Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #123: Princess Mononoke (1997).

In late-Muromachi-era Japan, new medieval technology rises against the natural powers found in the kindly Great God of the Forest and the ecological spirits he protects. When a strange demon arrives and threatens the Emishi clan, one of its young warriors, Prince Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup in the English dubbed version), kills the creature but then discovers that human anger mutates it.Now infected with its dangerous curse, Ashitaka leaves home for the western forests to find the cure that will save him. Once there Ashitaka becomes embroiled in a bitter conflict between Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver in the EDV), the forest-clearing leader of Irontown with many human followers, and San aka Princess Mononoke (Claire Danes; you get it by now), a young woman raised by wolves who hates humans but gradually sympathises with Ashitaka.

Pixar co-founder John Lasseter has called Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke's writer-director and the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, the world's greatest living animator, and that may be true. This was the film that put Miyazaki and Ghibli on the international cinematic map before they broke through with 2001's Spirited Away, and while that was the first non-American movie to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, for me this is definitely Miyazaki's crowning glory (although Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988) tops 'em both for me). It's his longest and most mature and complex work, serving as a meditation on war and particularly humanity's relationship with nature. Miyazaki first hatched his concept for it in the late 1970s with several drawings, but shelved it until 1994 when he began writing the screenplay. That was a wise choice, as the then-53-year-old Miyazaki could bring a more restrained and delicate but no less sincere touch to this very political fantasy allegory than a younger filmmaker/animator probably would have. As you'd expect, too, the animation is strikingly beautiful and detailed right down to the forest's foliage, and Miyazaki tells the central story (in which he invokes the seminal Western genre director John Ford) very calmly and objectively. The vocal performances (in both the Japanese and English dubbed versions) also help strongly to draw us into this community very far-removed from our own, and Joe Hisaishi's music effectively marries the rural and natural settings and atmospheres. Princess Mononoke is a superbly epic, thrilling and thought-provoking treatise on existence, adventure, power and the natural world.

And one priceless tidbit to close with: when the now-disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein tried to distribute Princess Mononoke through his company Miramax, he intended to make several edits to it beforehand. When Miyazaki learned of this, he sent Weinstein a package containing a gleaming katana sword with a note attached that read: "No cuts." His films have been released in the US unedited ever since.