Rising From The Ashes?

For those who are commonly acquainted with Studio Ghibli’s plethora of animated features and the said studios recent circumstances involving film-making and co-operating with other niche animated projects, it’ll come as no surprise how discouraging it is to not see the famed Ghibli logo of Totoro popping onto the silver-screen in recent memory. While cinematic efforts in the forms of Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name and Mamoru Hosoda’s The Boy and the Beast have supplemented anime-lovers’ interest in the said medium and have subsequently exhibited to general audiences the diversity of Japanese animation other than the acclaimed Ghibli, the initial departure of Hayao Miyazaki in 2014, following his release of The Wind Rises, and the resulting re-structuring of Ghibli in producing films has indeed left a void that no one, as of yet, has seized upon. However, it is with a conclusion that also brings a new beginning and this comes in the form of Studio Ponoc; a newly developed Japanese animated studio which not only see’s the likes of Yoshiaki Nishimura (previous producer at Ghibli) and Hiromasa Yonebayashi bring Ghibli’s sensibilities and art-style forward to a new platform, but has also released its first feature in the form of Mary and the Witch’s Flower.

Based on Mary Stewart’s novel of The Little Broomstick, Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s animated depiction of the said book centres around Mary Smith, an ordinary young girl stuck in the countryside with her Great Aunt Charlotte with no adventures or friends in close proximity. However, on one curious day, Mary follows a mysterious cat into the nearby forest, where she discovers an old broomstick and strange flower, named Fly-by-Night, that blossoms once every seven years. In fatefully discovering the flower’s true power in granting its user the power to become a with only for one night, Mary is soon whisked above the clouds towards Endor College – a school where young witch’s and wizard’s are taught magic by headmistress Madam Mumblechook and Doctor Dee. While Mary soon gets acquainted with Endor College and mastering spells and witchcraft that are beyond her own reasoning, she soon learns that there are terrible things happening within this school and, when she Mary tells a lie, she must risk her own life to set things right…

While the central image of Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Mary and the Wtich’s Flower shares an air of familiarity to it, wistfully echoing Hayao Miyazaki’s coming-of-age story of Kiki’s Delivery Service by presenting a young pre-teen girl hesitantly clutching a magical broomstick and accompanied by a sarcastically anthropomorphised cat, Studio Ponoc’s first theatrical animated outing ambitiously tries to do more than homage the unforgettable past and cements contextual motifs that mirrors Ponoc’s own struggle and willingness to succeed Ghibli. Indeed, while it’s easy to fathom as first how The Witch’s Flower implements the identical story-telling and animation styles to its aforesaid predecessor, the new studios’ creation not only marks a respectful cap on the legacy of the original Ghibli founders, of both Miyazaki and Takahata who bowed out with The Wind Rises and The Princess Kaguya respectively in 2013, it also manages to fully exploit the drawn majesty of traditional cel animation and ensnare our viewing pleasure with flashes of shimmering colour. Much of this is established within the opening minutes of the film where we’re granted an introduction with a mysterious woman fleeing from a blazing magical fortress by dashing away with a handful of magical flowers on a daring-broom escape and fatefully dropping these bloomed floret’s on the ground; exploding with a glint of glow that morphs the trees and grass in close proximity. What’s evidently shown won’t make sense until later events unfold, but as a demonstration of Studio Ponoc’s technical mastery of hand-drawn animation, it’s an impressive and bold opening that subtly nods to Miyazaki’s penchant for visceral airborne action; but with a slicker, more modern delicacy. In contrasting the dower and overwhelmingly heartbreaking When Marnie Was There which signified Ghibli’s inevitable end in making film in-house, Mary inherently has a more innocent and adventurous tone to it that will not only delight younger audiences, in the way in which it parallels aspects seen in the Harry Potter films when Mary first visits Endor college, it will certainly enthuse Ghibli followers since they can drink-in all the intricate background and character designs that has become synonymous with these particular creators. As much as this film can be be read as a compendium of its parents company’s greatest hits, in having a floating steam-punk esque island and a final third act that feels reminiscent of Laputa: Castle in the Sky and a heroine on a broomstick that obviously recalls a certain film that we’ve come to mention, it’s a story non-the-less that’s rather fitting of Ponoc’s particular situation and serves as an opener that doesn’t get too bogged down in eccentric thematics. If there’s one potent contextual motif that audiences can take-away and think about, is this idea of ‘power’ and how a certain specific strength should be used. When Mary first utilises the witch’s power by-chance, she’s naturally enthralled by the capabilities and gets so lost within this potential, that she loses perspective of what matters most to her. Of course, Ghibli films like Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke have each respectively burrowed into similar ideas. Yet, within Mary, this particular thematic is presented in a way that’s put across rather charmingly and more understandable to its core demographic. As well, much like how Mary exclaims that instead of using “magic to open the door. I’m going to use my won powers. However long it may take, I’m going to do it on my own.” and serves as a nice and inspirational message for the younger audiences to grasp and take with them, it also serves as a welcoming metaphor in relation to Studio Ponoc’s position; how both Yonebayashi and Nishimura, after leaving Ghibli, found themselves at the beginning again but used their own strength and power to continue. If there’s one criticism to be had in regards to the story of Mary however, it’s the damning structuring and how events, especially from the 1st act to the 2nd, feel uncharacteristically slow coming from personnel that have been in-grained by Ghibli film-making. Rather methodically, it takes far too long for Mary to eventually begin her journey and once the film enters into it’s concluding quarter, there are times when you can’t help yourself but to consciously wait for an ending that could have concluded twenty minutes prior.

