Is this the greatest kids’ movie of all time? I will defer to parents on this question but… I mean, yes. There’s probably a child out there who doesn’t love My Neighbor Totoro. That child has bad taste. Sorry about your child.
Totoro doesn’t have a plot so much as a premise: a father and his two daughters have moved into a house in the country. The father works at a university and their mother is in the hospital. The girls wander, play, go to school, make friends, and meet the king of the forest, Totoro,1 as well as his preferred mode of transportation, Catbus.
Totoro borrows heavily from Alice in Wonderland—the little white Totoro, Mei falling down the hole, the Catbus as the Cheshire Cat. Unlike Alice, though, it feels like it’s really and truly for children. As a child I liked Alice partly because of the sense that some elaborate prank was being played on me that I couldn’t understand.2 Here, though, Wonderland is where you already live. It is Wonderland all the time. The house that Mei and Satsuki move into is decrepit, and they know it, but it’s also the coolest thing ever, and we can see it both ways at once as they run around.3 Part of what makes this movie so great is that it enthusiastically embraces a perception of the world that is clearly not an adult’s. The sense of cause and effect is loose. It is a movie of episodic adventures that culminates in one big adventure, when the girls visit their mom in the hospital, but while this adventure is bigger than the others it doesn’t bring a sense of finality—and then they never saw Totoro again.
Instead of a conflict or a plot, Totoro has a distressing question that hangs over everything, a question the children have no ability to answer and are barely able to ask, which is: is Mom going to be okay? And while this question is eventually answered with a “yes,” it’s not a yes because of their magical adventures. Totoro doesn’t come by to make things okay. Totoro just exists.
The girls have an openness that lets them experience this other aspect of reality, something which is mostly but not entirely because of their ages.4 They are very trusting and their trust is rewarded. When Mei encounters Totoro, she isn’t scared at all, which felt truly remarkable to me this time around. He’s huge! He’s got that gigantic mouth with all those teeth. She’s more scared of the goat she encounters later.5 She’s more scared when she encounters an unexpected old woman when she’s running around her new home. Satsuki is a little more intimidated by Totoro, but she still gives him an umbrella.
Totoro’s reaction to the umbrella is an example of what makes this movie so good. It’s not that he doesn’t really understand it at first and Satsuki has to show him. It’s that he reacts to something completely unexpected: the sound the rain makes on the umbrella. At first he doesn’t like it, and then he likes it, and then he really, really likes it.
This is so weird! It’s so good! It’s so much the product of being willing to ask: what might be the first thing somebody who has never used one would notice about being under an umbrella? And it’s so funny because Satsuki’s gift more or less gives her friendship of Totoro in perpetuity… but for a reason she could not possibly anticipate, which is that she introduced him to a new kind of sound, not because she helped keep him dry. Their father tells Satsuki and Mei that people and trees used to be friends, and this is a moment where we see the friendship between people and nature rekindle in a totally unexpected way.
This movie has made me cry before, and I cried a little this time too. I find the relationship between the sisters moving to a degree that becomes a little painful. They are both tough kids. Mei falls down all the time and never cries—which makes the scene where Satsuki loses patience with her, and she does cry, hit hard.6 Shortly after that, we have a scene where Satsuki starts crying because she’s scared her mother’s dying and that nobody is really being honest about how sick she is. You don’t really perceive how much everybody in this family is holding it together for the sake of everybody else until you see Satsuki cry.
But even in the early scene where Mei freaks out at being left with their neighbor and insists on coming to Satsuki’s school just gets me. Satsuki kind of resents it and kind of feels bad for resenting it and kind of resents that she feels bad. Mei is old enough to know she’s being a brat but too young to act otherwise. These are just very subtle dynamics that all take place within a basically loving and happy, if stressed-out, family, and it’s because these sisters love each other so much that I just get weepy when they hurt each other. I’m getting weepy writing this. And… it’s not even a sad movie! The mom is fine! She’s reading to them in the end credits! The sisters are fine! They get to ride in the Catbus! Why does all of this make me cry…? But it does.
Here are some relevant Animation Obsessive posts:
That opening shot of the daughters getting candy out of a box… right after Grave of the Fireflies formed the first part of some child’s double feature… Miyazaki… you’re sick.
One other comment about Grave of the Fireflies: it’s interesting that the children in this movie are also animated in a way that feels very real but in a sharply different way from how Setsuko feels real.
I first watched Totoro as what is known as the “Fox dub” and I feel a strong loyalty to it… get those Fanning sisters out of my movie! (I’m sure they’re fine.)
Miyazaki being such a crank fits with my general belief that the best childrens’s artists are misanthropic adults. Like Patricia Highsmith would have been a great children’s author. In my opinion. She didn’t try but she would have been great.
I like how both of the sisters see a little bit of Totoro before they see the whole thing. It feels like sort of a moment where they can either write off what they’re seeing or go to see more.
There are certain moods in which I would say that Totoro is Miyazaki’s best movie, because it just has a kind of freedom to it. But honestly I don’t really know what his best movie is, particularly since I haven’t seen anything past Howl’s Moving Castle.
The schedule for January will be in the December year-end post. It will be some mix of Urusei Yatsura and Patlabor.
Totoro’s name is Totoro, but he’s also a Totoro, of which there appear to be at least three.
My childhood copy of the Alice books was that gigantic Annotated Alice which probably added to that feeling.
It is interesting to compare their attitudes with Chihiro in Spirited Away. Chihiro is definitely older, though.
The dad in this movie is so chill. He’s like hm maybe they did supernaturally drop off this ear of corn. Could be. Could be.
Though to be fair she’s not that scared of the goat.
This is usually where I start to cry.
My daughter did love this movie — every time I see a reference to it I still think of her saying, “What’s that? What’s a Tototo? [sic] What’s the Tototo want? What’s the Tototo doing? WHY?” She must have seen this first in that three-year old stage where everything is a question, because that’s MY strongest memory about this movie.
In fairness to my daughter, though, I don’t think she liked it as much as Kiki. I think she found the sick mother stressful.
And of course, there's probably the oddest fact about this movie (at least for me): the Japanese voice actor for the dad is Shigesato Itoi, who would later create the Mother/Earthbound series.