1984: NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND

What’s it about?

Long after the fall of industrialized society in a destructive war, the remnants of humanity live in small colonies scattered throughout a world of wilderness. Much of the globe is also threatened by the advance of “the Sea of Decay” -- an expanse of toxic plants that blankets any area it can get its spores into. In this world, the people of the Valley of the Wind live in relative harmony with nature -- burning away the deadly spores when they come too close to their village, but also respecting and protecting the giant (and easily enraged) insects that live in the Sea of Decay.

But one day, an airship from the militaristic Tolmekian people crashes in the Valley of the Wind. The ship’s cargo is a “giant warrior” -- an ancient weapon of unbelievable power that the Tolmekians are hoping to use to destroy the Sea of Decay. Armies soon arrive to subjugate the Valley of the Wind and retrieve the giant warrior. But when Princess Nausicaa -- an inhabitant of the Valley of the Wind who has a special connection with nature -- discovers that the Sea of Decay has a place in the natural order, it becomes clear that the giant warrior must be destroyed.

Is it any good?

It’s probably time that I stop pretending that I don’t like cartoons. I’ve watched a bunch so far -- FANTASTIC PLANET (1973), WIZARDS (1977), HEAVY METAL (1981), THE PLAGUE DOGS (1982), THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982), and now NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND -- and you would think by now that I’d be able to point to one and say, “Yeah, see, this is an example of why I don’t like animated movies.”

Maybe I’m just picking really good cartoons, though it’s not like there are a bunch of animated sci-fi movies I’ve been passing up. But so far the biggest complaint I have about the animated nature of the movies is that HEAVY METAL too often fritters away its artistic potential on big breasts and geysers of blood. In fact, back when I was writing about HEAVY METAL, I suggested that the problem with cartoons is that a world where anything is possible is also a world where it’s very difficult to invoke real emotions -- real awe, real sympathy, real terror.

I still think that criticism holds true of HEAVY METAL, which is the least imaginative and least skillfully executed of the cartoons I’ve watched so far. (In general, I mean. HEAVY METAL does have its moments too.) But I was a bit hasty in applying that comment to animated movies in general. What I didn’t count on is that the limitless possibilities of animation -- when combined with imagination and skill -- can hit emotional notes with images that are impossible to create in the real world.

NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is probably the best of the animated movies I’ve ever seen, so it’s possible that I’m letting the pendulum swing too far in the other direction now. After all, NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is a pretty great movie in almost every respect -- not just the artistry of the visuals. It’s probably not even fair to focus on how nice it looks, since that wasn’t even the part that I enjoyed most. But it does look really awesome, and practically every new image -- from the monstrous insects to the Tolmekian airships to the giant warrior itself -- is crafted for the maximum impact. I’ve said before that none of the animated movies I’ve watched would be better if they had been filmed in live action instead. That’s doubly true of NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND.

I also really liked the story and the world of the movie. The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, long after a world-wasting cataclysm. Much of the world -- like the Valley of the Wind, for instance -- looks peaceful and idyllic, but characters talk about the toxic elements that still infect the soil and water. Presumably these are the remnants of industrial waste or nuclear radiation that are still polluting the earth generations later.

It’s not really clear what the effect of this pollution is -- trees and other plants still grow, people seem healthy, the world generally looks like a nice place to live. But it turns out that the Sea of Decay (really a forest) is a sprawling organic filter for these toxins. The reasons the plants in the Sea of Decay are deadly to people is that the toxins present in the topsoil and surface water are concentrated and accumulated in them -- a plant from the Sea of Decay raised on clean soil and pure water is as harmless as a daisy.

There’s some mumbo-jumbo about how the Earth created the Sea of Decay to cleanse itself of humanity’s pollution -- I could have done without that part. But I did really like what this revelation did for the central conflict of the movie. Throughout the first half of the flick, the Sea of Decay seems like a source of pollution itself -- a riotous overgrowth of toxic plant life that brings death and decay everywhere it goes, and which is expanding faster than the few human survivors can contain it. But if the Sea of Decay is actually a natural and necessary adaptation to the pollution that already exists, then it doesn’t seem so smart to destroy it then. It puts the environmentalist’s favorite choice into stark relief: either doom the planet for the convenience of mankind, or let mankind perish to preserve the planet.

I think I would have expected these kind of environmentalist themes to be more prevalent in science fiction movies, but now that I’m thinking about it I can’t really come up with many precursors to NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND in this respect. There are certainly movies that feature future Earths that have suffered some kind of unspecified environmental catastrophe -- like the desert world of A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975) or the ice world of QUINTET (1979). But the only movies I can think of that have specific pro-nature or anti-technology agendas prior to 1984 are SILENT RUNNING (1972) and WIZARDS (1977). There are, of course, many other sci-fi movies that caution against advances in science and technology -- but overwhelmingly those warnings are on behalf of mankind, not on behalf of a bunch of trees and pixies.

But NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is unabashedly environmentalist in its sympathies and messages. I don’t really mind that since sci-fi partly exists to give shape to otherwise abstract fears. Environmental collapse is a possible danger we may have to face -- no different than the Communist invasions and out-of-control computers and overpopulated cities that science fiction helped us grapple with in earlier decades.

If you take the “prophecies” of these movies seriously, they start to be a bit much. But science fiction is a haven for hysteria -- partly because it makes for good stories, and partly because it’s actually comforting in the end. Despite the anti-science bent of so many sci-fi flicks, mankind usually wins out in the end -- and we win out over the most extreme and most unlikely versions of our fears. After all, Godzilla doesn’t show up in Tokyo and instigate a statistically significant rise in annual cases of skin cancer. No, he levels the whole city. (I know I’m mixing metaphors here, but you see what I mean.) If we can deal with Godzilla levels of carnage and destruction in our fantasies, then surely we can deal with our own messes in the real world. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that’s actually true or not -- but at least that’s what sci-fi seems to be telling us with all of its happy endings to gloomy situations.