Porco Rosso (1992) 94 Min. Based on the manga “Hikoutei Jidai,” Hayao Miyazaki’s anime concerns a WWI fighter pilot who has become a bounty hunter after the disillusionment of the Great War turned him into a pig. Defiantly opposed to fascism, conflicted over his love for Gina, an Austrian whose husband was shot down during the war, Porco struggles with pirates and an American pilot, Curtis. As in most Miyazaki films, there are strong female characters, and Fio, granddaughter to the master mechanic Piccolo, is equal to Porco Rosso’s knowledge about planes, designing for him a masterpiece of aviation.
Not to fly. Not to grow wings.
That was the true exile
From the garden.
Not to shed this skin,
Not to slither out into another,
Was punishment for rejecting evil.
To choose between love
And country in a War to End All Wars
Destroyed “The Time of Cherries.”
Turning back in disgust
From all humanity risks
Transgendering into a pig.
Look at the clouds. Dive in.
None is the beard of God.
Each cloud remembers lost pilots.
To fly in a seaplane, to repair
A Savoia S.21 or a Macchi M.33,
Defies the gravity of the fall.
Look at the waves. Ride the Adriatic
Into a secret cove. Yugoslavia darkens
The tone of these animated seashores.
When will pirates learn?
Will Gina win her bet? Let’s hope so.
The gravity of the fall is unbearable.
After repressing love so long,
Let the pig become human again
In the deepening moonlight
Outside the Hotel Adriano.
[Disposable Poem June 8, 2016]
Dr. Mike
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