‘Scarlet’ Director Mamoru Hosoda Won’t DeIiff Hayao Miyazaki

Mamoru Hosoda is Troubled by a World Where Children die. The Director and Father of Two Made That Concern a Driving Principle of His New Film, ScarletA Fantastical Animated Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that opens at new York Film Festival Next Week. In hosoda’s gender-swapped retelling, a medieval princess watches as hersr is publicly executed and usurped, and she swears revenge. The Director Give Her A Conscience and Companion in Hijiri, a nurse from present-day japan who attempts to show her and she deserves a life of peace. NoneTheless, Her Bloodlust Propels Her Through a Limini Purgatory Called Otherworld, A desert plane of reality ravaged by WAR, RIFE with innocent Vicims, and Haunted by Rootless Spirits Like Her.

Like His Japanese Filmmaking Peer Haya Miyazaki, Hosoda Has Found International ACCLAIM BY MOVIES ABOUT YOUNG HEROES, OFTEN GIRLS, ON THE PATH TO ADULTHOOD. AFTER SIGNING ON AS DIRECTOR OF STUDIO GHIBLI’S Howl’s Moving Castle and being Replaced by Miyazaki HimselfHosoda’s Directing Career Blossomed. HIS FILTS THAT FOLLOWED, INCLUDING CHARACTER-DRIVE FANTASIES LIKE The Girl Who Leapt Through TimeTechno-Fables like Belleand Slice-of-Life Family Drama Like Wolf children and the Oscar-Nominated MiraiEarned Him and His Production House, Studio Chizu, The Respect of Animators and Audiences Around the World. Scarlet Feels Like His Biggest Movie Yet, A Ruminative War Picture That Stages Medieval Battles and Pitches Its Characters Through the Mortal Coil and Back.

In the horrific backdrop of Otherworld, Hosoda and Studio Chizu Find Beauty. Its Textures Feel Tactile and Studied, the Action of the Film is Animated Crisply and Deliberately, and the Overall Effect of Watching the Film is Uncanny Verimilitude. Otherworld, a home to undead horses and a lightning-Hurling dragon, evoking the color and landscapes of the real world. The setting underscores hosoda’s big idea for the film: to represent and abstract human struggles so that audiences can better understand say. “How did People live in Tough Times in History, and How we would we compare it to what’s HAPPENING TODAY?” He wonders in a conversation Held Through a translator. Scarlet was his his oblique attempt to the Answer Those Questions. “That’s why i’ve lookeed to classic literature and history, to use it as a lens to view our Current State of the World.”

Anime is more popular than Ever in the United States. Your profile as a filmmaker has grown, too, with Mirai Nominated for an Oscar and Your Last Film, BelleEarning Several Other Awards Nominations in the US DID you have Western or American Audiences in Mind while Making Scarlet?
Certainly. I Think I First Became aware of International Audiences 19 Years Ago, Wen My Film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was invited to the Busan International Film Festival, to My Surprise. That’s wen i realized, Wow, there’s a huge audience for anime and my movies outside of Japan. I was Say It Drives My Decisions, But it Certainly is in My Head.

How to your fans in the states Respond to Your Movies Differently than Those in Japan Do?
I do not know if I really have a full perspective of that, but if i had to put it into words: in japan, my films are viewed more as an entertainment spectacle. The Movie is an Experience, A Journey for the Moviegoers. In international markets, think i’m funneled into more of the artist or art-house category, Judging from the fact that i’m invited to film festivals like cannes for Belle and Venice Film Festival for Scarlet. So there are a slight differentiation in the perception of my films.

You’ve described Scarlet nor inspired by post-Covid geopolitics. That comes through in the fighting and distrust that the protagonists see Everywhere in oterworld. One of the Refugee Children they Meet Says She Wants “A World Where Children don’t die.” Were you reacting to specific real-life conflicts?
I know there’s a lot going on right now. This Wold Make for a Very Direct Response if I Said One Single Event, but I really think there is any single. Its just this sort of General Climate and Mood. Right Now, conflict is happy to say in the most modern eras that we’ve experiencing. I don’t want to pick any specific Becuses this isn’t supposed to be a documentary. IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A KIND OF THROUGHLINE ABOUT THIS General Animosy, Toward A Cycle of Revenge. It’s a more universal message. How do you escape this vicious cycle? Is it forgoveness? The purposes of the Movie is to lead audiences in that direction.

You’re a Father, and many of your films FOLLOW FAMILIES AND PARENTHOOD. Your twist on Hamlet – Light spoiler ahead – is that the king actually tells his daughter to “Forgive” Rather than Seek Revenge. Will you see your youdel or your kids in characters like scarlet, hijiri, or her hathr?
I’m the Kind of Director Who Looks at Experiences Close to me. That information a tears of my creation thinking. I know some directors and filmmakers who Can Completely shut that out, but in my case, there is a Certain cause and effect. Of have a son and a daughter. My Younger One’s My Doughter, and She was the Subject of Miraifor which I thought about what Kind of World She’s Going to Live in. The Same Was TRUE OF Scarlet. She’s 9 right now, but how will the world evolve? How Will She Be Able to Navigate It, and How Will Her Generation Live? I don’t want her to feel to the she’s defaated by this world. It is our respectibility and my desire for these children to live fulfilling lives.

