Anna is a middle schooler with a passion for drawing who lives in the foster care system, has always been sickly and a highly featured social phobic. Soon after she is diagnosed having one of her worst asthma attacks ever, the foster care parents have her stay with one of their relatives who lives in a small coastal town located in the northern part of Japan. Even though her relatives do their best to help her get along with other children, she continues to find it difficult to make friends, until one of those days she falls in search of drawing spots into a low tide salt marsh and discovers an overgrown now abandoned house sitting on a mound. Coming back some time later, out of curiosity more than anything else, she finds a very pretty dressed in quirky clothes girl who says she lives in the house and is called Marnie. Anna is mostly unnamed as Marnie, though she has been puzzled of who or what Marnie had been, absorbs Anna’s warm smiles and makes her believe Marnie is her very first friend.
Review
I have a feeling ‘When Marnie Was There’ is the last Studio Ghibli movie I am ever going to watch in a cinema, and therefore it is a very important movie for me. Similarly, the experience of watching The Wind Rises in the cinema for the first time was similar for me as reading the last book in the Harry Potter series. Marnie’s case is at least mildly flattering, given the circumstances surrounding the future of Studio Gilli. Now, I was a bit scared of When Marnie Was There, because I was in around the 5th to 7th chapter ‘When watching a Marnie Was There Story,’ Two of the characters got inside me as a director Hiromasa. Well it was very frustrating; in fact, one of Ghibli’s impressive films is one of Ghibli’s most underwhelming. Australia has a pretty pronounced video game culture, so it came in two balls. As one problem rather than a complex and systemic one, there are two extreme views regarding nearly all represented and widely regarded as mainstream Hollywood-view female directors. But even if I have problems with his ideas or a better part of his movies, it has to be emphasized that When Marnie Was There is a da bomb. It is a film about an awkward chubby girl who is isolated all by herself with her own anxiety whom I can relate too so much, and it is so heart wrenching and heartbreaking yet beautiful all at the same time.
The conclusion is somewhat curious, more so because of some of the events that have happened earlier in the film, and it ruins the atmosphere enough to take away a star off the final score, however, taking that out, it is a marvelous film.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the technical elements raise the standard of other animators to almost unattainable levels. This is, after all, Studio Ghibli that we are discussing here. Still, I want to gloat over it a bit. Well, as with all Ghibli Movies, the charm of the settings here is not purely aesthetic as it evokes pastoral and idyllic feelings that people may use to remember but is not pleasant in any way – a more cynical approach in adverting back to the “less complicated time”. Anna’s trip to a Japanese provincial town, which is officially for her body recollection, is actually a background for the mental recovery as well, helping to relieve some of the worries and stress caused by the pressures of everyday life; it is heavily suggested that while those are not the only reasons for her illness, those conditions help aggravated the situation. And what a place this town is: here are moss-covered silos and maritime-vac homes swallowed by the nature and floating over seas of rippling grass (no one does that better than Ghibli), dotted with salt-delta and estuary at sunset for the reflection of the sun limped colors.
It is a place which rather feels like one of those very few places left, a remnant of a dying world, where snowy oxbirds are going about their business and everything is strangely slow. The pictures and the music are more or less screaming something that Anna, and perhaps the entire country of Japan, has to possess for one reason or another, a sad kind of pastoral beauty rather than frivolous pastiche.
I think that when Marnie Was There works to express emotions it isn’t “sad,” in the sense that it aims for tears (a feeling which I will admit to being sucked into myself quite a few times), but rather sober and dreamy in many aspects, and again, sometimes very tragic. I could understand why Anna was anxious, for her routines have an uncanny resemblance to what I used to do in junior high, and I have seen the same trait in other people who when exposed in a school environment, struggle most of the time, fidgety and nauseous. In the first scene, she tries to hide a nice drawing done by her from a teacher, because she is embarrassed to show it since she thinks it is not deserving of praise, but when this abilities eventually takes place, she fails a few rounds in straining herself to perform that only to be thwarted when the teacher gets sidetracked by a raucous and naughty dozen of students and leaves her behind moaning. That is when one is desperate to be saved from their monsters, only to find the people who should help them are always going to be more interested in the keener, boisterous, attention-seeking kids.
