Animation is Film Review: Trying to keep up with Mononoke the Movie is a trip and a half

Film festivals are weird, because you can end up watching so much that your brain kind of turns to mush. Even with a fest that's only a few days long, this can end up being the case. It certainly colors my experience of watching Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain at Animation is Film this past weekend. It was my fourth movie of the day, and it was a late movie for me (8:30pm start time?? 8:30pm at night???). I'm much more a morning person than a night owl, so by the time we plopped down in our seats for this one, I was a little bleary-eyed, quite ready-for-bed-pilled. But I was still excited to check it out.

Maybe it was my tiredness, or maybe it's because I wasn't ready for what I was getting into, but I found Mononoke the Movie wildly hard to follow, borderline impossible, even. It's a movie that doesn't waste your time, moving at a breakneck pace throughout, throwing a ton of characters your way in rapid succession and doling out story details left and right and up and down and sometimes from directions that don't yet have names. It's a truly strange ride, a puzzle box that is a challenge to decipher every step of the way, even as the credits roll.

Like...I could try to spoil this movie for you and I just wouldn't be able to. The general premise is simpler to grasp: it's about two women who join the ranks of an all-women palace in the service of a lord who is seeking to bear an heir. One of the women wants to have the honor of bearing said heir. The other is more interested in becoming a scribe within the palace. This latter woman, Asa, has the genteel personality to make her mark in the palace, and finds herself quickly raised to a position of prominence, which carries with it some unusual baggage in the form of a strange doll in her room (and also maybe a ghost).

The film is a spin-off of a 2007 anime which itself was a spin-off of another anime. The tie-in is the character of the medicine seller, a sexy vampire-looking fella who lurks outside the palace walls and desperately wants to gain admittance. He's mysterious, a bit aloof, extremely hot. I can and will let him bite me if he wants to. I don't know if that's at all part of his deal, but the fangs seem to suggest it's a possibility.

He's so sexy

It ends up the medicine seller is on the hunt for a demon, as well as the mononoke that summons it. I think? Once he really enters the story, things get kaleidoscopically weird, and that's when I had to just surrender myself to the ride. At that point, I understood that I wasn't going to be able to fully follow what was happening, but I knew I could at least enjoy the trippy visuals and cool action. And on both fronts, the movie delivers in droves.

This is one of my favorite-looking movies I've ever seen. The visuals look like ancient paintings come to life, with the textures of the background remaining static as the characters move over them. It's hard to articulate exactly what it looks like, but it's truly such a feast for the eyes. I'm glad this is the first of a planned trilogy, because I want to watch more movies that look like this (that's assuming, of course, that the next couple movies also use this aesthetic).

I plan to check this out again when it lands on Netflix (apparently sometime next month), to see if I can find firmer footing in the story. At the least, it'll be great to behold the beauty again.