 In reviewing "Princess Mononoke," which of Miyazaki's techniques does the reviewer appreciate the least?
Machines in the Garden In the animated ecological epic Princess Mononoke , the camera travels over landscapes with a clear, steady gaze, like a Zen hang glider. The Japanese director, Hayao Miyazaki, who spent three years on Princess Mononoke and is reported to have done 70 percent of its paintings himself, seems to work from the outside in: to begin with the curve of the earth, then the mossy hills, the watercolor foliage, the nubby stones, the whorls on the wood, the meticulous carvings on a teacup. A view of nature that some would call "tree-hugging" doesn't feel softheaded when the trees are rendered in such brilliant and robust detail. But then, "soft" is not a word you can apply to Princess Mononoke , however pantheistic its worldview. If Miyazaki in long shot is contemplative, in close-up he's ferocious. He's both inside and outside the action: He knows when to rock your world and when to induce a state of sorrowful detachment. According to the New York Times , Toy Story animators screened reels of his work when their imaginations flagged, and writers for Star Trek named an alien species after one of his features. Watching Princess Mononoke --which has been dubbed to Disney/Miramax specifications by American and English stars but retains its two-hour-plus length, its gory beheadings, and its grim, near-apocalyptic finale--you can understand their worship. It isn't that Miyazaki's work is technically so dazzling in this age of digitized miracles; it's that everything is sublimely in proportion. It's the beginning of what Bill McKibben called "the end of nature"--that is, when nature became no longer an autonomous, self-regulating force but one touched (and, in Miyazaki's view, poisoned) by human industry. In fact, the boars and apes have little patience with Ashitaka's call for nature and mankind to live together in harmony; they'd like to eat him. San is first seen sucking a wound of her huge wolf mother, then, as the gore drips from her mouth, training her dark eyes on Ashitaka with feral hatred. It's Miyazaki's use of sound--and silence--that takes your breath away: the determined tap of the wolf princess's shoes as she scuttles over the fortress's rooftops; the silence of Eboshi and her army as they stare at this tiny yet formidable tomboy against the black sky. It's a shame that the wolf princess warms up to Ashitaka and spends the rest of the film either saving him or being saved by him.
 His digitally dazzling cinematography
 His awareness of his audience  His digitally dazzling cinematography  His attention to detail  His sublime proportionality