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“Princess Mononoke” Cast Interview

BEVERLY HILLS, Oct. 16, 1999 — The task: Bring a Japanese animated classic to the U.S. with English dubbing, voiced by some big Hollywood names.

The project: “Princess Mononoke” (or “Mononoke Hime” in Japanese), the highly acclaimed film by director Hayao Miyazaki, which stands as Japan’s highest-grossing film save for “Titanic.”

The challenge? Do so without losing your audience in the translation.

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Miramax has taken on the challenge, getting Minnie Driver, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Billy Bob Thornton, Gillian Anderson and Jada Pinkett Smith to voice “Mononoke” through an English-language script by Neil Gaiman, best-known for penning the adult comic book series “Sandman.”

Princess Mononoke” follows a warrior named Ashitaka who seeks to break a curse that threatens to kill him. In his journey, he stumbles on a war between humans and forest gods. As he works to bring peace between the two sides, he encounters a young girl raised by wolf gods. Ultimately, she is torn between her growing love for Ashitaka and her hatred of the human race.

Bringing “Mononoke” to an English-speaking audience wasn’t easy. The actors had to voice over animation that was already completed, meaning that their voices had to match the characters’ lip movements — even though the characters’ lips were moving in Japanese. Needless to say, this presented quite a tough task for Gaiman.

“What I was given was essentially the subtitles, the very literal translations,” the screenwriter said. “My job was to turn it to dialogue that didn’t sound like Saturday morning cartoons, words that carried some of the resonance, some of the poetry.”

Even more difficult to deal with were the cultural assumptions that a Japanese audience would understand but American viewers would not.

“There’s a great scene where Ashitaka has to leave the village and the wise woman says, ‘And now you’ll cut your hair and we won’t be able to watch you leave and you’re never to return again.’ All of which probably isn’t as explicit in Japanese. But in her revealing what the state of their village is to us, informing of what the culture is in their village, we learn something about Ashitaka’s character, and at the same time, we learn something about their culture,” says Crudup, who voices Ashitaka.

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One of “Princess Mononoke‘s ” biggest draws — and probably its hardest sell — is that unlike most animated films, its story and characters aren’t sketched in black or white, good or bad. Lady Eboshi, voiced by Driver, wants to raze the forest to benefit her mining colony and is initially painted as the villain. But, as Driver points out, she’s more complex than that.

“She’s a woman with extraordinary heart and energy and stubbornness who feels that human life is more important than the animal life,” Driver said. “And it seems to me that all the characters have that idea of trying to integrate the different levels of being on this planet into living harmoniously and that everybody is working toward the same thing. I think fundamentally she’s a really good person.”

“Mononoke” finishes with an open-ended conclusion — the battle between humans and nature still continues, though there is hope — which Gaiman says is radically different from what U.S. audiences are used to.

“In a Western film you could almost make exactly the same movie, except the last two minutes you’d cut to [the little girl] in the village and she’d go, ‘Ashitaka’s here!’ And you’d pull back; he’d be riding up in his red elk and San [Princess Mononoke] would be by his side on the wolf,” Gaiman said. “And the village would erupt into cheers, and the little old woman would come out and say, ‘Welcome home!’ And he’d say ‘Yes, and I brought my bride,’ and the film would end.”

Driver says it’s good for an ending to “shake it up” for the audience. “You’re really being asked to question yourself, as there is no villain. There’s no way of pointing the finger and going, ‘That’s the bad guy.’ Just as in this society right now people are so busy pointing fingers: Gun control, government, parents, school, teachers. There’s no one person to blame. You can only look to yourself and figure out what it is that you’re doing and be responsible for your actions.”

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