Big Fish and Begonia Pays Homage to Ghibli in New(ish) Chinese Animated Feature
2016 Chinese animated feature Big Fish and Begonia, directed by Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun, is a playful visual wonderland wrapped around a touching story. There are so many familiar themes and images that it feels like Okja met Spirited Away and kid sister Ponyo was along for the ride; you immediately know it’s going to be lovely. We’re constantly searching for films that have the same magic as Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo, and finding something that gives a similar desire to jump into the world and explore is pretty rare. Liang and Zhang have created a distinct world despite the similarities, and the borrowed imagery works more as a knowing homage designed to delight Hayao Miyazaki fans than as a rip off. Because of their innocence, there are limits to the depth of the main characters; but with a touching message and an intriguing, secretive world, there is no lack of interest between the credits.
From short film to $90 million festival hit: Big Fish and Begonia see’s big results internationally.
We were lucky to have got to see this film at all; Big Fish and Begonia took more than 10 years to get to the big screen due to a lack of corporate funding. The journey began when the directors released a short film, Swallowtail Butterfly, in 2004. The response they received inspired the pair to eventually create a feature film. After years of struggling to source consistent funding, Liang took to Weibo (China’s answer to Twitter) to spread the word and ask for help. He succeeded, and 3 years later, Big Fish and Begonia was released in China and grossed nearly $90 million there as a festival favourite. Indiewire has even tipped it to be a possible Oscar’s breakthrough and is gaining traction amongst the global film community.
Inspired by ancient text Zhuangzi, the story takes Chun and Qiu under the oceans and through the clouds.
The story follows Chun, a young girl who comes from a world whose inhabitants orchestrate the changing of our seasons, the tides of our oceans and the direction of our winds. Her coming-of-age ritual sees her enter the human world in the form of a red dolphin for one week only. Chun becomes responsible for the death of a human boy and returns home to buy his soul back from the soul keeper in the form of a tiny fish. She must nurture her ward until he can go back to the human world and be reincarnated. Along with her friend Qiu, Chun goes on breathtaking adventures as she tries to protect the soul of the boy from the consequences she has brought upon her world.
The story is in part inspired by an ancient Chinese text, called Zhuangzi, estimated to be written at least 220 years BC. Zhuangzi is considered the most important piece of Daoist (Taoist) writings, and explores the carefree nature of the ideal Daoist sage. Among other stories, it contains the tale of another Chun and Qiu, both parts of a tree. Qiu, a leaf, falls to the ground and nourishes Chun, a fitting metaphor for the nurturing and selfless relationship the characters in the film share.
Influences from Disney, Miyazaki create a sense of nostalgia for millennial viewers.
We were a little late on the uptake for this one; Chinese animated features are often less publicised in the west than their Japanese counterparts. The english language version was released earlier this year and so the title has now appeared on the radars of english speaking anime fans. The Chinese translation for anime is donghua but is more commonly referred to by westerners as Chinese animation or simply lumped together with anime.
Chinese and Japanese animated films can sometimes occupy the same space to many westerners due to a lack of understanding of cultural differences, but Big Fish and Begonia seems to deliberately make this connection. The film seems to make countless references to Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki masterpieces and creates a world incredibly similar to many isekai anime (a genre of stories where characters are transported to another world) even though this portion of the story is relatively short. In this way, it is possible for casual anime fans to be unable to tell the difference from a stylistic and storytelling point of view.
The references to Miyazaki are immediately tangible: familiar colours and characters appear akin to the world of Spirited Away. Some characters even share the same faces and physical tropes, with one of the first groups of creatures you see looking remarkably like Spirited Away’s ‘no face’. Experiencing all the different types of people and creatures that inhabit this world is like riding a merry-go-round of visual delights. The general aura of the film, awash with blues, greens and purples, creates a feeling of eternal twilight that viewers came to love in Miyazaki’s creations. The seaside location of Chun’s jaunt to the human world and the child who lives there looks remarkably like Ponyo, while the very colours of the red dolphins remind us of the western classic Ariel, The Little Mermaid. What these references do, in practice, is create a sense of nostalgia in viewers. Many, like us, have been unable to find enough films that give us the same sense of wonder as Miyazaki’s masterpieces and Disney classics. In this way, Big Fish and Begonia succeeds wonderfully.
Why you should watch:
The beauty, the nostalgia and the mystery of the world itself should definitely be enough to intrigue viewers. Liang and Zhang’s world has the audience wishing for more. You want to pause the film in so many frames just to see what they’ve included, or because you saw a hint of some other aspect of the world that you’re interested in. It makes you hope there will be more exploration, so we are able to see and get to know more about the lore and characters.
The message itself is poignant in today's world as well, more so now than it may have been when the film was released in China in 2016. There is a subtle exploration of the violence that people show toward things they do not understand, and the fear they feel for people that balk at the status quo of the dominant culture or traditional values. Certainly, these are themes that are eerily pertinent to our 2018 world.
Watch the English Sub here: https://otakustream.tv/movie/da-yu-hai-tang/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/big-fish-begonia-chinese-animated-feature-oscar-1201949855/#
