Well, who would have thought that raccoons testicles would have played such a significant and dramatic part in an animated film!
And now, having grabbed your attention...
As ever, Studio Ghibli continue to amaze me. This was a funny, whimsical, richly-plotted and finally,powerfully moving drama that both focused on individual stories through anthropomorphy and got us questioning about the price paid for economic growth and the impact on everyone of this growth. There are certain similarities to Watership Down in that a community is under threat and they respond in a variety of ways, both individually and collectively and while they are clearly animals ( rabbits, raccoons) there is a universal human parallel to be drawn.
There is a great range of intriguing and interesting characters and the sheer amount of 'story' crammed into the two-hour running time ( which did not seem too long, unbalanced or overly complicated) was tremendous. It is very character-driven and so the gorgeousness of the drawings is not quite such a central part of some other films from this source.
A great joy and I am now sad that for this festival I only have one more left to see!