The years are always young, we are slowly getting old, and you will find that the childlike heart is a proud thing.
The animated film "Porco Rosso", which was released in 1992, is one of his masterpieces of anti-war themes, and also describes the midlife crisis of men.
The anime is also interspersed with the uneasiness and powerlessness experienced by male individuals in the chaotic times. These emotions are projected onto the free and romantic male protagonist in the film, revealing a faint sadness.
First, the storyline.
The film "Porco Rosso" is set in Italy shortly after the end of the First World War, mainly around the male protagonist Polluk, who was cursed by magic and turned into a pig's head, to tell the story of what happened in the Adriatic Sea:
In the Adriatic Sea in the 1920s, a group of unscrupulous aerial pirates roamed everywhere, plundering everywhere. Former Italian air force hero, the lifelong love of flying Polluk, due to magic to turn him into a pig, with excellent skills to drive the red airship alone with the air pirates, in order to earn a bounty to live happily.
The pirates formed the Alliance of Air Thieves against Polluk and brought in foreign aid from the United States, the famous pilot Kachis. Due to a malfunction in the aircraft, Polluk was temporarily defeated by Kachis.
After arriving in Milan, under the elaborate design of the 17-year-old granddaughter of the aircraft factory director, the airship designer Fei Er, a new high-performance aircraft was born.
Since Italy was gradually in power by the Fascist Party at that time, Polluk did not want to participate in the war, and in order to avoid the pursuit of the secret police, he decided to escape from milan's artificial canal by flying, and Phil also pretended to "collect debts" and insisted on leaving Milan with Polluk.
The climax of the film is when Polluk returns to his secret base on the Adriatic island and encounters an ambush by the Alliance of Thieves, and after Phil's mediation with them, Poluk decides to engage in a fair duel with Kachis. In the end, Polluk defeated Kachis with his superb flying skills and won glory.
The end of the movie is very interesting, Polluk changed back into human form, but the fate of the feelings was not broken, leaving the audience to play it by themselves.
Second, about dreams and midlife crises.
"Porco Rosso" is a very unique one in Miyazaki's works, its protagonist is not a young boy and girl, but a middle-aged man. From it we can see many themes of the adult world, such as war and peace, ideal and reality.
Miyazaki once said it was his autobiography. Polluk hated war, was dissatisfied with society, but was powerless, unwilling to join the fascists, but could only choose to self-exile into pigs.
The emotional scenes in the play are also more adult, and Polluk's handling of feelings is still quite calm, whether it is for Phil or Gina.
The young girl Fei Er is also a highlight of the film, although it is a supporting role, but it also portrays the character vividly, after all, it is Miyazaki Hayao. Miyazaki's young girls have brave and independent personalities, and Fei Er is no exception.
The pig-headed protagonist Polluk is arguably the ugliest male protagonist in Miyazaki's anime. But the male protagonist Polluk once had a glorious and painful past.
We can see in the film that he tells the story to the young girl Phil: he was an ace pilot in Italy, fighting alongside his comrades in the war.
However, the brutal world war has almost all his comrades killed, and there is a scene in the film where every plane is picked up by the forces of another world, and they pass in front of him, and no one pays attention to him. Only Polluk survived the war alone.
Because of this incident, Polluk has always resented himself. Since then, the long loneliness and regret have infected him with demons, he is disgusted with war, he wants to get rid of the vulgar world, so he also gave up his young and handsome face, and his appearance was transformed into a pig by the curse.
Later, after seeing the rise of Fascism in Italy, he left the Italian Air Force to become a bounty hunter specializing in fighting air robbers who were committing evil in the airspace of the Adriatic Sea.
"From a human to a pig" is not so much a "curse" as it is more like Polluk's banishment of the self, he would rather become a pig than a fascist human, and his courage is manifested in breaking free from the shackles of the world's vision, breaking away from various complex social relations, and becoming a free man loyal to his heart.
Regarding the midlife crisis, although it is not mentioned in the film, a press release says: "Because he saw through the human world, he cursed himself as a pig." Hayao Miyazaki put it this way: "When a man enters middle age, he has become a pig. Polluk seems to have a lot of ideological baggage that he can't let go, and his unwillingness to be a human being is also related to this.
After becoming a pig, although he is no longer restricted by laws and countries, he can still swim in the blue sky and blue waves with passion, have fame and honor, but still live in loneliness and regret. This is Polluk Rousseau, the "Porco Rosso" on the Adriatic Sea. A lonely soul, an elegant knight in the air.
"Dreams" still have special meaning for men of any age. However, Polluk, who was gradually entering middle age, gradually began to lose himself and could not find the motivation to live.
