Netflix Journal: Whisper of the Heart

What a strange Ghibli film. Like Ponyo, I grow fonder of this movie the more I reflect on it. The film is entirely focused around the main character Shizuku Tsukishima as she learns something very important about herself; that she wants to be a writer and that hard work is the only way to find out what she's made of. Personally, I love stories about writers. As Shizuku searches for her hidden gems she both lives and creates a wonderful fairy tale of adolescence. 

I love stories that show how people or characters make critical choices about themselves and their lives. Whisper of the Heart delivers the transformation of Shizuku so gradually, you'll probably miss the switch if you're expecting something obvious and grandiose. And the more I think about this smooth transformation, the more I realized that such a move is a part of Miyazaki's unique story telling style. Ponyo and Sosuke go on a large scale adventure from a child's perspective and learn to care for each other and their community in the process. Ashitaka and Son learn about the new harmony that must exist between man and nature by living in the divide. Sophie and Howl together learn to love each other, care for themselves, and be responsible for their neo family in the background of all their magical political antics. Chihiro learns to be a confident young girl who fights for her friends while staying true to her heart by working in a magical bathhouse. 

As for Shizuku, the slow pace of the film allowed the crafters to show the rich background of Shizuku's life instead of telling the viewer through heavy dialog. The everyday Japanese life is the backdrop for Shizuku's quirky adolescence. Despite her small group of friends, she's known as a bit of a loner who always has her nose in fairy tale books. Escapism is a common theme in Japanese animated stories, and it's represented in multiple ways in the Whisper of the Heart. Shizuku is always reading books and using the fairy tale stories as a means to escape her scholarly studying obligations. She even wishes that her life were more like the fairy tales. The fact that Shizuku desires an escape is only made significant and meaningful when we understand what she's running away from. 

From the humble and cramped living conditions to the pressure of getting into a good high school (which is somewhat analogous to getting into a good college for Americans) we experience the life that Shizuku unconsciously wants to escape from. Shizuku's home is not only small but it's filled with a sense of clutter, perseverance, and a lack of personal space.  As a wonderful use of visual story telling, we never hear Shizuku or any of her other family member complain about their conditions. With books and papers stacked everywhere, parents who share a single computer to work from home, and a big sister who still shares a room with Shizuku through she has graduated from college can see very clearly how Shizuku's environment shapes her character. All Shizuku knows of growing up, including going to high school, college, and getting a job, she gets first hand from her family. And from her one out burst, we know that Shizuku looks at her sister's lack of career success as a reason why growing up and going through the traditional route may not be anything to look forward to. This is not to mention how much her mother struggles because she went back to school to earn her masters. The house and the home life is temporarily in disarray and it only makes Shizuku unconfident in her future and herself.  

Shizuku longs for a better life. Or maybe just a different one. This desire is so strong that she even follows the freelance cat Moon from the train into an unknown neighborhood looking for an "adventure."

The contrast and use of environment is clear and at times breathtaking. From the cramped home, to the school, to traveling around Japan, to the view of the city that almost looks like your in the clouds, and later to the antique/violin shop and Shizuku's imaginary world, the film takes us to what seem like different worlds as opposed to different places in the city. With her nose in the books, her mind away from school, and her head almost quite literally in the clouds, the Whisper of the Heart is a story that sets Shizuku up for a rich transformation exhibited through the various aspects of her life. 

Our main character, Shizuku, is ripe for a change. More importantly, we can relate to her story because she's a character flawed in such a common way. After all, who hasn't had to grow up at some point?Who hasn't been unsure of themselves and their future? Shizuku even admits that she was the "dense" one when she finds out that her long time friend has had a crush on her.

The most beautiful part about the film is how realistic or beautifully banal the events are, yet, at the same time there's a double fairy tale in the works. Seiji Amasawa has had eyes for Shizuku for a long time and has apparently done many things to get her attention. But because she was so "dense" and focused on her fairy tale books, she never noticed him even when he would sit right next to her. Seeking adventure, Shizuku tracks down the name of the mysterious Seiji Amasawa by asking the elders at school about the name. After convincing herself that this new boy she's met isn't Seiji, the two grow closer after sharing their hopes, dreams, and feelings of inadequacy with each other. Soon she finds out this boy is actually Seiji and everything changes. So when Seiji goes off to Italy to study violin making, Shizuku digs deep within herself to support him by proving that she has what it takes to be a writer. In the end, both decide to go to high school, grow up a bit more, and envision getting married someday. 

Interestingly, while Shizuku's life changed in a fairy tale way, she writes a fairy tale of her own. Taking in many details from her odd life, unique acquaintances, and extraordinary finds (namely the Baron cat statue) a big part of Shizuku's internal state and internal change are expressed through her fictional story. At one point in the film, we can see that Shizuku's quest to prove herself causes her to isolate herself from her family, eat less, ignore school, and work herself to exhaustion. In this way, all of the layers of the story are connected. Creativity like this is why I typically love stories about writers. 

Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibili's story telling is so refined, subtle, simple, and powerful it's difficult for anyone else to compete with film. 