Moreover, she is quick to strike back and become aggressive during times of distress, which is a pattern seen in many children coping with terrible things (more so, girls). One of her aunts wants to take psychologizing (to put it mildly) her to another girl so she makes friends with her and the next thing that happens is that girl comes too close and starts surprising her with questions, making Anna increasingly perturbed. This other girl, then rather unkindly, comments on her blue eyes, and guess what, Anna goes into fight or flight mode and tells the other girl, who is still calling her names, that she is a beggar fatty, and she is running away. In Japan, children whose parents are racially different or who return from abroad are avoided, and this is usually never done in most anime (the rich blonde archetype is a bit invented, too), and it really is not that shocking that, she would act like this…. As much as you want to blame her for fat-shaming and bullying, sorry, I would also say that when I was in middle school, I did the same to the girl who bullied me.
And here we arrive to Marnie, a character who on the surface appears to do everything Anna likes but when Anna tries to be friends with her she fails terribly. She’s nice, she doesn’t pry or interrogate, and for some reason, she manages to get her out of her bubble without making her feel exposed and uncomfortable. For me, one of the most enchanting elements of When Marnie was There is, it does away with pretty much any tedious arguments regarding the question- whether Marnie is not. As always, the first time we see the vacation house, it is clear that the place is empty, dark, dilapidated, and ruins in that hiding the bag in that self-contained compartment tells us at once there is something not really right about this girl who says she lives there, but the movie does not make us waste time figuring out what exactly is Marnie. After watching, I began feeling that it was only natural to view totem-inspired My Neighbor Totoro literally and figuratively without even asking all sorts of questions why.
To be truthful, the matter of Marnie’s “imaginary” or otherwise determination would be better resolved, without prejudice to the overall gist of this film; this really would tell us little if anything of Anna or her deficits, and the brand of magical realism we receive herein, though fantastic, suggests a happy return on the proposition. On the surface, Marnie differs from Anna in that she is not a recluse, rather, she is friendly, on a deeper side, both Anna and Marnie love to explore and are creative, turning the fancy state of Marnie is not so apically based; she is rather like what Anna would have been had she overcome her turmoil once. After the first awkward party, where Anna is the only child hidden by the adults, Anna starts feeling sorry for Marnie, which is lovely. This is more pronounced when Marnie herself comes across as being marginalized and isolated; one part has Marnie bring Anna along to one of the many extravagant social functions her well-off parents host, and all the nasty superficializers who rapturously expended all sorts of costly gifts and childish loving bizarre openly but profusely done sacrifices.
It is to me a great story because of the extent of the affection reciprocated by Anna and Marnie in comparison. In the beginning Marnie seems to be merely an embodiment of Anna’s wishes, but the fascination with each other transforms into a beautiful capacity to sense each other’s pain without any words mutual affection. And I will not do the crime of using the word “love” lightly; it’s impossible for me to perceive the dynamics of their relationship other than romantic. It is the way they gaze in each other’s eyes at the most euphoric expeditions, the way Anna holds Marnie during her dark times, when both of them are stuck inside one of the devastated cylindrical structures. It is pretty much impossible for me to regard this as anything else except for two girls who are more than platonic friends.
And of course, I might be making it harder for myself to appreciate the movie any more than I actually do, because the movie does at least eventually offer us an answer as to who Marnie is, even if it is not entirely clear why she’s here now. And when we do find out why this character is here, some of the scenes are at least somewhat disturbing when it comes to the mood. And here I am trying to say that the film does not have what you would call a bad ending after all where everything has been stretched so out of sensitivity that how everything happened with Anna is quite revolting. But it is bad, really, really how the movie appears to go to great lengths to address the issue of the two girls being friends and nothing more, and it somehow still seems pretty awkward. By clumsy, I mean that the movie in my views has gone off on the wrong tangent by attempting in vain to consider who Marnie was in history instead of focusing on the relationship. In the case of Chihiro in spirited away, it is not as if she ever found out what became of her in particular things, nor would she be able to break it down in any way were she asked, but instead, the knowledge she gains from the episode is a lot more significant.
I’m glad that Anna evolves as a character from this but ultimately the film loses some of its dignity by overdoing the resolution as I feel.
But any way As for ‘When Marnie Was There’ it remains a great movie. It’s quite strange for me honestly, that Mr. Yonebayashi has made such statements borderline sexist. Because in the case that or someone from the staff seems they could, they really, really understand what it is as an apprehensive middle school girl. If this is how the Studio Ghibli goes out with their last feature film, so be it. It is a lovely way to go out and they have gone out on this note.
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