digital format appear, and you realize, uh, no, that wasn't a metaphor at all:
Just so you know what you're looking at: that's a rocky-mountainous beast of some sort, that has the planet's sun on multiple leashes.
Pretty soon we viewers meet the Temple of the Moon:
This is some kind of supremely enormous camel-like beast, with a long crane-like beak. There exists a temple room inside the hump, where fuzzy spider-like critters have strung up the moon like a balloon, and keep it tethered behind the "temple," which is the only way they refer to the camelid/crane beast.
The job of guardian lasts 350 years, and both are replaced during a ceremony on the same day. Sohone, the name of the brutish protege and heir to the guardian of the sun gig, starts off brash and Buzz Lightyear-like. Mune is chosen as the new guardian of the moon in a shocking turn of events, and is ill-prepared at best. The third main character is a girl named Glim who's made of wax; when it get's too cold she freezes and risks breaking to pieces, and when it's too hot she risks melting away.
As the story goes, both Mune and Sohone fuck up royally on the first day, and need to team up, but only the fragile Glim makes them see that. She's the courageous heart of the movie. The boys end up righting the ship and learn from their mistakes, which is always refreshing, and makes this surprisingly original film something special.
Cass loves it, French and all.
The main person behind the film wanted an original myth-like story based around an idea he had for a guy carrying around the moon like a balloon (which does happen multiple times here). He wanted his main characters to make major mistakes, but get the chance to atone. He wanted a lady character that would be the smartest and bravest person in the trio, while also with the most to lose in regards to mortal danger.
Next up...
In case you have eyes like mine and struggle to read that moster, what we have is Lupin III, The Castle of Cagliostro.
I had to do some research into this.
Lupin III, or Lupin the 3rd as it's occasionally written, is a famous Japanese manga character. He debuted in 1967, for a backstory has a great thief and burglar for a grandfather, Lupin, and is somewhat of a gentleman-thief. He is quite popular across many forms of entertainment in Japan; manga, animated television series, animated feature films, even live action feature films.
He's usually compared to Herge's Tin-Tin, but mostly because of the adventuring/saving the day plot-lines.
In 1979, the owners of the character knew that the time was right for a feature film release (it was probably earlier, like in 1978, but whatever), and decided to let a young hotshot from the television world get a chance at a full-length movie.
That hotshot was Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest animation directors ever.
It is said that this film, The Castle of Cagliostro, is both the best entry of any Lupin III story, and a showcasing of many of the rademark visual vocabulary for which Miyazaki is known.
That style is generally known as "European Dream" nowadays, and comes from a perspective of east Asia looking west with dreamy eyes. Loo at the following scene---it could be from Princess Mononoke or even Spirited Away:
The story and plot are as convoluted as anything, and enjoyable to watch play out. Cagliostro is a tiny European autonomous principality, like Liechtenstein, and has been well known for centuries as the best currency counterfeiters in the world.
The story goes so much deeper into the twisted world of the crown prince, and the history of a tiny, mostly forgotten kingdom, and eventually ends up in some kind of massive revelation/ecological disaster (for the drainage side) and you watch as the thief and his buddy reluctantly leave town after it ends, but they're running from Interpol. Really, what're you going to do?
I've included the next picture because it shows a normal scene in the movie:
Lupin is the one driving the yellow Fiat. It's an unassuming POS, but, he's got it rigged so at the press of a button it turns into some kind of crazy supercharged hypercar. His buddy and partner in crime is the guy in the hat, someone we never see the eyes of, and who is generally less gentlemanly than Lupin, if never really a scoundrel.
The samurai-dude is one of their long-time pals, a guy they call when shit gets really crazy, because, well, of course, wouldn't you want a samurai on your side when the shit goes down?
Also subtitled, also not an issue for Cassius.
I would recommend both Mune and this Lupin III entry, but, then again, I don't mind subtitled films.
These are both so entertaining. That part I can't stress enough.
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