It’s entirely by design that everybody looked at
publicity materials for Mary and the
Witch’s Flower and thought, ‘Oh, Studio Ghibli have a new film coming out?’
It looks just like a Ghibli film. And so it should, with Arrietty and Marnie director
Yonebayashi Hiromasa at the helm and a number of his collaborators from those
films present and correct. It’s also drawn in the Ghibli house style of art
that, let’s face it, is Miyazaki’s style as developed from the Toei Animation
aesthetic – but was unambiguously adopted as a house style by all the other
directors including Miyazaki’s great and sadly departed senior, Takahata. But
Ghibli this is not. It seems like the great animation house has given up trying
to create a new figurehead director and is winding up feature animation
production. So the young man who got to direct two of the most recent Ghibli
films and who seemed to be such a good fit because he was meek and malleable,
has actually gone off to a new studio. Ghibli producer Nishimura Yoshiaki has
founded Studio Ponoc, and despite having to start everything from scratch –
including trying to procure funding – they have produced a film that is
everything a Ghibli film ought to be. Call it derivative if you like, but I
call it a logical progression. And it’s wonderful to know that a new generation
will be continuing the lineage of the studio and just might live up to or even
surpass the accomplishments of their forebears.
And for all its imitative qualities, this felt like freedom
for Yonebayashi. For the third time, he’s adapting an old, somewhat quaint
British novel for his animation – but this time it’s not so peaceful and
introverted. This time it’s about witches, magic, cataclysmic spells and soaring
magical flight. His light, deft touch in the previous two films was
appreciated, but I get the feeling he enjoys a larger and more spectacular
stage, while retaining a lot of the cute, small-scale feeling.
The source material, The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart, is not a book I’ve ever come
across. I don’t think it’s been in print for many years. I’ve vaguely heard of
her from her books The Crystal Cave,
an Arthurian work beloved of hippies, and The
Moon-Spinners, which Disney made into a live-action film, but I’ve never
read anything she wrote. I don’t know how closely this adaptation matches the
source material, but I suspect it’s pretty close. And it’s probably a good idea
to use a decades-old book as your source when you’re expecting to battle
accusations of unoriginality: not only did they have to get Mary well-separated
from Kiki so that this wouldn’t seem overly slavish in its Ghibli imitations,
but it would be all too easy for a story about a British kid going to a school for
magic and proving to be a prodigy at magic and flying brooms thanks to
something her family did in the past to be called imitative of Harry Potter. Instead it might just make
a wider audience realise just how derivative – or, to put it more kindly, how
connected with a rich legacy of similar British works – Rowling’s books really
were.
While Mary and Kiki are very little alike, there are
far more connections with the Ghibli tradition here than just the fact that
Mary looks like Ponyo grew up to look a bit like Arrietty. Perhaps most obvious
would be the echo of Miyazaki’s passion for flight. But there’s more than that.
The matriarchal figure first seen formed from a huge gush of water is very Spirited Away, while the powerful,
noble, unstable and dangerous force at the end bring Mononoke-hime to mind. Mary at times gets the determination of
Nausicaa or the inner strength of Sheeta. The design of the school is a little
bit Howl-ish in places, while the gardens
have just a hint of the world of The Cat Returns. On that note, just like in Whisper of the Heart, the cats here totally steal the show. Tib the grumpy cat was
hilarious.
As with the likes of Mahoutsukai no Yome, it’s fun to see England rendered through the
fanciful lens of Japanese romanticism. Once again there’s a very odd take on
British food, with what looked like breaded chicken, beans, dumplings and
sliced tomatoes on a plate together. But at the same time they had very clearly
come to England and used photos of real Shropshire houses for their backgrounds
– you could even see that they had some Celebrations ready to eat! Having only
ever adapted British children’s books centred on adolescent girls, I’ll be interested
to see if Yonebayashi expands from there after this. Britain has always kind of
been represented as an echo in Ghibli’s works, from the adaptations of British
books that had their locales stripped away or changed to Japan to the scenery
based on Welsh mining villages in Laputa.
But it seems like Yonebayashi actually wants to set films based on British
works in Britain. And that’s very entertaining for me to see.
I’ll be following his career and the developments of
Studio Ponoc with interest. I hope they make many, many classic films and soon
the world will say Yonebayashi in the
same way they now say Miyazaki.
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