This has always been my favorite Miyazaki and one of my favorite movies, but its been years since I've seen it. Now that I'm further along in actually practicing paganism and witchcraft, seeing the Gods as manifestations of the forest and the film's Ragnarök-like ending (perhaps the most beautiful sequence in any film I've seen) are deeply spiritual.
It's an emotionally mature film, one that I loved and also found challenging at age 16. My first instinct is to side with San and the Forest Gods, to take up arms in their declaration of war against the humans. But they are not wholly good themselves, the different tribes conflicting with each other, and the Boars' blind rage leading to their extinction.
Lady Eboshi makes the movie. The nuances and sympathies the film gives her character are a large part of what elevate it over one-dimensional takes on similar stories like Dances With Wolves or Avatar. She houses and gives work to former sex workers and similarly (though there is room for a Marxist reading of their new labor as well) treats Irontown's leprosy patients with humanity. She is a compelling and often admirable matriarch, blinded by her anthropocentrism.
The nuances in their conflict formulates an invitation of deep love and compassion, echoing Buddhist and Daoist ideals, to both Nature and humanity. I've always had a hard time with the latter, but for the first time in my life I feel like I am ready to fully embrace that love and compassion to humanity, as well as continuing my relationship with the Natural world.
Ultimately, it's ending reflects the cyclical nature of things, a sentiment also found in both Paganism and Buddhism. Despite our best efforts and technological advances, we can never truly destroy or outsmart Nature. It will always grow again, perhaps in forms we don't recognize and/or in different parts of the cosmos. Our war on the forests is only a war on ourselves. The death of the forest is the death of us. The real question to be asked is not if we need to save Nature, Nature will be fine without us, but whether we want to save ourselves.
