Carlos Valladares’s review published on Letterboxd:
Vast. Too vast for full comprehension right now. The demolition of idealisms (the legacy one has carefully built over a lifetime), how quickly they vanish, the impulse to begin again—but it is too late, the bombs have dropped and a new generation must face the chaos you tried to avoid your entire life—yet which you, once, inherited and bolstered, just as the young will inherit and bolster in their due time. Thus, the need for islands of imagination.
People wanting another SPIRITED AWAY need not apply: the artist is reflecting, he finds that past film beautiful but boringly perfect, and he has the right to search and dawdle, seek and weave.
Is this (in 2023) what it felt like to watch the final films of Ford, Minnelli, Lang, Hitchcock, etc. in 1966? The last Miyazakis, the last Scorseses, the last Godards, the last Vardas, the last Erices, the last Loaches, the last Bellocchios....
I'm reminded of Scorsese's moving complaint in Deadline: "I wish I could take a break for eight weeks and make a film at the same time [laughs]. The whole world has opened up to me, but it’s too late. It’s too late. I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time. Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, he said, 'I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late.' He was 83. At the time, I said, 'What does he mean?' Now I know what he means." Now, Miyazaki, too, finally sees what he can do with cinema: and, it turns out, he is only beginning.
