![]() ![]() “That was the appeal of the novel, but also what made the movie very difficult to make - so in the end, out of all the things that happen in the novel, I decided to focus on the relationship between Van and Yuna, and made that the center of the movie.” “The novel is very long, complex, and there’s a lot of information,” Ando said. The Deer King deals with nuanced politics of a colonized realm and the motives animating its factions. The film’s nearly two-hour run time is only 20 shy of Mononoke’s 133 minutes, but it’s bursting with ideas that could have played out to even greater lengths. ![]() Elsewhere, plans of a rebellion are hatched, and Van, Yuna, and Hohsalle are pulled into the center of a growing conflict they all hope to avoid. ENTWINED WITH YOU AMAZON SERIES(The book series was published starting in 2014, but after nearly three years of a pandemic, it’s hard not to pick up on some eerie parallels between Van’s world and ours.)Īfter rumors of Van’s survival circulate, a Zol doctor, Hohsalle, seeks him out in the hopes of finding a cure for the disease, which has infected the emperor himself. But Van is bitten during the getaway and infected with a mysterious illness, called Black Wolf Fever, that has ravaged his homeland - although it doesn’t seem to affect him as it does so many others, particularly the Zol people. ![]() After the mine where he toils is attacked by wild dogs, he escapes with a young girl, Yuna, for whom he cares as if she were his own daughter. Van is the last survivor of a guerrilla resistance group of the Aquafa people, who were enslaved by the victorious Zol empire after years of conflict. ![]() Over the course of his adventure, he makes friends and enemies on many sides by sticking to his commitments and principles despite the inevitability of the cost. He is prone to quiet kindnesses toward those he encounters and fiercely protective of the one he loves. He is afflicted by a curse that threatens that land even further, and is preternaturally gifted in combat despite the gentle heart barely concealed by his survivalist’s demeanor. Its protagonist is an exile in a land torn apart by human rapacity. Adapted from Nahoko Uehashi’s fantasy novel series of the same name, and co-directed by another Ghibli veteran, Masayuki Miyaji, The Deer King is something of a piece with Mononoke in both story and style. “I do think, when I saw the final cut of the film, I realized that it was really thanks to Mononoke that I was able to visualize some of the aspects in The Deer King.”įor lovers of Miyazaki’s film, that’s clear from the get-go. “I really think Princess Mononoke is inside of me, and I really can’t wipe off what I had contributed, or what that movie had done to me,” he said, through a translator, earlier this year. And its fingerprints are all over his directorial debut, The Deer King, which is now out on digital platforms and coming to Blu-ray on Oct. Ando was Miyazaki’s chief animation director, and responsible in part for its memorable character design. A quarter of a century ago, Hayao Miyazaki - the most influential figure in global animation since Walt Disney - broke a remarkable three-film streak of complex-but- kid-friendly fare with Princess Mononoke, an epic blending period fantasy and sociocultural criticism with a tender, multifaceted relationship at its core. Masashi Ando learned from the master, and he’s not afraid to admit it. ![]()
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