How Miyazaki eased my fear of graduating — at least for a few dazzling hours
By Danielle Momoh
Ponyo / photo: Studio Ghibli
When is childhood over? That's a loaded question, philosophy disguised as objectivity. Okay then, when did you feel that your childhood was over? When did you think it should be over– when you went to college? Performed the depressing and upsetting activity of buying groceries for yourself? Again, this might be too hard a question, it's usually a slow dawning, like realizing you can't touch your toes anymore. It is usually not a singular event that slams the door of careless youth in your face. Except when it is.
May 3rd. 12:20pm: “IMPORTANT! Apply for Graduation Today”
Gmail rarely heralds good news for me, but that afternoon, this particular notification sent me into a psychological tailspin. The time had come to conclusively tell my university that I intended to walk out of their walls with a degree, that in a year from now I will join the real world, but that can’t be true. College can't be almost over. Surely, three years do not speed by that quickly. I stared at the email until it looked less like words and more like a threat to my post finals tranquility.
Honestly, it felt unfair. Only recently had I started feeling like a college student– turning 21, going to bars every other day, grinding out an essay in less than 48 hours. Seeing my friends across a busy building floor and feeling quite keenly, my entire day lifted into a lighter plane. The joy of shared misery– nearly over. Without even so much as a warning. Time flies when you're having fun. But of course I forgot. I can't get back the first year and a half that depression stole from me, and I cannot stop time from marching on even when I look away from it.
The cloud of dread follows me around for a few days. As someone with a predisposition to dread, or at least its dramatics, it wasn't all that hard to walk around with the stink of loss on me. Talking to graduating seniors, the cloud grew darker, with more interesting shades of black. What will I do after university? Graduate school… unless I get a job. What job? Who is going to pay me to write about movies? Do people even watch movies anymore? My entire job market is dissolving before my eyes, and there's nothing I can do about it. I walk around in a state of barely suppressed panic, staring at everyone’s face as they walk past me. I want to grab them and scream: The end is near!
I buy a ticket to the movies. It's a beautiful summer day, I walk the 30 minute stretch from my apartment to the huge Boston AMC with a friend and I try to forget that this will very quickly no longer be my life. Although I am dwelling in melancholy, the sunshine makes it seem a little less serious, like I'm over empathizing with some protagonist behind my laptop screen. Walking into the theater, the sound of children’s babbling and short screams greets me. This is an afternoon showing of a Studio Ghibli film after all. The parents look harried and the quaint chaos of it all buoys me through the trailers.
For the next two hours, I was dunked into the world of Ponyo. From the first few moments onward, Miyazaki brings a sense of awe to the heavily air conditioned AMC theater. A beautiful community constantly under threat of the sea that makes their lives possible by swallowing them up. A little boy determined to make friends with a strange fish that later turns into a strange girl. As an armchair film critic, I turned the film over in my head as I stared wide-eyed at the screen. I had not seen it since I was around Sasuke’s age, when his (non-magical) struggles mirrored mine. Now, at the ripe old age of 21, I saw all that was sewn into the breathtaking animation and moving story. A mother struggling to feel like a partner in an effectively long-distance marriage, a young boy trying to be responsible for the sea like his father is. The way humans mindlessly pollute yet have such a large capacity for harmony with the world around them. Even a sneaky look into how we treat our elderly. But these things aren't what ultimately lifted me out of my anxiety induced slump. The unbounded joy of the film did.
Every frame gushes with wonder at the world, every blade of glass and drop of water imbued with its own life, its own energy. The kind of energy that you only notice in children– a constant fizzing and excitement at the simplest things. In Ponyo, a bowl of ramen is just as precious and important as the seven seas. Keeping a promise to a friend is stronger than any ancient magic, and your fish turning into a little girl is simply another silly adventure around town. What’s truly special about Ponyo (and honestly all other Miyazaki projects) is the wonder that crashes off the screen and into our eyes. We don't just become kids again, we remember what it's like to see the world as fresh and new. Ripe with possibility, with love and friendship playing hide and seek in every corner. To see time as not a thing that conquers us, but as something we grow alongside.
The lights turn on and I blink rapidly. My friends slowly stretch in their chairs and I grin at them. They smile back tentatively, watching me scrub stray tears off my face. For a few rare minutes, I can’t bring myself to be embarrassed. The buoyancy onscreen still lingers in the air. Everything was miraculous: the short nap one of my friends quietly slipped into towards the end of the film, the tacky floor my sneakers stuck to, the incredible off-key singing the children around us were doing with an almost inhuman gusto. And I was lucky enough to be the overly-sentimental witness.
Mourning my college life before it was even over seemed a bit silly now. And frankly, my method of grieving (crawling back into myself in hopes I could wallow in self-pity long enough that it wouldn’t feel as overwhelming) wasn’t helping. Watching Ponyo and Sasuke’s happy acceptance of everything foreign to them, their resilience in the face of strict parents and unchecked magic— maybe childhood isn’t some exclusive club that you’re kicked out of once you’re legally able to rent a car. For several minutes I felt all the hope that only children seem to have. But I felt it. I felt it after the credits rolled, when I left the theater, as I took a polaroid of my friends squinting in the sunshine. If all I needed was a filmic nudge to feel like I'm five again, then maybe my years in college won’t instantly dissipate the moment I get my degree. I was letting my fear of it ending stop me from being there as it ends.
So while I still google film theory masters programs and stare anxiously at my savings account like I'm Ponyo and my will alone will make it bigger, I try not to let it drown the happiness I've felt and the happiness I feel now. Clouds of uncertainty and fear always hang around me in varying degrees of lightness, but good movies, good art, will always remind me to look up from my own misery. Ponyo left the ocean but the ocean never leaves her. She is still surrounded by it, and has been shaped by it. I look at memories, at time swirling around me as my present rapidly becomes my past and I feel a little braver. Just because it’s past doesn’t mean it’s gone. Just because Ponyo is now a human girl doesn’t mean her connection to the ocean washes away.
I may leave college, readjust to a life where all-nighters are not a norm, but my past will always be there, beside me. Ponyo will grow up with the ocean in her backyard, reminding her of all that she was and all that she can still become. Childhood isn’t some land I can never reach again. Ponyo gently reminds me that it’s right by my side. I can always go back in for a swim.
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