Ponyo Theme

Few pieces of film music have managed the trick that the Ponyo theme accomplishes: being genuinely, uncomplicatedly joyful without becoming saccharine, which is considerably harder than it looks. The children's choir enters with a directness that strips away any trace of production sophistication — these are voices organized for maximum sincerity, singing a melody so simple it might have been written by the first composer who ever wrote anything, and yet the simplicity is earned rather than lazy. The orchestration underneath is actually quite rich, with a rhythmic bounce that suggests the sea without ever resorting to wave-sounds or maritime clichés — the water is in the motion of the music, its endless up-and-down, its refusal to stay still. The tempo is brisk but relaxed, the harmonic movement basic and satisfying in the way that a wheel turning is satisfying. What Hisaishi is scoring here is Miyazaki's most unguarded proposition: that love between a child and a creature from the deep might simply work, might simply be. The music believes this completely. It belongs to mornings when you feel, briefly and without irony, that things might be fine — not that problems have been solved, but that the world is fundamentally, unreasonably generous. Children respond to it with their bodies before they understand it with their minds.