When Marnie Was There

The other night, I had the total pleasure of catching the newest Studio Ghibli film, When Marnie Was There at Dendy Portside Cinemas.

The story focuses on Anna, a twelve-year-old girl who gets shipped out to the countryside to be with her foster mother’s family after suffering a panic attack in the city. In the country, she finds a new friend in the mysterious Marnie and together they overcome their deepest fears.

It’s a beautiful film, languidly told with a compelling plot and the gorgeous animation that makes Studio Ghibli a household name. I particularly loved the gentle dynamic to Anna’s relationships with the people around her. Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi seemed to understand them intimately, and the relationships in it are always pushing and pulling and, very occasionally, tearing each other apart. It’s a wonderful story, terrifically told. It makes me want to live in it for a while.

One of the things that surprised me though was how much it felt like a new start to the studio. There’s been a lot of talk of late of Studio Ghibli shutting down, and When Marnie Was There being the final output of the place.

As a final chapter, I can’t help but think The Wind Rises and The Princess Kaguya were better and more compelling conclusions. To end with two masterpieces from the old guard makes sense for a studio ready to close its doors. In a lot of ways after all, When Marnie Was There feels like a new start – a modern story exploring modern themes of childhood isolation, rejection and fear.

It’s a new and younger voice for the studio (which is a little weird to say given director Yonebayashi is 41, but keep in mind Miyazaki and Takahata are both in their seventies), but it’s not one that feels like a hopeful one to end on.

It feels like a strong film in a director and a studio’s career, but a middling one.

Studio Ghibli’s pretty renowned for constant threats of shutting down. I mean, Miyazaki himself has been promising retirement for how many years now?

I really hope it’s not Studio Ghibli’s final film. I guess that’s what this is getting at. While I loved the movie itself, it doesn’t feel like a bookend to the breathtaking Nausicaa or Laputa: Castle in the Sky (depending what you consider Studio Ghibli’s first film to be).

I hope there’s more. I hope Studio Ghibli continues to be a cultural powerhouse all of its own. I hope it continues to shed a light on the internal lives of girls and the way they touch magic, whether they mean to or not. I hope the studio keeps making movies.