It’s about these characters’ specific journeys. It’s not so much a fable about inherent goodness (like Cinderella) or learning a moral (like The Tortoise and the Hare). Porco Rosso emphasizes personal change: We don’t need to see a physical change so much as recognize that there’s been an internal one. But Gina clearly loves Porco, pig snout or no, so what matters isn’t the cosmetic change, so much as the attempt to overcome the survivor’s guilt at the root of Porco’s curse. Viewers are left to guess Porco’s fate for themselves. But the change is temporary, which raises the question of whether it will be more permanent when a shocked Curtis briefly seems to catch sight of Porco’s human face in the film’s final moments. It’s a moment of honesty from Porco, who spends much of the rest of the film adopting a roguish, carefree attitude and willfully ignoring the fact that the people around him care about him. Fio, Porco’s frequent air-mechanic, catches a glimpse of his real face after he tells her a story about his experience in the war. The same goes for whether Porco manages to return to his human form. The horror-movie principle that an unseen monster is scarier than one clearly depicted onscreen has its romantic corollary in Porco Rosso, as the romance of Porco and Gina’s story no longer stems from whether they did or didn’t get together, but from the imagined love affair that stems from speculation.
Rather than lessening the power of their romance, Miyazaki’s resistance to fairy-tale storytelling conventions actually strengthens the film’s ending. Rather, the closing narration tantalizingly refers to the outcome of Porco and Gina’s back-and-forth as “their secret,” and leaves it at that. Though the sight of an empty garden suggests that Porco finally confessed his feelings to Gina, there’s no explicit confirmation. Viewers aren’t owed a clear answer as to whether Porco and Gina end up together. The “happily ever after” he offers instead is one that treats the characters as though they were real people: Their lives are their own business, and the audience has pried enough already. The Beauty and the Beast-esque structure is perfectly in place, but Miyazaki veers away from that seemingly inevitable finale. The easy conclusion to that love story would be for Porco to vanquish Curtis, regain his human form, and visit Gina in her garden. When Curtis, an American pilot recruited by the sea pirates, attempts to woo Gina, she rebuffs his advances by telling him she only has eyes for Porco, and that she waits every day in her garden for him to come take her away. It’s implied that his new visage is what keeps him from expressing his love for Madame Gina, who he’s known since childhood. One of the big questions hovering over the film is whether the curse that turned Porco (formerly “Marco”) into a pig will ever be undone. It’s a fairy tale without a fairy-tale ending. The film’s denouement is happy but uncertain, forgoing the usual happily-ever-after in favor of something more subdued and realistic. But as Porco Rosso reaches its conclusion, the scales tip in a more bittersweet direction. With the addition of sky-pirates and a star-crossed love story, Porco Rosso feels more like a fairy tale than historical fiction, in spite of its realistic trappings. That historical faithfulness is juxtaposed with a curse that turned Porco into an anthropomorphic pig, and a brush with the afterlife.
The main character, a, Italian bounty hunter named Porco Rosso, even quips that he’d rather be a pig than a fascist, referring to the rise of fascism in Italy at the time. The story, which takes place in the aftermath of World War I, heavily features airplanes rendered in loving detail, and a setting where the time and place are so clear that the unfolding events can clearly be pinpointed in history. The world of Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso strikes a delicate balance between reality and fiction. To celebrate the arrival of the Japanese animation house’s library on digital and streaming services, we’re surveying the studio’s history, impact, and biggest themes. May 25-30 is Studio Ghibli Week at Polygon.
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