I am not much of a movie watcher, but I do have my moments. I will confess I do binge on the easy comfort of movies and films when I am sick. Unfortunately, I have a hard time finding creative and original content that appeals to me. I will not pay money for most American movies and films. Most films that are not Academy worthy, are just not that good. In a way, their character lack depth and substance. And in a way, their plots involve lifeless characters going through the motions. Their writers routinely desecrate and rape plots in order to insert subconscious branding and subtle marketing.

All these factors dampen our urges to rewatch the movie and discover more. We watch the movie once and we know everything about it. Or perhaps we already know everything about the movie, before we have even watched it. So why watch it? Why watch it again? Why pay money to watch a movie? If the movie industry wonders why people routinely will not pay money for movies, this is why.

But I do watch movies, especially when I am sick. It is the one thing I can do that will not make me sicker. So after an intense overnight hacking bout at a hack-a-thon, after coming down with something suspiciously similar to a strep throat, after vowing to never to do it again, I was in a bind. I searched far and wide for good films. I ended up watching a whole bunch of anime films. They were great. It turns out that the guy behind almost all of them, was a Japanese animator by the name of Hayao Miyazaki.

Hayao Miyazaki is a superb animator. From My Neighbor Totoro to Princess Mononoke to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, he animates characters with thought and depth. Through their dynamic lines and expressions, Miyazaki breaths into them energy and life. In Miyazaki’s films, everything is in motion. The whole film is poetry in motion. In applying this approach, Miyazaki not only appeals to our human desire to connect to the greater cosmos, but to avoid the one thing an animation should never be. And that is dead.

Nature plays a tremendous role in Miyazaki films. With its beauty, perseverance, and at times fragility, nature is that life-giving force that gives his characters sustenance and a will to move. Miyazaki splendidly shows that nature and humans balance out in a complex ecosystem. That is beautiful in itself. Perhaps Miyazaki is reminding us of that old Biblical maxim, that from earth we came, and from earth we will return (after we have perished).

Even beyond the animation, he does everything right. Though on paper they are no more than drawn lines and colored shapes, his characters seem so passionate, convincingly human and believable on film. Unlike American films where antagonists are routinely made out to be villains, terrorists, mechanical punching bags for the audience. Miyazaki presents his antagonists in a more compassionate light. And because they are shown in a more compassionate light, we get a chance to understand them better. Unlike American films, where the writers tell us that the antagonists are societal oddities who cannot be understood, Miyazaki reminds us in his films even the antagonists are human. They just might have at one time been like us. And because we can understand them better, we can better understand ourselves and our own fallacies, not someone else’s.

Not everything is about box numbers and ticket sales. In a world, where everything seems genetically modified, monetized, and digitalized, Miyazaki gives us a dose of the wholesome. He reminds us again, what it is to be human.