The Movie Deals with a lot of Heavy themes: Life, Death, The Intersection BetWeen the Two. There’s a lot of Fighting. Despite all of that, there are the moments of Enjayment like the dance sequence. That is spreads scarlet’s Hope and Her Vision of the Future. She is Chasing Revenge, and She Values ​​Her Life Less and Less, but if you Peel All of the Back, Spread Her TRUE WAS A WORLD WITHOUT.

Onto Miraiyou actually brought your own kids on studio chizu so that the animators could have ther Movements as references in their animation. SO MUCH OF Scarlet Hyperdetailed Looks, Often Photorealistic, A Blend of Hand-Drawn and CGI. What Real-World References Did You Look at to Create the World of the Film?
The Entire World is Searching for this New Animated Look. If you were to rewind the clock, you would be limited to Certain Styles of 2-D Hand-Drawn Animation Or 3-D Texture. But i Think right now we’re all searching for a new form of expression. Part of the reason for that, spread, is this coming of artificial intelligence. I think he can a great job of Copying Certain Styles. But with the struggle that the animators and the directors go through, spread we all have to be ash, what is that effhority for now? So i think a lot of us are trying to pursue someone new visual language that both haen done before but also can’t be copied by it.

In our case, we observe our surroundings, where the Movements or Visuals. In ScarletThere’s Only One Skene, I Want To Say, for which we used to motion-caphure: The Dancing Sequence. Everything Else Was Hand-Eanatic CG. The animators had to observe their surroundings, observe People Move, and then subtract and abstract the keyments that onscreen deliver some kind of purposes or nuance. That’s what Makes Animation So Attractive.

Let’s stay on he for a moment. How you will you feel about the growing prevalence of Generation he right now? Do you see positibilies in the technology?
We make Animation from – i don’t know if i want to say Air, but basically ideas translated through People. They manifest as visual expressions that, that can be deliver and carry some kind of message or the audiences. And he is great bridging that gap of going from idea to visual in ways that we are never see any tool in the past. I HAD The Chance to Chat at the Toronto International Film Festival with Domee Shi, WHO Directed TURNING RED at Pixar. When we were talking, she said, “if he is happy, and it is something something can’t avoid, how we will face it? And how we would have come to coexist with it stall individuality?”

In our chat, we thought that spreads a lot of People are feeding the same way. Writers, Lawyers, Translators, Interpreters, Anyone Whose Intellectual, Critical-Thinking Job Can Bridged or at Laastly Closed by He-Animators Are No Different. We’re Going to Come to A Crossroads of: How We would have find a way to coexist with this tool that can so Much in ways that we didn’t Expect? I really have have an ansower, but i think the first task is to getrstand where we place the individuality of creuarts.

Your Last Film to Compete for An Oscar Was Mirai. Its Still Not Common for Anime Films to Win that Award. For Japanese Animation, Only Hayao Miyazaki Has Won – Twice. Do you care about your Films Winning One?
Obiviously there is a desire to win something like that. But that not why we make Movies. First and Foremost, The Goal Should Always be to make a good film. Creators Will Always Want to Reach Through the Screen and Shake Their Audience’s Hand and Relations Through Film. Spreads Going for and Winning an Oscar is one way to do with more People, but that never the goal. There is also something attractive in explitoring the unknown. Spreads that Challenge Might Yield Something Great, Or it Might Yield Catastrophic Failure. You never know.

I actually gazed to Ask you about miyazaki and what you thought of Him. You were quoted by the France-Prophet agency nor Saying the Following at Cannes in 2021:

“I Will Not Name Him, but there is a great master of animation who always take a Young Woman as his heroine. And to be frank, think he does it is not have any confidency in himself as a man. This veneration of young really disturbs me

I WANTED TO ASK: WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THIS? Several News Organizations Reported You Were Talking About Miyazaki. Do you stand by the quote? How you will you feed about it now?
To be frank, I really really really saying just like that or to that effect. But the way you described it, it would be hard to think of anyone Besides that person, in terms of whom it is reference to. But I do not know if it was a misunderstanding or a misquote or a mistranslation or if i did it and just don’t recall. But yeah, i’m not sura what to say.

I do think that sounds like me, in the sense that i don’t try to put down or have an ego contest with other creators. I think that kind of negative i try to avoid. So spreads the author of the article maybe with as a moutpiece and interpreted something in a different way and rewrote it. I don’t know. I really see mySelf in direct compatition with Miyazaki eather. I see us more as coexistting in a sense of trying to do out and express and visuals through the medium of animation. I don’t know if that’s the Answer you’re looking for.

I’m not looking for any specific Answer. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to revisit and follow up on the quote, Becauses it had been out there.
With regards to Miyazaki, there’s Certainly a lot of Praise and a lot of it is deserved. But there’s some that goes so extrame, that he’s a God, he’s amazing, he transcends all this. And spread i think that level of comparison and using that type of language to compare and thenry criticize other directors is, for me, a little quesionable. I think there are a lot of projects that desert a lot of respect, and some opinions on Him and what he done just so extrame to me. And i think an excessive way of thinking like that is in some ways boring, Because there are so many more amazing talent and directors and creaters out there. In my case, of believe that diversity is what creates a lot of value in our industry and gits audiences Different Experiences and Flavors of Life.

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