Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

Has Venice Film Festival already found its Golden Lion? Considering the enthusiastic response of the press, it seems that animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki (of Spirited Away fame) is the strongest competitor so far.

Sosuke is a five year old who lives with his mum in a house on the top of a cliff by the sea. One day, while he’s playing by the seaside, he finds a cute goldfish and names her Ponyo. Sosuke takes Ponyo home in a plastic bucket, promising to protect her. Ponyo falls in love with him and wants to become human. But her father Fujimoto, a former human now turned into a sea wizard who lives in a giant bubble, unleashes giant fish-like waves, his invention, to have her back. The ensuing tsunami threatens the whole community…

Once again, Miyazaki-san’s miraculous fantasy has created an enchanting fairytale. Man’s destructive energy has polluted and destroyed the bottom of the sea, but the magical forces that inhabit the abyss are able to survive. Magic is part of marine daily life and the sea itself, which is not just a setting but the main character of the story, interacts with the emerged world.  
As in most of Miyazaki’s works, good cannot be told from evil and there’s no baddie for the hero to fight. Even the tragedy of the tsunami is told with grace and levity.
This does not mean that everything is perfect in Sosuke and Ponyo’s worlds: the purity of nature is constantly threatened by pollution, Sosuke’s mother Lisa keeps longing for her sailor husband, a group of paralysed old ladies spend their days remembering how sweet it felt to be able to run around. Ponyo and Sosuke are two outsiders looking for love – and they’ll find it thanks to the intervention of Mother Sea, a giant and beautiful goddess that brings peace and order on earth and sea after Fujimoto’s experiments have run riot.

A beautiful and colourful piece of sheer poetry, Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea is much more complex than it shows. Thoroughly enjoyable by a grown-up audience, it also teaches important values to children.

Vera Brozzoni