movies: the boy and the heron

It's been just under a decade since the last Studio Ghibli movie by Hayao Miyazaki came out... The Wind Rises... which I never fully reviewed because I fell asleep part way through (I still maintain that was because I was in the early stages of a massive ear infection). Good times.

But that does bring me around, quite nicely, to the new one... The Boy and the Heron... because, I'll be honest, it's been a little over three hours since I got out of the movie, and the whole thing still feels a little bit like an extended fever dream. Whether that was my fever dream or Miyazaki's I'm not entirely sure.

Which, in this case, isn't a bad thing. It's just a very, very, very strange movie. And not really what I was expecting.

Firstly though, as one would fully expect, it is stunningly beautiful. And there is a lot of animation, especially at the beginning, that feels a little different to previous Ghibli and Miyazaki's movies. It does kind of revert to the animation style we all know and love by the end, which I don't have an issue with, but seeing something new definitely caught my eye.

Completely by accident, we went to see the subtitled version rather than the dubbed version (so none of the names on the poster are remotely relevant), but it's not a dialogue heavy movie anyway, which was good.

It's just so incredibly... strange. The official blurb calls is "semi-autobiographical fantasy", but, honestly, when was a Miyazaki movie not semi-autobiographical in some way. And I can very much see the parts that would fit the bill here. But the rest of it, like I said, feels like some sort of bird related fever dream.

Also, a lot of the character motivations are muddy at best. There are certain things that our lead character of Mahito does that I don't completely understand the reasons for, or, I have theories, but the movie doesn't confirm or deny them. Likewise with his aunt who is also his new stepmother (the internet tells me that that's called levirate marriage, but it also doesn't seem to be something that is widely done in modern Japan). But the issue is that... I didn't like his aunt/stepmother very much, she seemed a little odd/pushy, and I actually thought she might be the villain of the piece. Turns out no. But I also wasn't emotionally invested in her when she became important to the plot.

Honestly though, everybody could have done with having a little more motivation and a little more of their character explored.

Favourite character? Kiriko, absolutely.

Also, without spoiling anything... there's a lot of birds in this movie. Like, a lot. Anyone who has issues with birds should be fully warned.

There are also moments that feel very much like they were drawing inspiration or paying homage to some of Miyazaki's previous movies or Ghibli movies in general. But, again, that might just be because he and the studio have a visual style that they stick to, so things just look like My Neighbour Totoro or The Wind Rises or even Ponyo... but the Ghibliness of things like Arrietty also shine through.

Don't get me wrong though, none of this adds up to a bad movie. An incredibly confusing one at times, yes... bad, no. Did it also make me succumb to "just resting my eyes for a few moments" more than once? Absolutely... but they're very slow and hypnotic movies, so that's just a thing that's going to happen. Did it manage to stick the landing, which other Ghibli movies have sometimes failed to do? Yes, it did.

Do I want to see it again? Absolutely. Possibly the dubbed version, because I just want to see how they're different. And maybe just unpack the movie a little more.

yani's rating: 3 pelicans out of 5

movies: the red turtle

The Red Turtle is Studio Ghibli's first international co-production written and directed by Dutch-British animator Michaël Dudok de Wit... and as such it doesn't feel like a Ghibli movie. If anything the art style, especially of the humans, reminded me of Tintin.

The really unique thing about The Red Turtle is that it's completely wordless beyond a couple of yells here and there. There's no dialogue, just beautiful, beautiful imagery.

There's also not much of what you would call a story. Which isn't necessarily a negative, it's more that it's a very slow and lyrical movie with only really one action piece (and I don't want to say too much at the risk of spoiling it).

The story is about a man who is shipwrecked and washed up on a deserted island, who tries to escape and fails, but finds the titular red turtle. And that's when the story really begins.

After the movie had finished I was trying to work out exactly what type of story it is... the best I can come up with is that it's part fairy tale and part myth and part fable. It's not a children's movie though... not because of anything in it necessarily, but I think kids would be bored with it within about ten minutes.

It's not the most photo-real animation I've seen, but the whole thing has a beautiful stylised quality to it. It's also not a busy film... I noticed more than once that frames would be completely still except for one or two points of movement. And that actually works beautifully here.

The only real drawback to it from my perspective is that while I felt for the characters, the lack of dialogue (and by extension an explanation for some of the events) did mean that I was emotionally removed from them and so I didn't have that emotional reaction I may have otherwise had. That may also have been because a couple of the emotional "call-backs" I was waiting for in the movie never actually happened.

But that's a small thing, and more about me than the movie.

