Princess Mononoke is so great of a film, that if I try to summarize it, I would get lost in it and lose focus. The character I want to dedicate this page to is the female lead known as Princess Mononoke. Her actual name is Sai, but she is called, by almost every character, Mononoke for her connection to the gods of the forest. Basically, she is seen as a vulgar and wild young girl who was raised by the wolf gods. She is not even considered a human anymore, which is why she is referred to as princess of the spirits.
I wanted to bring her up because she is the lead of the first film that made me start believing girls were these strong and independent people. Sai is a normal human, so compared to the gun wielding soldiers and the gods around her, she is weak. However, she still fights for what she believes in, and risks her life in an almost hopeless war to save her home. I mean, the first time we meet her, we see her face covered in blood as she tries to suck out the poison from her mother’s neck and spit it out into the river. She really is this savage and strong character. Even though my description is making her out to be the kind of ideal, strong, feminist model, there are all these other moments in the film that make her human and fragile.
It is the moment she meets Ashitaka, the male lead, that she begins to show human personality traits. Like any other girl, she becomes embarrassed by the words, “you’re beautiful,” she falls in love, and she fights an inner conflict regarding her identity as human and spirit. You see this greater depth in a girl who is introduced as just a strong and fearful beast. You can’t help but start seeing her as just a normal girl who is desperately trying to find who she is while also fighting to save her home and family.
I just thought it was especially interesting, the relationship between Ashitaka and Sai, because of how Sor Juana had described the relationship between the two sexes. Sor Juana, as I described in my blog post, sees the relationship between men and women as self-contradicting and poisonous. The men seem to force these behavioral changes in women that just further upset the men, even though it’s what they originally asked for. Sai, on the other hand, is almost independent of Ashitaka. She does not try to change herself to match the ideals of Ashitaka; they do speak of ideals (in terms of society), but she is not so affected that she changes herself to make him like her. She acts on her own beliefs, and Ashitaka is simply another voice to add another perspective – like our roles in class discussions.
The reason I like Sai so much is because she is a normal girl who tries so hard to be strong and independent, but you can clearly see that she is breaking under the pressure of war and needs someone to rely on. With lack of a better word I will borrow Zhang Ailing’s: Princess Mononoke is REAL.
I would really advise that you watch the entire film, here is a trailer of it. It’s old but great. I definitely suggest watching it in the original Japanese with subtitles, but if it’s too challenging the English voice overs aren’t too bad either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkWWWKKA8jY