Ponyo at the Parousia 3 comments

By Bradford Winters

With my wife out of town and our two daughters in my hands for the rainy fall weekend, I managed to pull off a Saturday nap for both—not a small feat at their rest-resistant ages of five and a half and almost four—with the promise of an irresistible outing on the other side of sleep: a trip to the movies.

And not just to the dinky little theater down the street from us in Brooklyn, where they go with their mother once a month on Mondays for child-specific screenings, but to Manhattan! By subway! Now get to sleep and give your father a moment to himself!

Having heard from friends that Ponyo was not only another gem from one of Japan’s more beloved exports, the animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, but a perfectly safe one for small children as compared to his earlier masterpiece of phantasmagoria, Spirited Away, my additional promise of pizza afterwards had me set for coronation as SuperDad before the weekend was out.

Naturally, I was a bit caught off-guard when, during a harmless scene in the early part of the film before things get tough on the goldfish, Ponyo, and her would-be human keeper, Sosuke, the five year-old boy who found her at the base of the cliff where he lives with his mother, I turned to see my older daughter with tears streaming down her face.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I asked. She shook her head. Nothing was wrong. Sosuke and his mother had just hugged, each feeling the absence of the father/husband away at sea. And she was crying because she was happy. Because they loved each other.

Forget the popcorn; pass that crown I had in mind, so I can pass it on to someone else.

Because all I could consider in that instant, looking down at my daughter whose tears glistened in the dark, was every undeserved harsh word I had spoken in my weaker moments over the past five years. A premature “Stop that!” here, a hasty “Right now!” there, all the vain sparks of a fuse too short for anyone’s good, not the least of all its own.

I have known all along that she’s an especially sensitive child, who from infancy to this day has had the habit of putting her thumb and forefinger to the lobe of your ear, like an anatomical grounding device for both of you whose power is affection. But sitting there in the theater with her at my side, I realized there were ways in which I didn’t know her at all. Not by virtue of neglect, but of mystery.

Earlier that day on the street outside our apartment, my younger daughter had asked me in her typically sing-song tone of voice, “Daddy, are we never going to die?” Not an easy question to answer in any circumstance, but when it’s your three and a half year-old blue-eyed bomblet of joy doing the asking, well, I’m all ears if you have the proper response.

And naturally, I was a bit caught off-guard at breakfast the next morning when, without the slightest prior indication, she burst into tears for the pain in her head. What pain?

A pain that didn’t go away before my wife’s return as I had hoped, that she could trace like a seam down the back of our daughter’s head. The fact that my wife was worried made me really, really worried, her being the less inclined one to make mountains of molehills when it comes to health and wellness.

The timing of it all left me primed for a parent’s worst worst fears unimaginable: one day I saw my older daughter’s happy tears give way to tears of dread near the climax of Ponyo when it seemed that Sosuke might not be reunited with his mother in the end; the next day my younger daughter was having inexplicable head pains on the heels of her impossibly existential question.

Daddy, are we never going to die?

And then to see her enjoy the attention of the pediatrician, whose gentle mention of a shot to draw blood was met with: “No, that’s okay, I don’t need a shot.” As if her unparalleled charm could sway a doctor the way it often does her father. Then her own screaming tears at the sight of the needle as it dawned on her that she was actually going to have a shot, a fear not mitigated by promises of that rarest treat, chewing gum, when it was over.

One would be hard-pressed to attribute any Judeo-Christian overtones to Miyasaki’s story in Ponyo, though the apocalyptic havoc wreaked by satellites falling like stars does have its parallel in Revelation, and the restoration of nature by movie’s end does have its counterpart in the “environmental” covenant promised to the prophet in Hosea—a covenant apparently more important to the Lord than to much of his current Church.

In fact, with the sultry voice of Cate Blanchett animating the sea goddess, Granmammare, one could affectionately accuse Miyasaki of unabashed paganism, replete with all manner of sorcery and the like.

But I’d rather thank him for a film whose timing could not have been better in one respect, and worse in the other, lodged as it was in the middle of an unforgettably sweet and scary weekend with my two girls.

When I put them to bed tonight, several weeks later, with one’s little hand at my ear as she falls asleep, and the other’s passing viral headache all but forgotten at this point, I will go on hoping for that climax of climaxes that answers the younger’s question the way Ponyo did with or without meaning to, that says, “Yes, but...no” that says we get to be together again, but differently....