It is a beautiful, quiet, lyrical movie though, and definitely one to be experienced.

yani's rating: 4 ghost crabs out of 5

movies: when marnie was there

When Marnie Was There is the most recent title from Studio Ghibli and is somewhat in the vein of The Wind Rises... an odd mixture of dreams and reality, although this movie has a much less definite line between the two.

Once again the countryside of Japan is almost another character in the movie. It's one of the things that Ghibli does perfectly... all the way back to titles like My Neighbour Totoro and Only Yesterday... just the way they deal with grass and water and wide vistas is gorgeous.

The story of Anna, who comes to stay with relatives in the country for the summer to help with her asthma, is something of an odd one. I can't really think of another movie where the line between dream/fantasy and reality is both undefined and confusing. Even Totoro made sense in that the fantasy creatures where clearly fantasy, but with Marnie, what's actually going on isn't made clear, is it ghosts, is it time travel, is Anna having a psychotic break and it's all in her head... and even at the end of the movie when it's explained, or at least revealed, it's seems to be left up the audience to really connect all the dots to make the story make sense.

Granted, we did see the English dub version, so maybe the original Japanese/subtitled version is more explicit.

Likewise with Anna's relationship with her guardian... I couldn't work out what it actually was for a big chunk of the movie. Very mild spoiler... Anna is a foster child.

And I'll be honest, right up until the reveal of the ending, the story does have what feels like some fairly strong lesbian subtext. Actually not even subtext... just straight out text at times.

Which feels kind of weird to be honest. Granted a lot of it is also just a gender switch of the usual kinds of chaste romantic plots in Ghibli movies, but even so, it just feels a little odd.

Anna also feels like something of a brat in the first part of the movie... you kind of understand why as it progresses, but she says a number of things that make it difficult to like her.

Overall it's a very pretty movie, but I don't think it's the best story. Maybe it's the same issue that has occurred with a number of the other Ghibli adaptations of Western novels (Howl, I'm looking straight at you), and there was something lost from the original novel by Joan G Robinson during the conversion to a Japanese sensibility, I don't know.

It's not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, it's just not as strong as some of their other movies.

yani's rating: 3 sketchbooks out of 5

movies: the tale of princess kaguya

The Tale of The Princess Kaguya is not your typical Studio Ghibli movie.

The art style is closer to My Neighbors the Yamadas, and not surprising really since they share the same director, Isao Takahata.

And at 137 minutes it's the longest Studio Ghibli movie to date, with Princess Mononoke a close second.

The story, partly aided by the painterly art style and the opening narration, give the whole story a very fairy tale vibe... of course the fact that it's a story about a baby found in a glowing stalk of bamboo and raise by a bamboo cutter and his wife also helps.

And it does definitely tick off a number of the fairy tale tropes. But at the same time it also has a Japanese historical vibe.

The version we were watching was the English dub, so I don't know if there were some liberties taken with the translation... however there were a few instances of the characters saying things that didn't 100% make sense and also things that made certain characters less likeable.

Overall it wasn't the best of the Ghibli movies, but it wasn't bad.

yani's rating: 2 bamboo shoots out of 5

movies: arrietty

I think Arrietty is the first time that I've reviewed a movie that I've seen in the cinema after already seeing it beforehand. Okay, maybe the second time, but the first one doesn't really count.

It was slightly different because I originally saw the Japanese version, and this was the (UK) English dubbed version. And it didn't really make a lot of difference to my enjoyment... I think there were a couple of dialogue changes here and there, but nothing major. And the odd occasion where any English translation is a little bit... clunky. Or else the original writing was clunky, but I prefer to think it's the translation.

It's based (in an even looser way than say, Howl's Moving Castle, which ravaged the original story... whereas I think just took the concept and the names of the characters and left pretty much everything else) on the Borrower books by Mary Norton, which I will admit that I'm not familiar with. I know they exist and I know a movie version has been done before with a very young Tom Felton, but that's about it. So I can't comment on what has been included and what has been left out of the source material (although looking at the previous movie, it looks like Arrietty had a little brother that didn't survive the translation).

Like almost all (if not all) of the Studio Ghibli movies, while it's a very beautiful and very Japanese looking movie (you know what I mean... it's instantly recognisable as a Ghibli movie), it is a little slow around the middle... but not horrendously so.

The voice cast is solid... nobody that really stands out as great or below par though, but I will give some kudos to young Tom Holland as the voice of the young boy Sho... it's not a straightforward role since Sho has to display a certain fragility that I think Holland gets just right in his performance.

I'm not sure if the fact that we saw the UK version made any difference, but the only thing that wasn't translated in the whole movie (other than a couple of unimportant signs) was the note that is left under the sugar cube. It would have been easy enough to do, either with dialogue... and it appears that the US version may have an onscreen translation. For the record, the note reads... *very mild spoiler*... "You forgot something".

