Make Believe Bonus: How Do You Live?

squawk squawk

This is a spoiler-free meditation on Hayao Miyazaki’s Kimitachi Wa Do Ikiru Ka? or The Boy And The Heron Coming To North American theaters TBD

Scene: A cluttered living room after midnight. PATRICK sits on a slightly torn couch, stressing over some assignment or another he should have finished much sooner. Various copies of Nikkei Trendy magazine are strewn about. A homemade highball in a silver glass sits to his left, a half-charged iPhone to his right. PATRICK sighs, realizing he should pack it up and actually sleep.

A funny-ass-looking BIRD enters the room.

BIRD: squawk squawk How do you live?

PATRICK: [looking nervously at silver cup to left] Man, do I actually have a problem after all? Maybe I just need to upgrade from that Seiyu-brand “Highball Whiskey,” clearly that’s got me zoning out…

[louder] squawk squawk How do you live?

I uh, guess not too great right now? Lot of deadlines, and that means I’ve had to push the For Tracy Hyde interview I’ve been sitting on since May back again, to this Friday, which is a bummer. And now I guess I have to fix our door, because a wannabe pelican got in.

[frustrated, flapping wings as if doing air quotes] squawk squawk! “How Do You Live!?”

Oh, the movie! I get it I get it, this is like my own little Totoro encounter, how whimsical! You know, I thought it was pretty darn good! Though I have been thinking in the days after…am I taken by the work, or the circumstances?

I don’t totally buy the “Miyazaki’s last movie” framing, just because we’ve been through this before and dude is clearly restless. Still…he’s over 80 now, and this one felt surprisingly nostalgic, nodding to all of his previous works in some way subtle or obvious. Perhaps that’s confusing Miyazaki looking back on his career with the Ghibli aesthetic in general, but coupled with the surreal structure of the film, it felt more like an artist suddenly confronting their whole life’s output and trying to form something new out of it.

[pleased] squawk squawk, How Do You Live?

Right. And I truly appreciate how Miyazaki seemingly said “fuck it” when it came to the plot or a prominent message in favor of just letting imagination run wild. There’s a story, of course, but by the end of the movie it really does feel secondary to the whirlwind of ideas and especially animation he’s conjured up — breathtaking sequences mixed with Animal-Crossing-like moments of richly detailed simplicity. Some of the cutest work of his career turns into the most grotesque. I’m assuming you haven’t seen the movie, bird dude, given that you are a kinda terrifying animal, so I’ll spare you the surprise…but one of the funniest visuals I’ve ever seen in my life comes courtesy of this movie, featuring a…character from your species holding a big ol’ knife.

After watching it, I thought about a short film I literally haven’t thought about since college….Don Hertzfeldt’s The Meaning Of Life, a similarly surreal work that comes across as inscrutable but clearly very personal.

Like…since seeing it last Friday, I’ve tried to work out what Miyazaki’s trying to get across here, but I come up blank. The only takeaway I really got was “Miyazaki seems to fucking hate birds.”

BIRD is not happy with this

OK OK, let’s hold out for the commentary track before jumping to that conclusion. But I really liked it, and have thought about it a lot in the days after! But…part of me thinks that’s because of the context of its release, and how that possibly made me like it more than I would have under normal circumstances.

[bewildered] squawk squawk How do you live?

I implied it, in a way that’s definitely not healthy. So I think even a bird like you knows Miyazaki’s latest featured no pre-release promotion beyond a poster featuring a white bird, and some vague murmurings about it being an “adventure.” Going off of Twitter, a lot of people had no idea this film was coming to movie theaters until like, the Wednesday before. I was here in Japan for The Wind Rises, and while it wasn’t inspiring anti-war Happy Meal tie ups, ads for it were all over TV and it was promo-ed a bunch on news programs. Not so with the follow up, which has been so absent from television programming…including the news!…you realize the conspiracy that no network is talking about it because they aren’t seeing any advertising money from it is almost certainly true.

I saw a guy on Twitter say since there were no previews or commercials for it, he refused to see it. Buddy, how the fuck do you live, right?

[busting up] squawk squawk How do you live?!?!

