Now, the first time I saw Mimi-o Sumaseba, it wasn’t in the best of circumstances. It’s never good to watch an achingly cute love story when you’re in the midst of an argument with your girlfriend (in fact, I think the argument stemmed from the broken promise of going to see the film together – or was that The Cat Returns?), and as such, while I remember enjoying the movie, I didn’t actually recall much about it before rewatching it yesterday. And I’m glad I did, because it’s now amongst my very favourite Ghibli films.
When the film was made in 1995, Miyazaki was considering giving up directing, and most people inside the studio expected his successor to be Kondo Yoshifumi. However, this was to be his only movie as helmsman before his tragic passing in 1998. Nonetheless, for a movie the world remembers you by, you could certainly do worse than Mimi.
Sorry, Hayao, but I have to say that the stories of Ghibli films tend to be strongest when based closely on that of a novel- or in this case, a Ribon manga, even if one heavily adapted by Miyazaki himself for the film's screenplay. While Sen to Chihiro, Mononoke and Kurenai no Buta are in my opinion the best films the esteemed sutajio has ever made, their greatest strengths are decidedly not their storylines. On the other hand, Hotaru no Haka and this film benefit enormously from having really simple yet strong, cohesive storylines to build upon. Shizuku is a normal girl with some talent for translating lyrics from English but no idea what she wants to do with her life. She meets a boy named Seiji, and while they quarrel at first, she begins to see more of him after discovering the fairy-tale antiques/knick-knack store his grandfather owns and they grow closer.
It’s a simple story, told at a slow pace, full of charming details. Time is spent on cuts that would never be seen in an average Hollywood movie, let alone animation – people waiting politely for others to pass, things getting dropped and picked up again, typical petty family squabbles. Thanks to this attention to detail, the character animation is probably the best I’ve ever seen, being so very real. Shizuku is getting out of bed, reaches for the bottom of the bunk above her, misses it and carries on unperturbed; she lets out a breath or holds back her tears; Seiji and a group of musicians play an impromptu session, and they actually look like they’re playing. It’s sublime. There’s magic in, say, Sen to Chihiro’s Yubaba literally blowing her top and surging towards the camera with her hair a mass of living, fiery tentacles, but there’s magic too in simply capturing the unconscious mannerisms of a young girl. And then there are the fantasy sequences involving the Baron – the parts that make this a project suited to animation rather than live action…and they are astonishingly beautiful.
Some minor story details seem far-fetched (Seiji’s trick with the library cards, for one) but mostly the coincidences work within the idiom, because it’s not as though coincidences cannot happen, and you feel most of the events in the story would have occurred anyway, even if not for the circumstances that brought them about here. As a story, it is sweet, simple and touching, a romance in the simplest sense – affecting rather than titillating, which I for one far prefer. Easily in my top five Ghibli movies, despite being one of their most conventional. It may not be an adventure, as such, but it’s a story anyone can recognise and understand. Beautiful.
And undoubtedly, Miyazaki’s little story tweaks worked a charm. Violin-crafting? Inspired detail.
(Originally written 10.10.06)
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