From the opening that stamps Studio Ponoc’s name into this cinematic-age, we meet Mary Smith, voiced by Ruby Barnhill who you may have seen in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, who, like Chihiro from Spirited Away, serves to be the film’s central heroine who’s constantly seeking for fun and adventure. Unlike the aforesaid protagonist of Miyazaki’s Academy Award winner however, Mary is seen as a character that’s well-mannered and respected from the likes of her Great Aunt Charlotte and the local newspaper boy of Peter and is eager for summer to end and school to begin. Having watched both the English and Japanese versions of the Yonebayashi’s animated-feature, both of the voices for Mary make for a boisterous and charming lead that also feels colloquially appropriate for the typically English setting that the premise is based in. But as funnily aroused as I was in the way in which the English distribution team of this film made a Japanese animation feel wholly British made, echoing the BBC’s anthology series of Beatrix Potter’s characters in the 1990’s, there are negligence’s to be perceived in relation to the characterisation of Mary and many other characters. One particular annoyance to clearly fathom is the manner in which the characters are presented to be just one-dimensional pieces of a story that’s fair and simple to begin with. This goes for Mary especially since she initially questions herself near the beginning how she wants to change the way she is, but subsequently doesn’t do anything to justify this by the time comes around. Yes, as mentioned, she makes a choice in regards to the film’s central message of power and the responsibility that comes with that. However, there’s never really anything substantial in relation to her personality or attitude that changes which relates to the film lack of conflict or tension that would have been apparently expressed in Ghibli’s early years. Being that the characters inevitably fall flat consequently results in the pace of the film never really quite builds to a dramatic crescendo as it should. Tellingly, when you have non-human characters in the forms of Tib and Gib (both cats) who give off more personality than the likes of the feeble ‘villains’ of Doctor Dee and Madam Mumblechook, than there’s definitely some problems.

What the film lacks in providing complicated characters, it gains in its illustrious animation style that naturally accentuates how significant cel animation is within this cinema-age of technological craft. Considering Ponoc’s position of having to start again, leaving the branch of Ghibli, and hiring hand-drawn animators and musicians in an industry that has notoriously faced economic struggles and competition from Disney’s ‘New Wave’ of drawn animation, it’s nothing short of impressive how Mary and the Witch’s Flower got to be made in the first-place. One can only imagine the graft that both Yonebayashi and Nishimura had to go through in making a viable animation studio and animated-feature film into a reality and it’s certainly their hard efforts that’s ultimately paid off. To put it simply, the animation aesthetic of Mary is divine, like its predecessors, and is appropriately vibrant, detailed and expressive in all the right ways.

As strangely familiar as Studio Ponoc’s company logo is, fading-in at the beginning showcasing a simple line-drawing of a little girl smiling benignly beneath the words of ‘Studio Ponoc’ which resembles a certain Totoro logo, it’s an animation studio that’s slowly rising from the ashes of Ghibli’s own dismay and much of that is thanks to their first feature film of Mary and the Witch’s Flower. While the obvious shortcomings of lacklustre character development and slow-structuring cost the said film’s iconography in comparison to the works of Studio Ghibli, much of these failings can be understandably forgiven considering the studio and film-makers position of starting-over following the dismay of Ghibli. Despite it’s inherent familiarity of using aspects commonly seen in past ventures, Yonebayashi’s latest films strength significantly lies within it’s bewitching and dazzling animation. Even though Ponoc’s future may look uncertain considering the economic climate of Japanese animation in recent years and the competition that it faces, there’s an optimism to be had that will, hopefully, see them reach new fantastical heights…

On that note, it’s time for me to end this week’s Film Review. As always everyone, thank you for reading my latest film review in the form Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower and I hope you’ve all enjoyed the read! 😉 If anyone has an opinion on either the review or the film itself, you’re more than welcome to comment your thoughts down below. For next week, I will either be reviewing Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story or David Leitch’s Deadpool 2. Once again, thank you for reading this Blog Post and I hope you all have a nice bank holiday! Adieu! 😊💫

★★★☆☆ – Alex Rabbitte