Review: The Secret World of Arrietty

Setting aside Disney’s handsome but perhaps futile attempt to rekindle the flame of traditional, hand-drawn animation with 2009’s The Princess and the Frog, the digital conquest of mainstream American animated cinema has proven stunningly comprehensive. For the average American film-goer, the only big-budget, traditionally-animated films that they are likely to encounter in the present era are those from the renowned Japanese animation shop Studio Ghibli. Since its founding by film-makers Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata in 1985, Ghibli has attained a sterling reputation as a purveyor of aesthetically exquisite and profoundly humanistic films, many of them regarded as landmarks in global animation: My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away. Disney itself has provided the dubbed English-language versions of Ghibli’s most recent features with wide American releases, ensuring that U.S. audiences have the opportunity to experience such films theatrically.

Given Ghibli’s track record, it would be justifiable to declare that their most recent feature, The Secret World of Arrietty, feels for all the world like a minor film within the studio’s broader canon. Certainly, when compared to the surreal, gentle perfection of Totoro or the palpable sorrow of Fireflies—or even, for that matter, the unexpected warmth and density of Ghibli’s last feature, Ponyo—Arrietty necessarily seems to be a slighter film. Grading on such a skewed curve, however, is perhaps unfair, given that even a “lesser” Ghibli production such as Arreitty is so rife with uncommon loveliness and queer delights. Working from a screenplay by Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, long-time Ghibli animator and first-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi enriches the film’s relatively simple story with a fine instinct for fantasy wonderment and touching emotion.

Loosely adapted from Mary Norton’s beloved 1952 English children’s novel The Borrowers, Arrietty is set in a rural Japanese bungalow where the sickly twelve-year-old Shawn (David Hernie) has been sent to rest under the care of his great-aunt. Within minutes of arriving, the dreamy-eyed Shawn catches a glimpse of a four-inch-tall girl lurking amid the garden leaves. This is Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler), a fourteen-year-old member of a race of tiny people known as Borrowers. Arrietty dwells with her high-strung mother Homily (Amy Poehler) and stoic father Pod (Will Arnett) beneath the bunaglow’s floorboards, where they maintain a cozy four-inch-scale facsimile of a country house. Arrietty has just reached the proper age to begin learning how to “borrow” small objects—a cube of sugar, a square of tissue, a straight pin—from the “human beans,” but her encounter with Shawn sets into motion an upheaval in the Borrowers’ lives. Although Shawn offers a human perspective into the world of the little people, Arrietty is unmistakably the protagonist of the film’s story, which is in essence a pint-sized bildungsroman.

As with many Ghibli features, the conflict in Arrietty is of the mildest sort, focused on the manner in which unwelcome changes carry Arrietty and her parents downstream and into unknown waters. The miniscule Borrowers are both vulnerable and resilient in ways that distinguish them from a human clan, but the fundamental challenges they confront—material insecurity, familial tension, the whims of more powerful forces—are all too common. The closest thing to a villain in Arriety‘s narrative is the snoopy housekeeper Hara (Carol Burnett), a comical, slightly grotesque antagonist who is determined to root out the “infestation” of little people. The kind-hearted and lonely Shawn longs to befriend Arrietty and protect her people from discovery, but whatever safety the Borrowers enjoyed was fatally disrupted during the pair’s first meeting. Without even meaning to, Shawn provided the impetus for Arrietty’s troubles, and this bittersweet irony is the gray thread that runs through the film’s otherwise vivid, charming story.

Consistent with Ghibli’s reputation, Arrietty offers a wealth of visual pleasures, from the rich design of the Borrowers’ bungalow-in-miniature to the luscious hand-drawn backgrounds that sing with bright floral hues and dusky shadows. The character designs are typically marvelous, with Arrietty herself a particular wonder of early adolescent spunk and quivering adult resolve. Most conspicuous is the animator’s meticulous regard for the realities of life at a smaller scale, exemplified in the way that water assumes a squishy, syrupy character when seen from a Borrower’s vantage point. Such loving  and memorable attention to detail is what distinguishes Ghibli’s offerings from other animated features, where the preponderance of visual noise often precludes a deeper aesthetic impression. The Secret World of Arrietty‘s blend of fine artistry and familiar-yet-nuanced brand of storytelling mark it as a worthy entry in the Ghibli brand, but also leaps and bounds better than the productions emerging from most American animation studios.