 |
| Picture taken from cinemagora.co.uk |
There was much evil going on in the film, from the gods turning into demons to the people who cause the gods to turn into such monsters. With evil, there's good; and vise versa. The gods were originally good and protected the land and the humans worshipped them, but as humans got more powerful, they started to relinquish their dependance on the gods. The humans started to use their intelligence to create weapons that could kill gods, and this type of action enraged the gods who have ruled the lands for hundreds of years. Humans were going against the order of nature, and against the Forest Spirit.
There was one human in particular who displayed much compassion for the outcasts of human society, but showed none for nature and its inhabitants. Lady Eboshi is one who buys the contracts of prostitutes from brothels and takes in lepers. She gives them all they want to eat, as long as they work for their stay which isn't easy. On the other hand, she invades mountainsides for iron, destroys forests for wood to keep her iron forge burning, digs up mountainsides and forests to get iron from the sand, and kills any obstacles including animals to get to the iron ore. She's constantly trying to create stronger weapons to get what she wants, so she has the lepers create the detailed weapons for her in the background. This is good and bad, because she's giving them a purpose and somewhere to live, but at the same time she's taking advantage of them because they have nowhere else to go.
Another example would be Jigo, a traveling monk who Ashitaka (main character) meets on his way to see the world with "eyes unclouded". He gives Ashitaka help with money and also gives him a meal and information. Jigo is revealed to be a hunter who has been given pardon by the Emperor of Japan to kill the Spirit of the Forest or "Nightwalker". He takes advantage of Lady Eboshi and uses her troops to be meat shields against the animals of the forest. He is evil to both humans and nature, but only shows partial compassion to humans. He gets Lady Eboshi to kill the Nightwalker and takes its head, but fails his mission when Ashitaka and San stop him.
It must be something about relations between race and compassion. One feels more compassionate to one's own race rather than another. That can be between different species of animals and even nationalities of humans. It's just how humans work, it's complicated.
