Porco-maxxing
Spring/Summer Inspiration From the Ghibli Masterpiece
Summer is right around the corner, and it’s another lazy, rainy weekend here in Boston. Kind of incredible that it only rains on the weekends, like we must be bordering on some sort of statistical anomaly at this rate.
Anyway, the miserable weather has me thinking of the sunny skies and disgustingly hot and humid weather that are right around the corner. Summer is notoriously hard to dress for, and when donning the typical shorts-and-tee/polo, it’s hard not to feel like this:
I recently watched the film Porco Rosso (The Scarlet Pig) by Studio Ghibli, and couldn’t help that our title character, a man cursed to wander the earth as an anthropomorphic pig, was absolutely drippy as hell.
A Summary and Short Review
[spoilers]
I’m not the biggest proponent of cartoons/anime (grow up), but Studio Ghibli kind of stands as its own “thing“.
The animation studio painstakingly captures the romance of everyday life, combining it with fantastical plots that have equaled out to a massively influential aesthetic brand, perhaps only rivaled by Wes Anderson’s filmography in terms of how immediately recognizable the studio’s work is.
Our film at-hand follows our man-pig, a former WWI ace who now exists as a bounty hunter somewhere in the Aegean Sea during the interwar period. The area is heavily patrolled by air pirates, who fly gigantic seaplanes and kidnap tourists for ransom money and such things. Porco works to bring them in and collect the bounties on their heads.
Both pirates and bounty hunters alike come to the island hotel of Gina, the widow of one of Porco’s fellow fighter pilots, who’s death Porco feels responsible for.
Some interesting notes about Gina and the island:
-As best I can tell, it’s modeled off of Lake Bled in Slovenia
-An island ruled by an enchanting woman who is irresistible to men, some of whom have been transmogrified from a human to an animal… This sounds familiar…
In truth, Gina seems to act as a sort of reverse Circe, bringing out the best in the men that haunt her establishment, and working tirelessly to reverse Porco’s curse. It is clear that they share a deep love for each other, but Porco’s shame (at his curse?) keeps him from pursuing her in any meaningful way.
The seaplane pirates eventually hire a ringer, an American by the name of Donald Curtis, to put an end to Porco so that they can pillage in peace. The two engage in a dogfight, where Porco’s plane is destroyed but he survives. He then sneaks back into Italy where he is an outlaw to have his plane rebuilt from the ground-up. Here, we meet our female lead Fiona, an Italian-American aeronautical engineer, visiting her Grandfather back in Milan.
A self-proclaimed womanizer, Porco balks at the idea of a girl designing and building his plane, but ultimately relents. Fiona secretly designs the plane with a second seat for herself, and forces Porco’s hand to let her join him on his adventures, as the Italian secret police (the fascisti) close in on them.
Porco and Fio continue on their adventure back to Porco’s hideout in the Adriatic, where the seaplane pirates are waiting in ambush. They decide to settle it once and for all in a 1v1 quickscopes rematch between Porco and the American.
In preparation for this fight, we learn more about Porco and his backstory. He was a captain in the Italian air force, and the sole survivor of a vicious dogfight, where he saw his best friends killed (including Gina’s newly-wed husband).
It becomes clear that Porco is wracked with survivor’s guilt, wishing that he had been taken instead of his friends. It is implied that his curse is self-inflicted, and he sees himself as sub-human for having survived.
Fio sees a brief glimpse of Porco in his human form as he relates this tragic, humanizing (lol) story of grief.
Porco proceeds to his faceoff with the American, where they both crash and then come to blows on the ground. Porco narrowly ekes out a victory, coming to terms with who he is, and learning to move on. It is heavily implied that he transforms back into a human and allows himself to find love with Gina — that’s right CHUD, in the real world. the freakish pig man gets the girl.
The aesthetics of this movie are peak — an idealized version of Mediterranean Italy and the Adriatic coast is brought to life with great delicacy. The movie itself handles some pretty complex themes for a kids’ movie, however. I feel like if I watched this as an 8 year old, I wouldn’t get much more than “lol funny pig man“ out of it, but I guess that’s why Studio Ghibli appeals so widely — there’s something there for everyone.
That said, I thought Porco’s voice actor (Michael Keaton) fell a little flat, like he couldn’t hit the notes that some of the animations required. I guess voice acting was still kind of in its infancy in 1992, and it wasn’t really that distracting.
Rating: 4.5/5
P.S. Do NOT go to the Studio Ghibli subreddit. I can’t think of a place with a worse vibe. Absolutely infested with man (and woman) children of the highest and most repulsive degree (though I do concede that describes most of reddit).
The rest of this post is more of a moodboard consisting of the remaining screengrabs that I took while watching the movie — just a little inspiration to ease us into a Summer full of leisure (knock on wood):
This feels like bait for me personally. Love it!