Netflix Journal: The Place Promised in Our Early Days

Were was I for the last hour and a half? As the credits rolled down my TV screen my brother and I made jokes about how watching The Place Promised in Our Early Days (TPPIOED) spirited us away into a timeless existence. Like a dream. This is not to say that we loved the film. Overall, there are very few good qualities to the film and far too much loose and careless writing. Makoto Shinkai, the singular man behind "Voices of a Distant Star" got his own studio and has produced another film. Some are calling him the next Miyazaki. In all seriousness, such a claim is ridiculous. While the master Miyazaki crafts wonderfully tight, simple, and profoundly subtle films, TPPIOED reflects an artist that is out of touch with what makes stories and film so great.

One of my favorite parts of anime is how the Japanese interpret and incorporate their cultural respect for action into the characters, plot, and story telling. Not just the over the top, fantasy, powering up, it's over 9000 kind of martial arts action. But all action. From playing tennis (Prince of Tennis), baking bread (Yakitatte Japan), working in a bathhouse (Spirited Away), or spending time with friends (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) the Japanese have a way of taking an action, fleshing it out and creating a main character that uses the action. To make the action more significant, the worlds of these stories are designed around around the action. And it is through this action that the characters most likely learn something about themselves and grow in the process. Along with the action come themes, motifs, and other subtle  elements that tie everything together. The truth is, anime does this very well, but the Japanese are not the only one to do it. All stories are based around some kind of action as events unfold through time. And the best stories are tightly organized and executed. How connected and meaningful these actions are to the rest of the story is how we can measure the quality of storytelling.

TPPIOED does not have any significant action. This is not to say that the characters don't do anything in the film. But I will say that the characters almost do nothing. The promise that is such a core part of the film and the title involves building a plane to fly to a distant tower that was erected because of a war torn Japan. So you might think the film involves a lot of flying and struggling to build the plane? Perhaps you expect a moment of despair after a failed attempt? TPPIOED has none of these scenes. But what the film does have, unfortunately, is a lot of narration.

I don't know too much about the craft of film making taught in film schools. As an indie film maker, I picked up everything that I know on my own. One lesson I do know they teach is that narration (and also dialog) should carefully and sparingly used. Essentially, the strongest communicative element in a film is visuals. Human sight makes up around 80% of our sensory perception. So when you're trying to communicate something through a film, it's best to do so visually. Thus, visual story telling is prioritized, which is why centering a film or a show around characters with actions is a great way to go. The poor filmmakers or screenplay writers don't understand this. Whether they can't seem to convert the literary, inner voice, introspective style into a visual storytelling style or they simply aren't aware of the strengths of different mediums in the first place, creators like Makoto Shinkai miss the mark. 

For that matter, I don't think TPPIOED would have make a great book either. I generally applaud the effort of creators pushing the boundaries and/or conventional rules of a medium. With this great risk sometimes comes a great payoff. But the extremely heavy use of narration, multiple voices, and a lack of action in TPPIOED make it too hard for the story to establish place and time. And this short coming occurs before the film introduces the scifi theory of parallel universes with harmonic coexistence with people's dreams.  What we're left with is what I call the dregs of anime, or a soulless, copycat work.

Instead of truly grasping the craft, less than talented creators often copy what they like. They copy what's "cool" to them. And often times for Japanese anime creators, their version of cool is a partially immature, incomplete, shonen's (young boy's) version of cool. Without the mature sense or the experience to take these cool elements and weave them into a more sophisticated, coherent work, they simply put in what they like and move on. So what we're left with in TPPIOED is a lot of narration and scenes that seem like they go together, but are ultimately shallow. Crazy scifi concepts are dropped. Characters work in undercover plots. Others wander around in their own lonely worlds. A car blows up. Friends are held at gunpoint. And it all falls flat. In other words, the story is written as if all the great characterization happens off screen and we're just supposed to assume and accept the gaps in communication and move on.  

 

While the scenery is wonderfully drawn, the character design and animation is pretty ho-hum. Sure they have a bit of charm to them. I like how they're not extremely perfect or pretty looking. But overall, they seem fairly generic and poorly drawn. Perhaps if the characters were better animated I would have a different opinion. However, it's more difficult to characterize someone through animation when he/she doesn't do much. After all, the great Miyazaki created opportunities to show the differences in kid characters like in My Neighbor Totoro or Ponyo through their actions even with something simple like running around the house.

The film also has a problem with scope and believability. I will say that I'm more than used to anime kids doing extraordinary things. I've accepted that Ichigo from Bleach looks like a college student and that nearly every other Shonen Jump character seems a bit old for just being around 12 years old. But I find it a bit too much of a stretch for the middle school/high school characters in TPPIOED to be smart enough to build an airplane, program the system, and work with an ultra high tech facility that manipulates alternate realities. It's details like this that hurt what little believability the film actually establishes. 

The Place Promised in Our Early Days isn't nothing. But it is a lot of incomplete utterances that don't come together. Though I kind of enjoyed watching it, I can't say that I haven't seen anything like it before. Plenty of shows have bad writing. Plenty of shows have some good ideas. In the end, The Movie Recommended in My Earlier Tweets disappoints.