Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta, 1992) opens with the ultimate escapist fantasy for tired men, whose brains, in Miyazaki's imperishable words, have turned to tofu: a middle-aged man, the titular protagonist of the film, Porco Rosso lazes reclining under a parasol in a cove—Miyazaki's object of great fascination the "thatched hut" comes alive, surrounded by the murmurs of seawater; wine, fruit, cigarettes and a radio at his side from which melodiously buzzes "Les Temps des Cerises (The Time of Cherries)"—written by Jean-Baptiste Clément in 1866, which later became associated with the Paris Commune of 1871.
Les Temps des Cerises has explicit political connotations. The song is a lament for the failed Paris Commune and Miyazaki used it to express his own dejection at the fall of Yugoslavia and the violence that led up to and stemmed from it. He was also deeply disturbed by the first Gulf War and Les Temps des Cerises invokes Miyazaki's disillusionment with the world.
Porco Rosso, in many ways, is Miyazaki's fantastical Casablanca (1942). Like Casablanca's star-crossed lovers, Rick and Ilsa, Porco Rosso has Porco and Gina. Like Ingrid Bergman's perdurable Ilsa, Gina too has an anti-fascist connection. In both films, fascism looms large: Casablanca is haunted by Nazi Germany and Porco Rosso has its Italian predecessor. Even more than Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca is synonymous with “As Time Goes By” and Porco Rosso has its equivalent musical leitmotif as we see a chanteuse Gina crooning Les Temps des Cerises.
Miyazaki is often ambiguous, blurring the line between good and evil, his canvases are treasure troves of moral complexities and non-binaries but in regards to fascism, Miyazaki is unquestionably unequivocal. Eschewing all forms of moral non-dualism, Miyazaki asserts his strong anti-fascist stance in Porco's defiance on the face of Mussolini's fascist regime: "Better a pig than a Fascist." A pig is often associated with selfishness, greed and with abject abhorrence as we find in later Miyazaki work, his chef d’oeuvre, Spirited Away (2001).
Whilst jingoistic parade takes place and secret police stamp out dissidents, Porco's defiance and disgust of fascism are amplified as we see anti-fascist posters and graffiti on the walls. Showing resistance to fascism, defying and dissenting are also present in Miyazaki's The Wind Rises (2013). Through Porco's daring defiance and in Castrop's dissent who incidentally was named after the protagonist of Mann's The Magic Mountain, Miyazaki avers that it is possible to be a contrarian, to dissent even in a current of totalitarian control.
Porco Rosso is Miyazaki's first political film and alongside The Wind Rises, disparate in his oeuvre, though it wouldn't be prudent to categorize it as a merely political film. Miyazaki defies categorization, Miyazakiworld is almost always a potpourri of distinct themes adjoined together and standing on a diegesis of fabulism. Porco Rosso is a political film about a pig-headed man who refuses to be party to fascism, yes, but it is also a slapstick comedy, a nod to Ghibli's many female workers, an escapist fantasy, a nostalgic lament, a hopeful bow to humanity: "You're a good girl. You make me think that all humanity is not a waste."
It is not far-fetched to speculate that the film's titular protagonist is Miyazaki himself, the lone remaining red who is disillusioned with socialism and has a profound survivor's guilt regarding his family's refusal to help a neighbor with a child to escape the firebombing of Tokyo and this sense of guilt also emerges in another form in his last film The Boy and the Heron (2023).
Miyazaki's films have more often than not featured strong female characters and Porco Rosso is no aberration. Gina as a strong-willed hotelier and chanteuse, Fio as a teenage mechanic and as another of Miyazaki's shōjo heroines are the two strong female characters in the film.
One of Porco Rosso's most sublime scenes takes place when, after some insistence from Fio, Porco starts to narrate his story of becoming a pig. In the last summer of the Great War, Porco almost died, involuntarily ascended to a terra incognita, some place akin to Valhalla perhaps, and had an epiphany. Though inspired by one of Roald Dahl's short stories, this scene wouldn't be out of place in a monologue of Fosse's characters, it's ineffable, it's phantasmagorical and that was the closest the audience would get to know his story of becoming a pig.
The film ends with the song "Toki ni wa mukashi no hanashi o (Once in a While Shall We Talk about the Old Times)" which invokes the student protests of 1960s Tokyo. Bookended by two nostalgic and poignant laments, Porco Rosso is a deeply political and personal Miyazaki film, one that still resonates after more than thirty years, on walls as acts of dissent and defiance on the face of a totalitarian state.
Miyazaki is perennially pertinent. Yes, it is always better to be a pig than a fascist; even now. Read the room or the country perhaps.
Najmus Sakib studies Linguistics at the University of Dhaka. Reach him on X at @sakib221b.
