My Neighbor Totoro Review

Set in 1950s Japan, My Neighbor Totoro follows the magical adventures of Satsuke and Mei after they move with their father from Tokyo to a house in the country in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother. While playing, the girls discover that the nearby forest is inhabited by the same sort of magical beings called Totoros depicted in a favorite story book.

My Neighbor Totoro is a charming film, infused with a Japanese sensibility about the nature of reality. As the film opens the children Satsuke and Mei explore their new home and there is a sense that very real magical beings are just beyond human perception. The first beings they encounter are "black soots" similar to the beings that aided Kamaji the boiler room manager in Spirited Away. Grandma, the elderly neighbor who's been looking after the house explains that these beings are Susuwataris - harmless, easily agitated creatures who leave soot and dust in empty houses. Grandma, like other rural folk, accepts the existence of Susuwataris as a matter-of-fact, as much a part of the natural world as an insect or a dog or the giant camphor tree that dominates the nearby forest. Other folk beliefs about the nature of spirits and magical beings are laced throughout the story - such as when strong winds engulf the house during the family's first night there, rattling the windows and filling the air with ghost-like howls, Father suggests the girls chase the "ghosts" away with laughter.

The next day the family goes into town to visit the girls' mother, who, like Miyazaki's own mother, is hospitalized for tuberculosis . She indulges her daughters' belief that the house is haunted, commenting that she is exited to come home from the hospital to meet a ghost. In a small but touching moment, Mother combs Satsuke's hair and tells her that it will be like hers when Satsuke is grown up.

The film is built up of many such small moments that gradually build to Satsuke and Mei's encounters with the Totoros. Mei is the first to encounter one of the creatures while playing in the backyard. Depicted just like a real girl, she picks flowers, plays with tadpoles, and looks for acorns. It's while searching for acorns, that she spots the Totoro as it emerges from the tall grass at the edge of the property. A small creature, round with long pointed ears, it can bend the light, sometimes appearing translucent like a bubble and sometimes completely invisible. Curious, as most small children would be, Mei follows the mystical being to the crawlspace beneath the house. While she waits for it to come out, the creature, joined by a slightly larger companion carrying a bag of acorns, attempts to sneak past, Mei notices and gives chase but the creatures disappear into the woods at the edge of the garden and Mei follows. Before she knows it, Mei finds herself in the middle of a mystical and ancient forest reminiscent of the forest from Princess Mononoke where she encounters a giant Totoro several feet tall dozing in the hollow of a tree. The creature isn't like any natural being but seems reminiscent of both the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland in appearance and a Shinto kami spirit in temperament and behavior. He seems almost a prototype of the spirits and creatures from Spirited Away.

When Satsuke returns from school, she and Father find Mei sleeping in the shrubbery behind the house. Insisting that she saw a Totoro (a childish bungling of the Japanese pronunciation of the word Troll) Mei leads Satsuke and her Father along the path she believes leads to the Totoro's lair, as in many fairytales the path instead leads right back to their own garden. A few days later while waiting at a rainy bus stop for their father to return from his job at the University, Satsuke and Mei encounter the giant Totoro. Satsuke teaches the creature how to hold an umbrella. The creature enjoys the splatter of rain against his umbrella so much that he excitedly jumps up and down to make more rain drops fall from the trees. A few moments pass like this until an apparently living "cat bus" appears and takes the Totoro off into the woods. Just before departing, Totoro gives the children a package of seeds which they later plant in their garden. When Father finally arrives, it is impossible to tell if the girls are excited or frightened by the events they've witnessed.

As summer begins the girls have many lighthearted, magical adventures with the Totoro, such as flying over the forest, dancing in the garden, or playing with flutes in the treetops. Their mother's illness, however, casts a certain melancholy pall over these events, the reality of her illness hits home when her illness takes a turn for the worst and she must delay her planned trip home. The girls quarrel over this news and Mei runs off. Regretting their argument, Satsuke runs herself ragged looking for her sister only to find that a child's sandal has been found at the edge of a murky pool near the Shinto shrine. The sandal turns out not to be Mei's and Satsuke, assuming Mei has tried to walk to her mother's hospital, runs off to find the Totoro. Satsuke begs the Totoro for help and he summons the "cat bus" to aid her.

Unlike many American fantasy movies, none of the characters ever questions the nature of the elements of the fantastic. The father is an archaeologist and a university professor but never doubts his daughters saw something unexplainable, he never rationalizes it away nor does he condescend to Grandma or treat her belief in the supernatural as quaint. Likewise Mother accepts that the house is haunted by supernatural entities or spirits of some kind she never tells her children that were just dreaming or imagining things. The supernatural elements of the story are accepted as real or at least very important even if they can not be sensed by the adults in the story.