Porco Rosso

I must have seen part of Porco Rosso on a movie channel at some point. The big fistfight at the end certainly seemed familiar. At any rate, I knew there was going to be flying and air pirates, and that was enough for me.

Porco (or Marco as he was formerly known) is a bounty hunter, though I'd describe him more as on-call security. When air pirates rob ships in the Adriatic, they call Porco for support. He's very good at what he does, which makes him unpopular enough with the pirates that they band together and hire a hotshot American named Curtis to deal with Porco. He catches Porco on the way to Milan for engine repairs, and shoots him down.

You would expect this to mean Porco is driven to rebuild his plane and take revenge on Curtis, and Porco is eager to have his plane rebuilt, but he's not concerned with Curtis, only with getting back in the air and earning some bucks. Porco's not concerned with much of anything other than himself. At least, he doesn't care about politics, war, honor, any of the things many other people think he ought to care about. But why should he? He's a pig. No really, he's a talking pig, because he was cursed. Or so he says. He largely uses it as an excuse to not care about laws, warrants, compliments, whatever someone is troubling him with at the moment.

It's more like a self-fulfilling prophecy, frankly. He thinks it's true, that he's a miserable person, a pig, so he becomes one. And it fades when he does something that runs contrary to the nature of a pig. Which happens more frequently after he meets Fio, the young engineer who designed his plane and insisted on coming along to make adjustments (there wasn't time for a proper test flight, seeing as the Fascist government isn't a fan of Porco).

It's interesting that Porco is a short, dumpy pig, contrasted with Curtis, who is this tall, dashing, brash Texan. Yet Curtis is a buffoon. Boldly declaring his love for practically any woman he meets by quoting lines from his own screenplay, that he intends to star in as a springboard to the White House(?!). He has no problem working for sky pirates, and crows about shooting down another pilot who not only had a faulty engine, but wasn't even trying to fight back. Then you have Porco who can be kind, compassionate, is highly merciful (he won't shoot if there's a chance he'll hit the pilot), and even if he does it for money, is still ultimately protecting people (or at least their goods). Porco's greatest fault seems to be his unreasonably poor opinion of himself, that he doesn't deserve anyone, and can't make anyone happy. It really seems like Curtis ought to be the pig, but is too oblivious to know it. Perhaps it's just a matter of age. Porco is a middle-aged man, Curtis is not a boy exactly, but younger. He made his marks as a racing pilot in the late '20s, while Porco flew in World War I.

The film is gorgeous, which I guess is no surprise for a Miyazaki film. And the film wisely gives the scenery and the art its time to shine. There are a couple of wonderful sequences without dialogue, or at least minimal dialogue, where I could just stare at the surroundings. Porco Rosso is one of those stories that kicks in that urge to "go", and try to find somewhere that looks like that. Even the story Porco tells Fio, which has his narration, carries enough wisely placed pauses to let the effect of what we're seeing sink in. That's important, because as he tells it, we can see how the sight of it affects him, and it's given time to do the same for us.

One other thing I like is how much is only implied. Why none of Porco's mechanic's sons or nephews are available to help. That radio Gina keeps hidden behind a bookshelf. Those glimpses of the larger wheels turning out in the world, but only glimpses, because Porco does his best to ignore it all. We only see them as they intersect with his story. If this was more Gina's story, or even Fio's, growing up in a Fascist country, the view might be very different.