Video Backlog: “Karigurashi no Arrietty (Arrietty the Borrower)”

Publisher: Buena Vista Japan
Format: Region 2 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English and Japanese Subtitles
Length: 94 minutes
Production Date: 2010
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

I am not all familiar at all with the original series of Mary Norton’s “The Borrowers” children’s books, nor the many film and TV adaptations of the books since the early 1970’s. I had heard of the big late 1990’s Hollywood adaptation and knew there were little people involved, but that was it. It’s probably a good thing I had very little in the way of expectations of this film. Having said that, and with the knowledge that Hayao Miyazaki did the screenplay for the film, I was really surprised that this film seemed a bit of a letdown and not up to the usual standards of Studio Ghibli.

After I saw the film, I read the synopsis of the original novel and was very surprised that it sounded a lot more involved and intriguing than this adaptation. A lot of little plot points seem to have be excised from Miyazaki’s script. The major problem I had with the film is that it takes about an hour of its runtime to get to the meat of the story. During this time everything is set up and the Borrower’s world is explored, but it leaves very little time to build up any drama. And even when the drama finally arrives it’s hardly as exciting or suspenseful as any of Ghibli’s films from the past decade. Even “Ghiblies 2” is more suspenseful than this film.

The other problem with this film is that it feels so damn old fashioned. The original book was published in the 1950’s, and to me it seems rather odd to send a sick child to the country to rest before they have major surgery. It’s a very 19th century or very early 20th century thing to do. I understand that there has to be a driver in the plot to get the boy to the old house in the country (or on the outskirts of modern day Tokyo in this case), but surely there has to be a better plot device to do this. There could have been any number of medical afflictions used or the boy could have just been there for another reason. Miyazaki could have even set this film in an earlier time period, which would have made it a lot more realistic in my books. The character design, which I know is a Studio Ghibli tradition, is increasingly looking old hat. It particularly looks rather inadequate here with the juxtaposition of the human characters and the Borrowers just not looking right. I also felt some of compositions of certain shots didn’t give any scale to the Borrower’s world from their perspective.

There is still a lot of that patented Ghibli magic in this film. For instance the sequence of Arrietty and her father Pod travelling though the wall cavities of the house with their improvised devices was awe inspiring, and end credit sequence was wonderful. I really wished the relationship of the young boy, Sho, and Arrietty had been developed and strengthened more. It feels a bit a bit detached and there is not much emotional impact when the Borrower’s world is turned upside down in the last arc of the film. While first time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (previously a talented key animator) has done an admirable job on this film, it is in my opinion the least satisfying of last few Ghibli films, and that includes Goro Miyazaki’s “Tales from Earthsea” which was unfairly panned by a lot of critics in Japan. I’ll say yet again that Ghibli should have tried harder to work with Mamoru Hosoda (“The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” and “Summer Wars”) and kept him at the studio. His two Madhouse films are far more interesting than this film (even if his work does have the occasional flaw). To me Ghibli is the now studio run by the old man Hayao Miyazaki who is a bit set in his ways and unfortunately it feels like it’s slowly becoming archaic and bit irrelevant to modern day anime fans. I note that on the Japanese DVD, there is no English title for the film on the cover, unlike the past few Ghibli movie releases. In fact on the Englsih subtitles on the DVD itself, the title is curiously left as romanised Japanese, “Karigurashi no Arrietty”, and not translated at all. The DVD and Blu-ray versions came with a bonus hair clip. Summing up, yes it’s a good film, but not up to the standards I’d usually expect in a Ghibli film, especially in the story department. 7 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: 25 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).