Review: Studio Ghibli's Final Movie 'When Marnie Was There' is Lowkey but Beautiful

Does Studio Ghibli go out on a high?

Oct 08, 2015

Images via Studio Ghibli

Images via Studio Ghibli

Last year it was announced that Studio Ghibli—the genius animation studio behind classics like Princess Mononoke, Castle In The Sky and Howl’s Moving Castle—had apparently finished making movies, following the retirement of its founder Hayao Miyazaki. There’s still one final film to come though—the supernatural drama When Marnie Was There, which makes its UK debut on Friday (June 10). But does it make a fitting farewell for Ghibli?

Right, the first thing to note is that When Marnie Was There is not a stone-cold, all-time classic. It’s also kind of Ghibli by the numbers—it’s about a troubled kid who moves to the coast and encounters a magical being, which is pretty much the same basic plot as My Neighbour Totoro and Ponyo. Plus its themes of childhood and imagination are covering grown already done in the likes of Spirited Away, The Cat Returns and Kiki’s Delivery Service. But even minor league Ghibli is better than pretty much every other animated film that gets released, and it’s definitely worth your time.

Our adolescent hero this time is Anna, an orphaned teenage tomboy who’s sent away from the big city smoke to a seaside town, in order to help her get over health problems. There, she befriends the mysterious Marnie, who’s either ghost, or an imaginary friend, or something even freakier, and lives in a big, seemingly abandoned creepy mansion. Unlike the flashy spectacle that you expect from Studio Ghibli, it’s a rather restrained film. Marnie herself doesn’t appear until a good half-hour into the film, and even then she’s just girl, not a massive dragon or anything. There’s actually very little that couldn’t be achieved in live action, yet as with every Studio Ghibli film, it looks utterly beautiful. The big finale is relatively low-stakes, but it takes place in a massive thunderstorm that is so powerfully rendered you almost feel soaked just watching it in the cinema.

When Marnie Was There is a simple story and you’ll probably figure what Marnie’s connection to Anna is pretty quickly, but it’s also genuinely moving and heartfelt. It’s not going to be anywhere near as iconic at Studio Ghibli’s greatest work, and we won’t be seeing action figures of its characters or people getting tattoos of it for years to come, or anything like that. In truth, its lasting legacy will probably just be as a little-played extra disc in the eventual ‘Complete Studio Ghibli Blu-ray Collection’. But it’s a sweet, lovely little film that deserves to been seen on its own merits, and not just because of its place in animation history.

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When Marnie Was There is in UK cinemas June 10. And see the subtitled version over the dub, obviously.

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