Léo Favier Talks ‘Miyazaki, The Spirit of Nature’

The new documentary explores the life and influential works of celebrated, Oscar-winning Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, focusing on his passion for animation and advocacy for the natural world; U.S. premiere set for October 19 at the Animation is Film festival in Hollywood.

Every Studio Ghibli fan remembers the first time they watched a Hayao Miyazaki film. For some, the image that sticks with them is young witch Kiki saving her friend Tombo as a blimp collapses over their city. For others, it’s old Granny Sophie crashing a propeller craft into wizard Howl’s moving castle. For French filmmaker Léo Favier, the scene that captured his heart was calm, serene and, to this day, one that he still can’t wrap his mind around. 

“I remember seeing the Forest Spirit or Deer God in Princess Mononoke, and watching it walk through the forest and how it made things live and die at the same time,” recalls Favier. “This deer kisses one tree and it dies, but it kisses something else, and it lives. As a child, that was completely mind-blowing. I could not understand how that was possible. But this is nature. It’s life and death. It’s an interesting way of looking at the world.”

Favier’s new documentary, Miyazaki, The Spirit of Nature, explores the life and influential works of the celebrated, Oscar-winning Japanese animation master, known for films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. A Les Bons Clients production in co-production with Arte France and Tag Film, the movie focuses on his passion for animation and advocacy for the natural world. After premiering at the recent Venice Film Festival, the documentary makes its U.S. debut next week at Animation Is Film (Oct. 18-20). The film, distributed by Balanga, will screen Saturday, October 19 at 12 pm, at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. 

A handful of documentaries have been made about the acclaimed Japanese animator – such as The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki and Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron – but none has looked at all of Miyazaki’s life and his works with a heavy anthropological and botanical emphasis and analyzed how this all weaves together.

“These aren’t just movies,” notes Favier. “They work together to create a coherent vision of the world with flavors of pacifism and animism.”

Animism is defined as the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena. It is the belief that all things have a spiritual essence and agency. This is not an uncommon belief in Japanese society, where the two main religions are Buddhism and Shintoism. But Miyazaki was certainly a trailblazer in illustrating the natural world with such vigor, vibrancy and emotional depth. 

“I worked many years on this documentary, watching all his films, but Princess Mononoke is still the one for me,” says Favier. “It’s a masterwork. It shows this raging nature. It’s furious and dangerous and there’s so much violence. But at the same time, it’s beautiful and peaceful. You have both in that film.”

He adds, “Now, what I really appreciate about the whole body of Miyazaki’s works is to see the connection between Miyazaki’s life and what was happening in the world and why he made each movie at those times. His films are very autobiographical. He inserts a lot of his own memories and stories into them. At first, you don't see it. But the more you know about his life, the more you recognize those things.”

Miyazaki, Spirit of Nature is enriched with exceptional film excerpts and insights from voices like his son and director Goro Miyazaki, his producer Toshio Suzuki, and philosophers like Timothy Morton.

“We didn’t get to speak to Miyazaki,” admits Favier. “He hasn’t done interviews in a long time. But there's so much of him in his work that it really spoke for itself. And I was always trying to connect that personal aspect to him. Like in My Neighbor Totoro, where it talks about those two girls moving to the countryside because their mother is sick. Miyazaki and his brother also moved to the countryside because their own mother was ill.”

From 1947 to 1955, Miyazaki's mother, Yoshiko, suffered from spinal tuberculosis and spent the first few years in Shichikokuyama Hospital, same as the girls’ mother in Totoro, before being nursed from home.

“I also watched everything in the archive of Miyazaki speaking on TV,” continues Favier. “I watched everything. And most of the time, when he's speaking to people with a translator, it does not tell as much as one would think. But I looked into the books he was publishing and articles he was writing for the newspapers. That’s where you can truly see the way he thinks about things. So, while creating this documentary, I was trying to find a way to get as close as possible to translating the Miyazaki from those books to this documentary. He was really himself when he was alone writing and not in an interview.”

Favier, who worked with writer Léo Brachet and producers Loic Bouchet and Thibaut Camurat on the film, also consulted with biologists and experts like Susan J. Napier, professor of the Japanese program at Tufts University, throughout the production process.

“Napier told us, ‘Miyazaki is not black and white. It's complicated,’” recalls Favier. “Miyazaki is someone who, from childhood, has been traumatized by war and disease. Yet, he’s very dogmatic. His films can be political and ecological. But at the same time, they are very open, and he does not tell people what to think. He does not tell them what is right and what is wrong.”

“These movies are meant to make you think so that, after a while, you watch the world, and you reflect on your connections with nature, your elders, and everything around you.”

In the Western world, nature is usually depicted in entertainment as either something to save, or something out to kill us. It’s either the villain or the damsel in distress. But, in Miyazaki films, nature is as complicated as he is, and alive as any human being. Miyazaki approaches nature like a friendship, rather than a child to be protected or a god to be worshiped. 

“In the Western point of view, nature is something outside of you,” shares Favier. “In Miyazaki’s films, you’re a part of nature. It’s at your center. At one point, one of the biologists we were working with told us that, as human beings, we are a unique species, always trying to control nature. But nature always gets its revenge. And we seem to be stuck in that dilemma. It’s a human condition, which we see in Miyazaki films, where we try to harness nature and control it. But we have to respect it.”

Favier thinks back to the film Ponyo, which features a father character, once human, trying to control his very strong-willed sea-born daughter. But, despite his best efforts, the young fish daughter uses her father’s magic to turn herself into a human and harness a tsunami to reach the human boy she loves. One way or another, nature finds a way. 

“Nature is so beautiful, but it’s not possible to control,” states Favier. “It’s not some conquest or achievement to be had. You have to respect nature and, with that respect, comes quite a lot of joy. There’s a lot of darkness there, too. But you see Miyazaki making these movies for children, depicting nature through animation in a very magical way. It brings so much pleasure and light in his life, but in our lives as well.”

Animation style plays a big role in the way Miyazaki’s films speak to audiences. Favier notes that Studio Ghibli’s approach to filmmaking – hand-drawn for cinema and not digitally animated for TV – was economically very fragile. But Miyazaki’s animation, and the way he drew nature, was, in Favier’s opinion, one of the aspects of these stories that made them so popular and “never-ending.” 

“The movement of everything on screen is so precise and when you’re watching plants grow or creatures transform, it’s pure visual pleasure,” says Favier. “You create 12 drawings for one second and then you have magic. It’s a big thing you see in the documentary, Miyazaki correcting and adjusting the rhythm and movement of each image. If you compare Miyazaki films to those of Pixar and Disney, which move so fast, they feel so slow. But it works so well. It’s a perfect fit. You can feel the calm with which he creates, despite what he’s been through.”

As audiences take in all the wild wonder that is Miyazaki, the Spirit of Nature, Favier hopes viewers walk away feeling they’ve gotten an authentic look at the layered mind of a creative individual, rather than watched promotional content for a filmmaker already world-renowned as a “genius.”

“There are different ways that different minds think about things,” says Favier. “And that seems obvious but what’s not always obvious is who is right. That’s why it’s important to have an open mind. It is not possible to understand everything. And that’s also part of Miyazaki’s filmmaking process. He starts production before the storyboards are finished, before he’s found an answer to the ending. So, you have this creator who is lost in the middle of production and a viewer who is lost in the middle of his films. But then, by the end, it’s like you’re finding the answer together and you can feel that spirit of revelation in his storytelling.”

Victoria Davis's picture

Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.