Even with it's slight flaws, it's a very endearing movie, although not the best Ghibli has ever made.

yani's rating: 3 sugar cubes out of 5

movies: ponyo

In a lot of ways Ponyo was the perfect movie accompaniment to today... while it filled in the time, there wasn't very much to it (and the title of the post may be a little harsh, although Ma and I both admitted that we found ourselves fighting "the drowsy" at difference points).

At the risk of having all the Hayao Miyazaki fans howling for my blood, I have a very hit and miss relationship with the work of Studio Ghibli, Howl's Moving Castle was a complete travesty (it received one of the second lowest rating I've ever dished out)... but I quite enjoyed Spirited Away (although the ending is a bit crap), Kiki's Delivery Service and Porco Rosso... but My Neighbour Totoro left me cold (I spent the whole time waiting for something to actually happen) and then Nausicaä and Laputa just ended up feeling very campy (from memory anyway).

So I would have to say that Ponyo needs to be filed alongside Totoro... not that nothing happens in the story, but it feels very much a movie aimed at kids.

Some of my objections to it may be due to a difference in cultures and some of it may be because of the English translation... but parts of the movie are just plain old weird, even for a Miyazaki film...

Firstly you have the heroine, Ponyo, who doesn't look anything like a fish... in fact she looks like a beanbag with a human head, but nobody (bar one old lady) seems even remotely surprised that this "fish girl" doesn't actually look like a fish (and certainly not the "goldfish" they all keep referring to her as, other than the fact that she's vaguely goldfish coloured)... then there's Ponyo's dad... who isn't a fish at all (in fact he has the Ghibli version of David Bowie going on that seems to crop up in the adult male characters in their movies... Howl suffered from it too), and who seems to need air but at the same time has to keep his feet wet on land. And don't get me started on keeping the Old Folks Home (which seems to be occupied solely by women) inside of giant jellyfish filled with water that isn't water...

The plot just doesn't seem to want to make complete sense. I'm not saying that I didn't understand what was going on, but some of the motivations and reasons for certain things are hazy at best.

I'm sure that Miyazaki fans will tell that that is the whole point and it's left open to interpretation and you need to fill in the blanks yourself and all that stuff... but, to me, it just felt like sloppy storytelling.

I'm willing to give some leeway to the occasionally "crude" animation... this is hand drawn stuff after all, and I think it's more that I'm used to the "high quality" (and mostly CGI these days) stuff that's more common to Disney and Pixar and the like.

But while the foreground and the actual moving animation was occasionally a little bit off, the backgrounds were pretty much consistently beautiful... especially the stuff early in the movie that's seemed to be obviously pencil drawn (you could see the individual pencil marks)... it had a really nice watercoloury feel about it, even if it did also look slightly unreal. It was effectively used though... most obviously during a very hurried driving sequence where the background outside becomes a big green blur of pencil lines. I think the movie progressed to a more traditional background style later in the movie, although I can't say for certain since I think I stopped noticing after a while.

And there are some genuinely beautiful sequences... the whole boating bit after the storm is quite gorgeous...

It also has what has to be the weirdest set of closing credits ever...

So all in all it was okay... not great, but serviceable.

yani's rating: 1 sentient seawater blob out of 5

movies: howl's moving castle

The phrase "loosely based" definitely applied here...

I've been looking forward to Howl's Moving Castle since I heard it was being turned in to anime, and a Studio Ghibli anime at that... I'd read the book ages and ages ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I figured that the anime version was going to be very very cool.

Then I started seeing trailers and things about it and very little except for the characters and the basic premise seemed to be the same.

And don't even get me started on the movie's version of "the castle"...

But, I like anime, I liked the book... so I went to see it anyway. I both was and wasn't disappointed.

Yes, Miyazaki managed to both mangle and "anime-fy" the story... and having read the book parts of it were very frustrating... especially Sophie's seemingly neverending change in age... she's supposed to turn 90 and stay that way... not flip from 90 back to 16 and then to something resembling 50ish, but I think that was done mostly to serve the slightly heavy-handed romantic plot. Characters were turned from powerful, strong characters to essentially comic relief or were turned from good characters to villains, or just left out completely... whole subplots were lopped out, or pruned back until they were pretty much unrecognisable... the setting seemed a little too steampunk given the more traditional fantasy setting in the book... and the whole ending was a little too deus ex machina...

Of course most of it probably wasn't helped by the fact that it was the English language version of a Japanese anime of a book written by a Welsh woman.

Having said all that, visually it was a very beautiful movie. You have to give Miyazaki that... he might not be able to write a script that makes linear sense, but he makes pretty films.

yani's rating: 0 fire demons out of 5