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Trying to head off the impending warfare between humans and animals, Ashitaka rides his red elk into the forest, where the tribes of wolves, apes, boars and other creatures are preparing a last stand against the human invaders. There he meets a human child named San, the Princess Mononoke herself (Claire Danes), who has been raised by the brusque wolf-god Moro (Gillian Anderson) as a sworn enemy of her own people. But by the time Ashitake and San overcome their mutual mistrust and begin to work together, it may be too late. The noble and warlike boars have embarked on a terrible, suicidal assault against Iron Town and Lady Eboshi has dispatched the cynical monk Jigo (Billy Bob Thornton) to kill the Forest Spirit, a spectral, majestic deer with a nearly human face.

Amid the wrenching, vertiginously exciting action scenes that conclude "Princess Mononoke," Miyazaki never loses his grasp of the film's main question -- can the hauntingly beautiful but fundamentally alien spirit of the wilderness coexist with human civilization, or must the whole earth be subjugated to reason and functionality? He doesn't pretend to know the answer, and viewers should be forewarned that for all its whimsy, awe and sheer loveliness, "Princess Mononoke" is not, after all, a Disney film. It doesn't shy away from death and loss, or from the idea that evil acts have consequences that can sometimes be ameliorated but never undone. Unlike most sugarcoated Hollywood animations, this film actually makes emotional demands on its audience, and asks that we see ourselves both in its heroes and its villains. In an age when bigness so often correlates with emptiness, here's a big movie for the ages, full to the brim with sympathy, imagination and sheer visual delight.
salon.com | Oct. 27, 1999

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