The Life of Budori Guskou (2012)

[BluWacky]

So I wanted to start a thread for this film from 2012, directed by Gisaburo Sugii, a looooooong time director who also directed the film version of Night on the Galactic Railroad.

Just like that film, this is based on a story by famous poet/author Kenji Miyazawa. Also just like that film, virtually all the characters are cats, because Miyazawa liked them (you can also see this in Shoji Kawamori's Spring and Chaos TV special).

The film is, as the title would suggest, the story of the life of Budori Guskou, a young boy who lives in a cottage in the middle of the forest in Ihatov, a fictional land that Miyazawa created. However, when horrific weather and famine strike Ihatov and his little sister Neri is kidnapped, Budori heads off into the world.

Ostensibly to find her, you'd think, but the story is generally hardly concerned with that. Instead, it's a moralistic tale about the virtues of hard work. Or at least it should be...

I'd be very interested to hear what other people think of this once they've had the chance to watch the film. Having rewatched bits of it over and over again over the past few days out of necessity, although the film has beautiful artwork and music I think it's ultimately rather flawed.

Spoiler for MASSIVE plot spoilers, do not read unless you want the whole film spoilt for you!:

The original Budori Guskou story has no "fantastical" elements in it, beyond being set in Ihatov. It still has the same principles to it - Budori's parents die, his sister is kidnapped, he works for the silkworm factory owner and Redbeard before ending up in Ihatov working for the Vulcanology Department etc. There are two big differences, though:

i) The story still ends with Budori sacrificing himself to explode the volcano and bring about global warming to save the climate (...) However, this isn't because the scientists go "oh, it's impossible, we can't do that, tough shit Budori!" like in the film - they actually design a special capsule to be piloted into the volcano to make it explode, but it has to be operated by a pilot and obviously they won't survive, so Budori volunteers to sacrifice himself for the good of mankind.

The film's ending, with the robber cat (who doesn't get named - I forgot to check the credits I'm afraid) spiriting Budori away into the volcano, robs the story of its meaning. While Budori is blandly virtuous throughout the entire thing as always, it sort-of makes you feel as though there's been no point to the rest of the film if a magic cat in a cloak can magic you into the volcano. The point is supposed to be about hard work and self-sacrifice - but the fantasy stuff, not just here but also in Budori's dreams, doesn't have any real place in a story about science and reality.

ii) The insinuation of the film is that Neri is also dead. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with Miyazawa's ouevre to tell you if there's any significance to her being a ballet dancer at Galaxy Station (I wish I'd subbed that as Galactic...) - I wondered if the elephant next to her might have been a reference to "Obber and the Elephant" but I really don't know. Given how disinterested Budori seems to be in looking for her other than in his dreams, it seems like he's accepted this.

Of course, in the original story, Neri is not dead. She ends up alive and well and happily married with children, because the man who comes to take her away from the famine genuinely does so.

While I get that the mystical fantastical side of things is probably what Sugii was interested in, and the design of those sections is wonderful, they feel very out of place in the film. Maybe they're absolutely rife with literary references or something, but this is not a story about escapist fantasy, but grind and hard work (and bad atmospheric science!).

On the whole it's a slow and meditative experience and not entirely without charm, but I just found the above elements to be more than a little irritating.

[Larg]

Is it just me, but after reading the plot summary of 'Kaze Tachinu', did Studio Ghibli literally rip off a competitor's star movie my simply making the exact same film, but with an opposite plot, and humans instead of cats? Budori Guskou worked tirelessly to create inventions that would save the world, whereas the new Ghibli's hero created weapons. Both films heavily feature dreams, and the significant female hero being sick/dead, with the protagonist fighting for them.

I mean Studio Ghibli's huge, and their movie would sell regardless, and I read about the origin of either story. It just seems weird that two studios, in successive years, would release two massive film projects that are seemingly mirror images of each other, along the same basic plot.