Yeah…that guy sucks. Anyway, I had no intention of seeing this movie, at least not for a while…but the total lack of information hooked me in. I can’t remember the last time I’ve known zero about a major piece of art, let alone one from Japan’s most celebrated creators. I bought a ticket late Thursday night…in this very room, on this very computer, drinking errrrr the same kind of beverage…and the next afternoon I was in a surprisingly full for 2 p.m. theater in west Tokyo, going in blind.

You could argue no promotion at all is a sort of promotion in its self…worked on me!…but then I compare it to all other existing art and I’m convinced it isn’t. It’s such a rare experience to truly be surprised, and one becoming harder to find everyday.

[quizzically] squawk squawk How do you live?

As a culture writer, mostly, so I’ve seen up close how PR campaigns and memes demand more attention from the industry than the work inspiring them. I’m certainly guilty of writing stories about “the internet reacting to” a thing and valuing marketing over the actual work, so I don’t come to judge…that’s just culture writing now. Still, I feel disgusted thinking about how many words have been written about glorified advertising campaigns over the art itself…maybe that cuts deeper as someone following K-pop, a particularly grievous example of this…and how nothing can be unknown anymore. It certainly could end up being a great movie, but Barbie has been a perfect example of this. Exhausting coverage with writers fawning over the ad rollout, as if that means anything besides someone at the studio getting the greenlight for a bigger budget. Rolling Stone called it “subversive” and maybe it is! But it’s so predictable that’s how they would trumpet it.

I can’t think of any director anywhere…including Japan…who could pull a Kimitachi Wa Do Ikiru Ka? The film industry is too fine-tuned, shaped by analytics and algorithms, to allow for something like Miyazaki’s latest. At least music still offers room for discovery and a sudden release…though even then, that’s not what gets the attention.

Part of me had to see this movie because I knew nothing like this would ever happen again…Miyazaki’s name could get people to a theater, even if the only thing they knew about the movie was “bird!” This is truly the end of a certain type of film….and I wanted to be part of that fading experience one last time.

[bemused] squawk squawk How do you live?

[sigh] I don’t know, man. But in terms of this movie, it’s probably one of my favorite theater-going experiences ever. Nostalgia colors that…like, I can’t tell you about anything I remember about seeing any of the new Star Wars’ movies in theater, but I definitely recall walking through the sticky movie theater in the Antelope Valley Mall to see Chicken Run, which I went into as a seven-year-old kid aware the two words in the title would factor into the film and that was it, and loving it despite not knowing anything about it. That was nearly 30 years ago…times change, that’s fine. But being able to soak in that feeling one more time was great, and if the movie Miyazaki made was just a white backdrop with squiggles over it, I would have probably loved it.

[intrigued] But really, who is to say other people don’t experience all movies like that, right? You bring up Barbie, but you only know all these details and fawning bits over the promotion of it because you spend too much time online. Now, other writers do too, and you are basing this off of the admittedly shitty state of modern cultural journalism, but I bet most people see it and think “oh wow, like the doll, I’ll check that out.” I bet the subversive elements within genuinely catch them off guard, because they don’t stake their whole life to a dying social media platform?

[catching themselves] uhhhhh squawk squawk how do you live?

Ummmmm oh OK…I need to sleep. I see what you’re saying, but experiencing an actual major artistic group in the country reject the seemingly mandatory advertising requirements? I love it. I’m a big backer of Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume, but even that came with a huge McDonald’s tie-up which drains a little of the magic away. Miyazaki’s potential last film could very well be the end of an era, of a time where a project could totally exist in the shadows and, for three days at least, provide audiences an honest-to-goodness surprise.

Maybe when I watch this again in three years, I’ll be able to approach it from a clearer critical perspective…but for now, it’s too tied to what feels like a vanishing practice, of letting the work stand totally on its own and letting viewers get wrapped up in it their own way. I cherish that about this movie.

[wisely] squawk squawk how do you live?

A little better having seen it, and in a context that won’t be replicated anywhere else, unless people really force themselves to stay in the dark. And if it really is Miyazaki’s last…what a…wait for it…swan song to go out on.

[tired] squawk squawk how do you live?

PATRICK looks at the clock, disgusted…it’s now 1:30 a.m., with deadlines still open and the silver cup now empty. He shoots a glance at BIRD…not anger, but concern. The two nod at one another, as bird rushes towards the exit. PATRICK stares at the “Continue” button, unsure if to send this out to the kind folks paying to see it…but maybe the surprise is part of the fun.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)

Twitter — @mbmelodies
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