The climax of the film is the thrilling and comical duel. In fact, the fight between the two of them is not only to protect their respective reputations, but also to compete around two women.
The two women — Phil, a 17-year-old airship designer, and Gina, the goddess of the Adriatic pilots — are all crucial characters who change the protagonist Polluk's attitude toward life.
Polluk must have loved Gina, and according to Miyazaki, Polluk had intended to marry Gina, but soon after World War I broke out. Gina lived on an island that was Austrian territory—as an officer, Polluk could not allow himself to marry an enemy.
He struggled with his loyalty to his country and love for Gina, and finally chose his country. But when he witnessed the death of his comrades(including Gina's husband) and left him alone, these painful experiences also made him rethink the meaning of life.
He gave up participating in meaningless, lifeless wars, and even gave up being human, determined to become a free porco rosso and continue to fly between the sky and the sea. "Flying only for the bounty" seems to be uninhibited, but in fact it is his lonely dream. As Polluk himself said, "A pig that can't fly is just a pig."
After becoming a bounty hunter, flying has become a bounty-earning means for him to earn a living, meaningless but impossible to discard. Polluk was disappointed in humanity: "Good people are dead," he said.
Fortunately, he was so desperate and tired that he could also be touched by the sincere heart of the young girl Fei'er. What really rekindled his courage in life was the airship designer Phil he met in Milan.
The 17-year-old talented young girl Phil is passionate about her work, fighting for every opportunity, full of enthusiasm for life, full of hope for everything, insisting on fighting with him (saying that she can help him repair the plane in battle), and for him to dare to mediate with the Air Thieves Alliance, he will not hesitate to bet on himself to win a chance for Polluk.
She is also brave in her love, and she makes no secret of her love for Polluk, and it is her kiss that eventually makes Polluk turn back into a human face. So Phil is the one who inspires Polluk from the heart, and he is willing to get better for Phil! Willing to change back into a human being.
The vitality of Phil's body evokes Polluk's hope for human beings, and the original dead and silent heart has regained vitality and youth, and he has been freed from the crisis of middle age or from his middle-aged psychological depression, and has regained the responsibility of protection.
In the process of guarding Fei'er, his human appearance reappeared, and he seemed to have the answer he had been seeking: a life of protection is meaningful.
In fact, the love of life in men's hearts is the key. Polluk is like a middle-aged man in reality, the appearance and heart have experienced the erosion of time, and gradually become flat and introverted, in fact, they are responsible people, when they see through everything and are powerless to change, they will use their own way to protect the dreams in their hearts and the people around them.
In Polluk, we see his pursuit of the meaning of life, in addition to the dream of flying that he has always insisted on, the process of enriching his inner growth experience is more important.
"Porco Rosso" is Miyazaki's design for the physically and mentally exhausted middle-aged people to see, and there are various presentations about the romance of men. The reason why it is autobiographical is that the male protagonist projects the shadow of Miyazaki's generation of "Japanese middle-aged people". The evasion and responsibility in the face of great pressure from all aspects of society, the mid-life crisis after years of stagnation, etc., the meaning of life for self-search also affects the audience's heart.
Like Miyazaki's other works, the story takes place in a world full of magic. "Magic" is often used as an important prop to play his imagination beyond ordinary people, break the convention, and make everything irrational.
Let the audience form a variety of fixed ideas in the real world be disintegrated one by one, slowly bringing the audience into a fascinating fantasy world, while also allowing the audience to enjoy the excitement and surprises brought about by breaking these ideas in an unexpected way.
However, miyazaki's films have not become pure magic films or children's films precisely because of the real and detailed emotional portrayals in them. In his writing, even non-human animals show a variety of extremely human appearances and movements!
Miyazaki was born in 1941, and the war destroyed his childhood, but he used his imagination to paint a virtual beautiful Europe in his mind. Although Europe was in fact more fiercely war-torn, this virtually beautiful Europe became Miyazaki's spiritual refuge.
Truth, kindness, freedom, love, peace... How helpless all these beautiful things are in the face of lies, desires, greed, hatred, war. "Porco Rosso" is in this smoke of war, Miyazaki wants to build a refuge for children, for friends, for loved ones.
"The time has come for the end of the filthy world war. The white bird flew and informed the eternal purification of the human world that had begun. Say goodbye to this worldly life that is only painful! "Even in times of chaos, there are good things and there are things that motivate us."
"Even in the midst of hatred and killing, there is still something worth living for. A beautiful encounter, or for the existence of something beautiful. I paint hate, but that's to describe something more important. I painted the curse to describe the joy of liberation. Miyazaki said.