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Joan G. Robinson's novel "When Marnie Was There" is a favourite of mine and has long enjoyed great popularity in Britain, but I was surprised to learn that it is also known in Japan. The original novel is set in a seaside village in Norfolk, but this animated version transfers the action to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The characters become Japanese rather than English, although the names of the two main characters, Anna and Marnie, have been retained. Rather oddly, Marnie remains a blue-eyed blonde, as she was in the book: Anna is a brunette, but nevertheless has large round blue eyes. Now characters, especially female characters, in anime often look surprisingly Caucasian, even when they are supposed to be Japanese. In this case, however, Marnie is the daughter of an English father and Japanese mother. (There is also an explanation for Anna's blue eyes, but I won't say what it is as that would be to give away too much of the ending).
In this version Anna is a shy, withdrawn and introverted girl, probably aged about 12, living in Sapporo with her foster-parents, with whom she has lived ever since her real parents were killed in a car crash and her grandmother died soon afterwards. Because she suffers from asthma, Anna is sent away from the city to live with Mr & Mrs Oiwa, relatives of her stepmother, in a rural seaside town. Anna has always found it difficult to make friends; she feels that all the rest of the world is inside an invisible circle and that she is on the outside. At first does not seem any happier at the seaside than she did in Sapporo, but things change when she meets Marnie, a girl living in a large house by the sea.
The two girls form a close friendship, the first either has ever known, but there is something strange about Marnie, who asks Anna to keep their relationship a secret and who seems to appear and disappear mysteriously. Nobody seems to know anything about her or her family, and her house, although obviously once grand, seems dilapidated and abandoned. Anna finds herself wondering whether her new friend is real, or a ghost, or a figment of her imagination. Eventually Marnie seems to disappear for good, but Anna is befriended by another family who have recently arrived in the village, especially their daughter Sayaka, and this leads to the truth about Marnie, and about Anna's own past, eventually being revealed.
When I was younger, animated movies always seemed like something specifically American; Disney seemed to have the market in full-length cartoons sewn up. In more recent decades, however, Disney seem to have abandoned the traditional hand-drawn cartoon in favour of computer animation, and their mantle has passed to Japan, particularly Studio Ghibli. The Ghibli style, however, is very different from the Disneys which I used to love as a child- less stylised, more realistic and with more subdued colours. The visual look of "When Marnie Was There" is particularly attractive; I have never been to Hokkaido, but the mountainous landscapes depicted here conjure up the same sort of sense of place which Robinson achieved with her descriptions of the very different Norfolk coast.
Much as I love Robinson's book, it does have a couple of minor weaknesses. She never fully explains why Anna is allowed to take so much time off school and what becomes of her biological father after his divorce from her mother. There is perhaps something of a slackening of intensity in the third quarter of the book, between Anna's final meeting with Marnie and the denouement. In the film, however, all these matters are addressed or resolved. Anna's absence from school is explained by her health condition, and Anna's mother is only married once; the man who dies with her in the accident is Anna's father, not her stepfather. The pacing is also better, with no perceptible slackening, possibly because Sayaka, who emerges as Anna's new friend and confidante, is a more well-developed figure than Priscilla, the equivalent character in the book.
On the surface, Robinson's novel is a simple tale of the friendship between two young girls, but beneath that surface it is surprisingly deep, tackling the interrelated subjects of loneliness, friendship, bereavement and parental neglect. All of these elements are covered in as much depth in the film version which, I feel, in some respects even manages to improve upon the book. With this film Studio Ghibli have succeeded in the difficult task of taking a story very much rooted in one culture, transferring it to another, very different culture (with only a few minor changes to the plot) and producing something of universal relevance. A beautiful film. 10/10
score 10/10
JamesHitchcock 28 September 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3817466/ |
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19-3-2020 12:05:20
