Studio Ghibli Thoughts: Arrietty

Of all the Studio Ghibli movies, this one is most about perspective and how you look at the world. In another way, it can also be seen as the perspective of a first-time director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, on the work of his mentor Hayao Miyazaki, which is why Arrietty manages to so closely simulate earlier Studio Ghibli work while being the work of a fresh director. Based, like many of Studio Ghibli’s works, on a Western children's fantasy novel, Arrietty follows the adventures of the titular character, a girl from an almost extinct race of very small humans, as she interacts with our world.

The entire premise of The Borrowers hinges on the wonder of looking at our world from the eyes of a race that is as small as insects, and that’s where perspective is key. For Arrietty and her family, who sometimes need to go into human kitchens to “borrow” supplies, the walk between one side of the kitchen to the other becomes a grand adventure. Needles become swords, tissue paper a valuable fabric resource, and vermin horrifying beasts.

The sections that best showcase this perspective are as masterful as expected from Studio Ghibli in creating a plausible and living world, aided by the brilliant compositions of Cecile Corbel (working for the first time in Anime). Yet, the central event that propels the movies feels a bit off. A “borrower’s” most important rule is that they shouldn’t be found by any humans, which could risk not only the individual family unit but the entire embattled race. Naturally, that happens to Arrietty almost immediately in the movies as a sickly boy glances at her movements in the gardens, and later spies her during her maiden “borrowing” trip with her father in the old house.

Unlike the relationships between other Studio Ghibli characters, I found the boy to be too depressing to be interesting, and the subsequent threatening of Arrietty’s home by the house’s live-in housekeepers to be over-the-top. A better realization of the same theme would have been for the “borrowers” to leave even without any overt threat, that much being the threat to their world from modern society.

On that note, Arrietty's perspective should help the viewer appreciate the wonders of our world. How filled with memory and craft our houses are, how nature allows for complex systems to exist in a way that enriches the whole world, and other lessons that we would get if we tried to look at our world from such a microscopic angle.

That’s why, despite some narrative weaknesses, I still think that Yonebayashi’s first directorial debut is brilliant, fully deserving to be considered a Mid-Tier Studio Ghibli film. Miyazaki hoped that the films would “soothe and encourage people living in these chaotic and uncertain times”, and I think it succeeded at that.