I was surprised to find this film had no reviews. Porco Rosso 1992 is a funny wistful story about flight war and idealism all soaking in this cosy bath of nostalgia. Go watch it Its Miyazakis birthday today you know. This might just be his most characteristic movie featuring the grand sweep of flying antiwar sentiments working women and pig metamorphosis kinda weird that it happened twice. I suppose all it is lacking is a dash of environmentalism. What it is not lacking is planes. Miyazaki loves those things. Possibly a bit too much. The flying the planning the building the crashing and burningwithin his long list of planerelated work Porco Rosso pulls this stuff off the best and is certainly worth a watch even if the subject matter anthropomorphic grumpy plane pig doesnt light up the sky for you. I enjoyed it a lot more than 2013s The Wind Rises which insists on telling a long selfindulgent biography of planemakerwarcriminal Jiro Horikoshi and kind of forgets that the majority of us do not care about airborne hunks of metal. Porco Rosso is plenty indulgent itself described by Miyazaki as idiosyncratic in a way he doesnt believe films should be. He whipped the movie up as a promotional short for a goddamn airline dream come true for the guy and he based it off his planecentric manga called The Age of the Flying Boat 1988 that acts as a campy tribute to aviation. Due to certain realworld events though things had to change more on this later. https://mvcdn.fancaps.net/2265290.jpg Porco is not your typical Ghibli protagonist. Hes a chauvinistic lazy jaded pig. He was a heroic French pilot in World War I but after becoming disillusioned with the country he fought for he set off on his own. Were introduced to him living a cruisy life as a freelance bounty hunter reprimanding sky pirates in the idyllic Adriatic Sea before sliding into the smoky Hotel Adriano where he sits down lights a smoke and just looks very very cool. Naturally Miyazaki creates a stellar tourism ad for the area. On the surface the movie is an airborne romp. A love letter to early aviation sure but one that is instantly enjoyable and accessible to those of us that did not grow up in a literal plane factory. The central plotline extracted from the source material follows Porcos rivalry with this American caricature named Donald Curtis and its consistently consistently hilarious. Whether its Porcos dry wit Curtis campy stupidity or the delightfully funny minor characters the laughs persist throughout. But Porco Rosso is a lot more than that. While Miyazaki and the gang were putting together their fun little airline short film they were blindsided by the Yugoslavian ethnic war. This news would echo into the movie. https://jaysenheadleywrites.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/screenshot152.png Miyazaki is not just a giant plane nerd. Hes a romanticist. A pacifist. An environmentalist. A Marxist. A feminist He is all manner of good ists in the world. Spectating the collapse of Yugoslavias socialist state broke something inside the beloved filmmaker and he ended up channelling these feelings into his work. How can you live when it seems like the world is going backwards? How can you reconcile that awful feeling of being disillusioned by humanity? To varying degrees of visibility I feel all Miyazaki movies reckon with these questions. Porco Rosso puts forth an answer. Become a pig Say goodbye to your humanity and lapse into misanthropy. Its a bit pathetic but can you really blame Porco? As Ive hinted at throughout this review this is a funny movie with a sunken heart. Beneath the bright colours and witty gags exists a tragic backstory: Porco lost all his friends in a war that amounted to nothing. The country he fought for no longer represents his injured ideals. Better a pig than fascist. Better a pig than a human. If you havent realised Porco is notsosubtly Miyazaki. I dont think its any coincidence that the filmmaker selected a pig as his alteregohe always seemed to like them. And against all odds it makes perfect sense in the movie. I never once questioned why Porco was a pig as it just kind of came into focus over time. The benefit of animation of course is that the medium can pull this fantastic animal nonsense off so seamlessly. As such I actually dislike Miyazakis flaccid attempt to link some type of supernatural curse to Porcos pig form. That wasnt necessary. I get that he likes his curses but we understand why Porco is a pig. It just works and the implied magic only serves to complicate things. https://i.pin.com/originals/cc/33/62/cc336234750c73a5a493cb9ae1ac55ca.jpg Anyway meet Fio Miyazaki aint no pessimist so he cooks up one of his signature girls to breathe life into his stinky pig of a man. Fio is this hardworking passionate girl who builds Porco a plane and comes along with him. In addition to being a strong likeable character in her own right she does so much for this movie ultimately leading Porco back to his humanity. Theres the idea that if people like this are the future said future might not be so doomed after all. I will say that much like in Castle in the Sky 1986 the teenage heroine is at several points presented as honey on a stick for a conglomerate of thugs who thirst over her throughout the movie. Bit iffy. Her relationship with Porco at least is a joy to watch. Save for a few scenes... Shes not the only great character populating this film. The movie gives us Gina who was not present in the source material. She is unfairly cool. Every man in the Adriatic Sea appears madly in love with her and unlike with Fio I totally get it. Her singing and general vibe are almost solely responsible for the mature nostalgic feel of this film. I just wish she had a bit more screentime. Being such an important part of Porcos past present and prospective future she lacked just one or two scenes. Even random no name characterslike the sky pirates the schoolgirls they abduct or the old engineer womenare packed full of joy. Miyazaki writes with such care. Its the little things you know? He does the little things well. https://64.media.tumblr.com/b404929cc3da3016af6d57456789bf6e/tumblrp4fizaFDp01t08lggo21280.png It goes without saying that this movie is gorgeous to look at. Its spectacle after spectacle. Im not going to pretend that I know all that much about direction but its there to gush about if you have the right vocabulary. Miyazaki is as good as they say and then some. Joe Hisaishi is also here as he tends to be. This isnt my absolute favourite soundtrack of his but you know what? Its subtle. It fits. This whole movie just fits together very well Hisaishis Bygone Days lapping at the shore all the while. And the dub is great Well one of them. Turns out Japan Airlines took it upon themselves to make an English dub of their own and Im honestly quite curious how it turned out. I cant imagine it being better than the dub I watched the main dub I imagine? which was stacked with great casting calls. I found it a lot funnier than the raw audio but my poor Japanese could have had something to do with that. https://i.pin.com/originals/40/ca/44/40ca44055e831fb349c77a0e9f14aa77.jpg Porco Rosso doesnt overstay its welcome. It actually holds back a bit. Brevity is the soul of wit they say and this is a very witty movie. A grand pigreversing ending just wouldnt fit you know? Some things cant be resolved so easily. I did think the film wrapped up a little quickly even if I liked the general hopefulbutstillambiguous note we left off on. Miyazaki leaves his audience longing for more and I think he feels the same way after leaving so much unsaid. By all accounts this was a passionate unplanned movie constructed in an entirely different way to his previous work. He was anxious that it wouldnt work out and then stunned that it became at the time his most popular film overseas. Hes even expressed interest in creating a sequel It wont ever happen of course. In his own words my heart couldnt take it.