The animators take great care evoking a world that sits halfway between idyllic mundane realities and mysterious romantic notions. Once Anna arrives in the windswept fishing village of Kushiro and discovers Marnie ( Kiernan Shipka) and the Marsh House, the movie finally comes into its own. The dialogue of the adults here give suggestions that there’s more going on with Anna than they quite know what to do with (a change of pace and scenery are hoped to help her mood) while Anna’s own thoughts are less subtle about her emotional state, which seemingly borders on depression. When the attack happens, she’s sent off to the countryside to live with a hospitable aunt and uncle she’s barely met before. Right from the beginning, Anna (voiced in this English dub by Hailee Steinfeld) feels distant and cut-off from her classmates and the people who surround her. There’s a freedom of expression that doesn’t exist in many Western forms of the medium, and it’s an almost refreshing shock that the opening sequence features the protagonist experiencing a bout of ‘asthma’ that the adult characters discuss and treat as if it were a panic attack. Both movies use the animated form to externally embody the sensitive and apprehensive headspace of uncertain and jittery pre-teen antagonists, setting aside the exaggerated and often surreal fantasias that usually make up the studio’s bread and butter. The story itself alternates between shimmering slightness and downright ephemeral haziness, but the gorgeous, melancholic animation and quiet, compassionate direction of Yonebayashi (2010’s somewhat underrated Arrietty) carry this portrait of a young girl fearful of growing up, and the mysterious playmate she befriends at a moldering mansion in the marsh.Īlthough the presiding feeling of that creepy old house and the bucolic countryside it inhabits is entrenched in European gothic sensibility, the movie itself retains the overall whimsy and naturalistic magic of its Ghibli precursors, particularly the understated Whispers of the Heart. Robinson’s decidedly English ghost story reinforces some of the smaller, subtler delights Ghibli specialized in over its long, glorious career. Sure, the recent Hayao Miyazaki wonder, The Wind Rises, or Isao Takahata’s lovely, poetic Tale of the Princess Kaguya might have proved more significant swan songs, but this dreamy, gentle extrapolation of author Joan G. If Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s When Marnie Was There does turn out to be the last Studio Ghibli theatrical film, then the animation powerhouse will be going out on a strong, expectedly poignant grace note.

When marnie was there studio ghibli