#WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE HOUSE MOVIE#

Later, Anna asks Marnie about the boy she was talking to at the party, and Marnie assures her that Kazhuiko is just her friend, but that doesn’t stop her from being jealous.Īnna and Marnie spend more and more time together, growing closer and helping each other through their loneliness. It’s filled with the aristocracy of yesteryear attending a fancy party thrown by Marnie’s parents, who take to Anna instantly (she shows up disguised as a flower girl) and the two girls dance together and have a wonderful time, but their enjoyment is cut short when her nasty nanny tries to lock her up in her room. She wears clothes reminiscent of the 1950s, and when she takes Anna inside, the mansion is no longer abandoned. Marnie isn’t dressed like someone would today. As the days wear on, the allure of the mansion grows stronger, and she makes her way back only to find that the girl is real. When he isn’t around, she sketches on a hill top alongside an old lady named Hisako, who also paints the mansion, and they complement each other’s work. Anna knows what that feels like, so she begins spending time on his boat, sketching away while he fishes in silence. The kids in the village make fun of Toichi, who mostly keeps to himself. A mute fisherman named Toichi rows her back to the shore when the tide is high, and she begins to sketch this girl from the comfort of her bedroom. There’s something uncanny about it, something familiar that she can’t quite place, and she begins to have dreams and visions of a young blonde girl, waving at her from the window. She makes her way over to the house during low tide. She decides to wander off on her own, at which point she discovers an abandoned mansion on the other side of a marsh. She’s on edge when she’s around other people, fending off anyone she might grow close to. It’s not so much mean-spirited as it is observant while lacking a filter, as is the case with most kids, but Anna lashes back at them with insults. The country air is most definitely good for her, but she finds it hard to adjust, especially since the kids all notice she’s of mixed ethnicity (she has blue eyes) and they make sure to point it out to her. Since finding out, she’s not only been socially withdrawn, but largely emotionless in her interactions with her foster parents, who she now refers to as her aunt and uncle when they aren’t around. Unbeknownst to Yoriko, Anna is aware that she’s adopted. When a teacher asks to see her work, her social anxiety triggers an asthma attack, a continued problem that leads her foster mother Yoriko to send her to live with her aunt & uncle in the countryside for the summer. High-school aged Anna, a reclusive, self-loathing girl with plain and boyish features, spends her time at the park sketching the other kids instead of joining them. While the film manages to undercut a significant chunk of its narrative thanks to a bizarre and almost lazily conventional story turn, there’s a lot to be loved, and enough impetus behind the decisiom (despite having annoyed me) that it may even end up a cherished memory for some, which is fitting since the film is about our relationship to memories in various forms. Magical realism has always been a cornerstone of Ghibli’s oeuvre, and while Hiromasa’s brand of fantasy is relatively grounded when compared to Miyazaki (though not quite as stark as Isao Takahata), he employs the same tenderness in his approach. Hiromasa, or Maro as he’s affectionately known, became the studio’s youngest feature director with The Secret World of Arrietty in 2010, and he wields that same eye for verdurous mysticism in When Marnie Was There, a beautiful tale of letting go. It’s fitting then that Hiromasa Yonebayashi, a man who came up in the industry doing clean-ups and key animation on the films I mentioned, is tasked with the company’s final outing.

#WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE HOUSE MOVIE#

A hiatus is most certainly on the horizon, and with no clear return in sight, we may not see another Ghibli movie in theatres for a while, if ever. Since Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement a few years ago, speculation has run rampant about the future of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation titan he helped spearhead with such films as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle.

When marnie was there house