"Arrietty" (1st Viewing)
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
I've kept myself out of the theaters for most of this year, simply because there hasn't been anything to lure me out of the Oscar season, with this being the single exception. Last year was a truly sad year for animation, and we didn't get everything that we deserved. Dreamworks was at a level of dispensable fun, and Pixar on a level of materialist carnage without proper justification. I had similar feelings about Studio Ghibli as of late, which has degraded to the levels of films like "Ponyo" and "Tales from Earthsea". I can say rather confidently that Hayao Miyazaki is able to bring the studio back to their intimate roots in the most subtly fantastical of ways.
In terms of conflict, "Arrietty" ("The Borrower Arrietty" or "The Secret World of Arrietty" in some countries) is very much scaled back. The objects of life and death lay in the background of philosophical concepts the film plays properly with. The relationship between Arrietty and Sho is much like the relationship of a rebellious young woman and a young boy dealing with traumatic events with dashes of optimism and the desire of being necessary. It's a very intimate story, not about friendship or family, but the desire to live a happy life in a world that doesn't care. There are political connotations to this story that are quite touching. The miniaturized characters cause for a fantastically maximized scale for the house the borrowers live in, and it's especially attentive in terms of sound design and absolutely gorgeous animation, like a moving still-life given the full cinematic treatment. It would be a joy to see this film inspire a generation of illustration majors from it.
