Friday, October 28, 2011

Kari-gurashi no Arietti / The Secret World of Arrietty

Kätkijät / Lånaren Arrietty. JP © 2010 [an acronym tbc]. PC: Studio Ghibli. EX: Hayao Miyazaki. P: Toshio Suzuki. D: Hiromasa Yonebayashi. SC: Hayao Miyazaki, Keiko Niwa - based on the novel The Borrowers (1952) by Mary Norton (translated in Finnish as Kätkijät in 1959 by Ulla Lehtonen / WSOY, illustrated by Ilon Wikland). AN D: Megumi Kagawa, Akihiko Yamashita. AD: Yoji Takeshige, Noboru Yoshida, M: Cécile Corbel. S: Koji Kasamatsu. ED: Rie Matsuhara. 94 min. Released by Cinema Mondo. 2K DCP of a Finnish spoken version viewed on 28 Oct 2011 (day of Finnish premiere), Kinopalatsi 9, Helsinki.

Finnish spoken version supervised by Pekka Lehtosaari. Japanese voice actor - English character name - Finnish character name - Finnish voice actor. [Ryunosuke Kamiki] SHO (Antti LJ Pääkkönen), [Keiko Takeshita] Sadoko / MUMMO (Anitta Ahonen), [Mirai Shida] Arrietty / ARIETTA (Satu Pikkusaari), [Shinobu Otake] Homily / HEMMELI (Eija Ahvo), [Kirin Kiki] HARU (Titta Jokinen), [Tomokazu Miura] Pod / PODI (Seppo Honkanen), [Tatsuya Fujiwara] Spiller / PETTERI (Rasmus Lehtosaari).

A strong new Studio Ghibli anime feature based on the popular English children's book which has been published also in Finnish in several editions, although I don't remember reading it as a child or since. This is good animation material (there have been already three English animations, none of which I have seen), and the masters at Studio Ghibli are up to the task. They have created a whole world for the lilliput characters which live in a symbiosis in the interior of the human house. The story is a great adventure of survival, and it is also a Bildungsroman of the young girl with a weak mother and a strong father; she identifies more with the father. Her contact to the regular humans is to a boy of the same age, fatally ill with a weak heart. The big themes include dealing with failure, disappointment, loss, and giving up, and finding new goals and new horizons when things get impossible. It is also a tale of impossible love, but not in a morbid way. "You gave me courage to break out of my sheltered life. You will be eternally be a part of me", confesses the boy. A family movie of lasting value.

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