The two tough but supportive monologues Shizuku receives, first from her father, Seiya, and then from her mother, Nishi, are some of my favourite moments in cinema: But Whisper of the Heart averts cliché and predictability at every turn, and rather than dishing out a stern talking-to, her parents are calm and concerned and talk to Shizuku like the adult she has been behaving. Naturally, her decision to forge her own way in the world at such a young age disturbs her parents, who give her a “big sitdown talk” over the issue. It’s in this decision that the film delivers some of the best-written scenes not only in the Ghibli oeuvre but, I fervently believe, that I have ever seen in film. Inspired by the boy’s determination and drive to become a violin maker, she resolves that she wants to drop out of school at 14 and become a novelist.
After a truly magical sequence set to the film’s recurring musical motif-various revisions of the John Denver classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads”-Shizuku begins to wonder what she wants out of life, and it’s at this point that she decides to take the road less travelled. It’s in the film’s second half that its real resonances begin to emerge. Shizuku’s destiny is indeed a boy, but he is equally a catalyst for so much more. Many of the Ghibli films are praised for showing that girls’ stories needn’t have very much to do with falling in love or boys, and Whisper of the Heart is a little exceptional in this. The film never feels disconnected, though, as there’s a constant lure pulling her toward that antique shop, it’s avuncular proprietor Nishi, and the boy living beneath it, who may not be so bad after all. We follow Shizuku about her days of summer spent in the library reading books, writing song lyrics, hanging out with friends, being pestered by her older sister and the adolescent fluttering in her chest, and generally doing very little studying. The bulk of the film’s story is comprised of this sort of minutiae. She traces the cat to a dusty boutique, where she discovers a treasure trove of antique wonders, but finds her reverie spoiled by the reemergence of Seiji, a seemingly arrogant boy who has an unerring ability to get under her skin.
WHISPER OF THE HEART AND THE CAT RETURNS SERIES
The scene where young heroine Shizuku follows the “snobby” cat Muta up a series of tight exterior stairways and back alleys visually and narratively echoes the magical transportations of My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away, or the film’s own spinoff, The Cat Returns.Īs it happens, though, rather than a sojourn to some enchanted grotto or haunted bathhouse, Shizuku’s journey takes her nowhere more out of the ordinary than an aspirational Tokyo suburb, but no less life-changing experiences await.
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Although the film’s fantasy elements are minimal-restricted to the folktales shared between the characters and flights of adolescent imagination-the film often borrows the typical register and iconography of the studio’s more typically supernatural films. There’s the usual blend of sentimental fairytale imagery and a mature, fine-grain ruggedness, and it features the typical story threads of adolescent first love and coming of age that nearly always mark the studio’s output. The film that resulted is simultaneously the most grounded and one of the most touching films the studio ever produced, as well as one of the best coming-of-age movies one could hope to see.Īdapted from the manga of the same title by Aoi Hiiragi, Whisper of the Heart features many of the tropes common throughout the Studio Ghibli oeuvre. Directed by neither of the studio’s twin pillars, Miyazaki or Isao Takahata-although it was adapted by the former- Whisper of the Heart was the only directorial effort of Yoshifumi Kondo. And within its faultless catalogue, one film that stands apart from the others is a finely polished gem called Whisper of the Heart. Hayao Miyazaki is a god, and if anyone tries to tell you there is a Studio Ghibli film that isn’t worth watching, then I would treat anything they tell you in the future with suspicion.
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