beautifully animated, but lame-ish in the plot.

This film came across to me most immediately as a blessing: from the ‘overload’ clichés of modern animation that have plagued the medium increasingly since.... Shrek? Where the bombastic, unrelenting pace of the images flowing by make it hard to really register the thing as a cohesive whole… Where every single shot is filled with such unimaginable detail, you’d literally have to pause the frame to take in everything being thrown at you… And such simplistic, predictable elements as: dramatic arcs you can predict in the first ten minutes, stock “cheeky” characters, and an hour and forty minute runtime. I feel like out of the perhaps thirty or so CGI animated features I’ve ever seen, 23 of them have blurred into one mediocre, amalgamated non-entity.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a very welcome antidote. On an aesthetic level, this movie is absolutely beautiful. And simple. Simply beautiful. You can feel the hands who drew it, and I marveled at what wasn’t in the frame, so many unnecessary details omitted, a simple elegance guiding my attention toward the active art in each frame. The images matched the progressing story so perfectly.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya has heart, has authenticity. Also I’m going to get right out and say it, it’s SLOW. It’s slow as fuck. It ebbs and flows, like Life I think, and doesn’t always rush to get somewhere, then sometimes it rushes too fast and you yearn briefly, already nostalgic. It’s also unrepentantly sad, specifically the last two-thirds of the movie.

But the story carries you along, like a River: it’s a tale of living, and life can be really fucking sad. And beautiful. This movie was a joy to behold, and a sorrow. The first Act bursts with joy, as we witness the Princess’ remarkable growth as she joyfully discovers the world. My heart ached and pondered for the beautiful Princess as she was ‘made’ to succumb and conform to societal expectations. How she was robbed of her passion for life, and how she contributed to her undoing as well.

The score is perfect, graceful, matching the soaring and diving emotions of the movie with a great wisdom. Lighthearted joy matched later by striking, haunting melodies on the Koto, reflecting the Princess’ heart. There was one decision made by the director/composer late in the third Act that almost made me laugh out loud, even as my heart verged on breaking. Truly a beautiful reflection on Life.

A