Princess Mononoke is arguably the most important work for Miyazaki himself, exploring the contradictions he pondered for half his life but could not find a solution, the conflict between man and nature, and the discord between man and man. Industrialized civilization has inevitably disintegrated the faith and balance in traditional civilizations, the Ainu people who revere nature live in a remote corner, the ancient gods have disappeared, and the destroyed forests are tamed and at the mercy of people, even if they are rebuilt.
The work also shows Miyazaki's pessimism and sadness relatively obviously, unlike some other works that often exude warmth for children. The people of Asidaka tried their best to expel him on the grounds that "young people need to go out and roam", those who saw gold tried to make money and killed, the knot monks always had a reasonable attitude to seize things that did not belong to them, Sang grew into a fanatical warrior with hatred and extremism, and humans who fought with wild boars used their compatriots as bait... But it is not complete despair, pessimism is mixed with miserable hope.
"Princess Mononoke" is actually not very suitable for long-form commentary and flowery rhetoric. On the contrary, you need to quietly understand and reflect on yourself. The film's astonishment begins with the picture and soundtrack, and finally the shocked heart. Although Miyazaki did not give a specific answer to how man and nature coexist in harmony, he also left hope.
Just as the cursed Ashidaka was finally redeemed for his bravery in facing fate and the goodness of his heart, the "aftermath" of humanity needs to face up to its own curse that "development is too much to be eaten by nature". After experiencing the baptism of nature, wise and virtuous human beings will eventually find a balance at some point in the future to live in harmony with them. Looking at the ending from this perspective, it may be more reassuring.
The contrast between the ending and the front of Princess Mononoke is so great that Miyazaki should be desperate for the future of humanity, and if you look at all the films after Miyazaki, he is narrating a process of natural abandonment of human beings. In Spirited Away, man and God have parted ways, and God has God's dwelling place and man's society. In Hal's moving castle, the gods exist only as a magical force, and in the goldfish Himiri on the cliff, the gods have reached the point of "falling", and the gods can no longer be seen when the wind rises.
I don't know if Ghibli is going to turn on the air conditioner, but when we have to rely on the air conditioner for the summer, doesn't it prove that we can't survive, and our exploration of the universe is nothing more than telling ourselves countless times that we can't go out, we can't go out, and the world we live on has been squeezed dry by us.
But there are still people who think that the damage we have done is insignificant, that we have only turned a small part of the earth into a bustling city, but that the creatures that cannot adapt to the new environment have disappeared one by one, and how can human beings be caused by human beings themselves if they cannot survive? There must have been more than one generation of intelligent civilizations in Earth's 5 billion-year history, and now we know how they disappeared.