Today we watched Whisper of the Heart, and no fooling, it is now our favorite Ghibli movie.
This movie is about a lot of things. It's about first loves, it's about the act of creation, it's about lost loves, it's about working hard at something you might ultimately not be good at, it's about a fat cat, it's about discovery, and it's about that time in your life when everything is the most important thing ever.
But mostly, it's about growing older.
The film opens with Olivia Newton-John's version of "Take Me Home, Country Road" playing over the traditional Ghibli establishing shots, and I'm not ashamed to admit I was very confused. What an odd song to play at the beginning of a Japanese animated film aimed primarily at Japanese young adults. We quickly find out that Shizuku, our protagonist, is trying to translate/rewrite the lyrics for her friends. At the beginning of the film, she has two versions: a serious version, that is still in a rough stage, and funny version, which she makes about Tokyo and changes "country roads" to "concrete roads".
This song is used throughout the entire film in different ways, and Shizuku's final Japanese version is sung over the end credits by Yoko Honna, the voice actress for Shizuku. But my favorite use of the song is also my favorite scene in the movie, and probably my favorite scene in all of Studio Ghibli's films.
When Shizuku visits the strange little shop where the Baron is housed, where she was led by Muta a few days earlier (you remember Muta and the Baron, right? we'll get back to them in a second), she comes downstairs to find Seiji carving a violin. Seiji is her frenemy at this point, and only becomes her first love a little later. She marvels at his skill, while he plays it down, saying there are way better violin makers out there. She asks him to play a song, but he'll only do it if she sings. Because he found her "Take Me Home, Country Road" lyrics earlier in the film, he plays that song on his violin, and she begins to sing. Halfway through the song, Seiji's grandfather and his two friends return to the shop and join in by grabbing a bunch of other instruments. I don't really know why, but I was in tears the second the three older men joined in. I didn't have any real affinity for the song before; I liked it well enough, but it held no special meaning for me (its use in promotional material for Fallout '76 didn't help matters any). Now, though, I may cry every time I hear it, and I may never really know why. Maybe it's because I'm older, and because I know for a fact that there are places I'll never be able to return to. Physically, sure, but it can never be the same.
Shizuku is a voracious reader. She checks out books from her school library, and from the public library, where her father works. By the end of the film, she is also a writer, writing a novel about the Baron. It's nearly impossible not to see myself in Shizuku, and remember what being that age was like, and how incredibly far away that all seems now.
Knowing that Shizuku has decided to write, and that she writes stories about the Baron, I see The Cat Returns in a new light. It's no longer just a fun and entertaining Alice in Wonderland pastiche. This is a story Shizuku wrote, maybe while she was still in junior high, or maybe after she went to high school.
Or maybe she wrote the story after she'd grown up and worked for 10 or 20 years, and was trying to recapture some of the magic from her youth, before she'd fully grown up.
No comments:
Post a Comment