Hayao Miyazaki - Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

2. My Neighbour Totoro

If Princess Mononoke represents Miyazaki at his most serious, delivering a message-minded epic which seeks to comment on the important issue of environmental destruction, then My Neighbour Totoro site comfortably at the other end of the spectrum. It's a low-key but sumptuous tale which focuses on the personal, with two young sisters moving out to the Japanese countryside in the 1950s to be closer to their hospital-bound mother. When Miyazaki made My Neighbour Totoro he set out to produce a film which would show the young people in Japan the beauty of their countryside, a side to the country that many children - raised in busy cities - rarely got to see. Like country life itself, the film's pacing can best be described as laid back, with the two girls eagerly exploring the land around them and encountering the spirits of the forest, including the titular Totoro. A strange hybrid of modernity and nostalgia, it almost feels as if Miyazaki were projecting his own childhood fantasies onto the screen, and just as the subtly unfolding drama is sweetly engaging, so too are simple moments, such as a frog slowly hopping over the road, rendered with loving care. It's a film in which the importance of attention to detail truly comes to the foreground.