Arrietty

Film: Arrietty

Year of production: 2010

UK Release date: 29^th July 2011

Distributor: Optimum Releasing

Certificate: U

Running time: 94mins

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi

Starring: Mirai Shida, Ryûnosuke Kamiki

Genre: Family

Format: Cinema

Country of production: Japan

Language: Japanese

Writers Name: Mary Norton (novel), Hayao Miyazaki & Keiko Niwa (screenplay)

Arrietty is the latest adaptation to the screen of Mary Norton’s enduring children’s story The Borrowers, lavishly realised by acclaimed masters of Japanese animation Studio Ghibli.

Arrietty is the youngest of a family of ‘Borrowers’; tiny people who make their living by borrowing un-needed items from the houses of human beings. At fourteen, Arrietty is now deemed old enough to accompany her father on her first borrowing excursion into the realm of humans.

Occupying the house is Shô; a young boy recuperating from a serious heart condition, his elderly grandmother, and their maid, Haru. Shô’s mother told him of the existence of a tiny race of people when he was a child, so when he spies Arrietty attempting to liberate a piece of tissue paper from his bedroom, he is fascinated rather than surprised.

Housebound by his illness, Shô develops a need to interact with Arrietty and, with small acts of kindness, begins to draw her out of hiding. The pair begin to develop a friendship, despite Arrietty’s parent’s warning that interaction with humans can only lead to danger.

As it turns out, all of the house’s occupants are aware that they share their home with the Clock family, but not all of them are as indulgent as Shô. As Arrietty becomes more and more careless about maintaining her secrecy, evidence of the family’s existence begins to mount, and Haru decides to rid the house of what she views as ‘pests’.

With their home in jeopardy, Arrietty and her family are forced to undertake a perilous journey and, with the help of Shô and the uncivilised Spiller, attempt to start a new life away from the destructive influence of humanity.

As one would expect of Studio Ghibli, Arrietty is beautifully animated and exhibits a remarkable attention to detail. It’s possible to stare into the background of every scene, examining the everyday items that have been ingeniously worked into the scaled-down world of the Clock Family. Also typical of Studio Ghibli, the film concerns itself with confrontations between humanity and nature, environmental issues and mankind’s destructive tendencies. All this takes place in Miyazaki’s curious half European, half Japanese landscape.

The first half hour of Arrietty is wonderful, perhaps even reaching the heights of Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). The characters are charming, their world beautifully envisioned and the whole lot brought to life with some exceptional sound design. It’s unfortunate, then, that from this point on Arrietty begins to lose its way.

Arrietty, as with the majority of Ghibli productions before it, is available as the original Japanese version with English subtitles, or as a dubbed version (in this instance both UK and US markets have been catered for). The dub is really quite remarkable; the nature of animation means that with clever manipulation of the script a very accurate sync has been achieved. Unfortunately, what is gained in marketability is lost in coherency; despite valiant efforts from a cast including Peep Show’s Olivia Colman the dialogue never seems quite right. Furthermore, a great deal of meaning seems to have been lost in translation, with the dialogue differing drastically from the subtitled version.

Perhaps as a consequence of the slipshod dialogue, character motivations begin to seem unclear. From one minute to the next, Shô’s interest in Arrietty verges from fervid romanticism to the jaded disconnection of an analytical naturalist. If this weren’t confusing enough, Haru is simply unfathomable, The film makes it clear not only that the household are aware of the Borrowers’ existence, but that they have been for generations. Despite this, Haru develops a sudden and inexplicable urge to be rid of them, citing their thievery (one pin, one sugar cube, one piece of tissue paper) as reason enough.

Studio Ghibli have created a glorious world for Arrietty to inhabit, but the occasional hiccup will conspire to pull you back out of it. In keeping with Ghibli’s preoccupation with the natural world, Shô begins to examine Arrietty’s plight in relation to manmade extinctions. Perhaps this comparison could have worked allegorically, but as a blatant moral message it seems clumsy. Miyazaki’s films have always had their peculiar nuances, sometimes cultural, sometimes filmic, but have always maintained a consistent internal logic. Arrietty, though, is almost baffling. The Borrower’s existence is remarkable but practical; their world is a scaled down human world. By including a scene where Arrietty communicates telepathically with a cat, then, the filmmakers have undermined the rules of their filmic world. Moments like these break what is otherwise a very convincing illusion.

At 94 minutes, Arrietty is hardly a long film, but the pace is almost glacial. Most established fans of Studio Ghibli will be more than happy to appreciate a film that takes its time, revelling in its beautifully animated, thoughtfully composed imagery. For children, though, it’s difficult to imagine that Arrietty will keep their attention in the same way that Spirited Away or Ponyo (2008) were able.

Ultimately, the film seems to have suffered in the edit. Perhaps the original film was too long and two slow to garner any success as a children’s film, and has been cut down accordingly. As a result, the film barely makes sense. Arrietty’s father is inexplicably absent for a third of the film, and the relationship between her and Shô reaches a schmaltzy conclusion without ever being satisfactorily nurtured. The presiding sense is that elements that should have been explained are now missing.

Fans of Ghibli’s previous films won’t be disappointed, but Arrietty will never be counted amongst the studio’s finest work. Lavishly crafted, imagined with originality and executed in minute detail, Arrietty fails to satisfy only where narrative is concerned.