Such comments are a bit too mean to "Marnie in Memory". In recent years, the situation of Japanese theater animation has been moving. Jin Min died of illness in his prime, Miyazaki Hayao Takada Xun has retired one after another, bearing the reputation of "Successor of Miyazaki" and The heavy-duty Hosoda Osamu gave the simmering "Son of the Monster" after three years. Milin Hongchanglu and his "Marnie in Memory" directed by him can really be regarded as a clean work that has not changed his original intention.
The film is based on the children's novel of the same name by British author Joanne G Robinson. The film tells the story of Anna, a 12-year-old girl who was adopted by her adoptive parents due to a family accident in her childhood. She came to the countryside to recuperate because of asthma, and met Marnie, a blond girl in a wetland mansion in the countryside of Hokkaido. Xing Nai has a withdrawn and sensitive personality, longing for attention but has always been indifferent to others. Although Marnie has a wealthy family, her parents are away all year round, and she has been bullied by servants since she was a child. The story of the two girls who are so frank and caring for each other makes this film labeled as "Ghibli's closing mountain is actually a lily film".
If the first half of the film gives the illusion of "lily", coupled with the frequent interspersed with stream of consciousness and reality, it makes people a little confused. In the second half, the dream-like appearance is revealed step by step. Marnie left without telling Annie sad and angry, but the people in the village didn't know Marnie's existence. And an old "Marnie's Diary" in the Wetland Mansion leads Anina to find the real Marnie. I learned the truth about Marnie's life from the painting auntie Jiuzi. It turned out that Marnie had already passed away. Although her husband died early, her daughter was killed in a car accident, and she was raising her only granddaughter in her old age, she was always so elegant, strong and beautiful. .
At the end of the film, the adoptive mother gave Anna a photo that was kept by Anna's deceased grandmother. The black-and-white photo was the old scene of the Wetland Mansion, and on the back of the photo was written the line "My favorite home - from Marnie." In the
original novel, "You can grow up only by being loved." As long as she can remember, Anna has been abandoned by her relatives to the society. Her adoptive parents adopted her but received government subsidies for raising her. Anna, who does not think she is loved, treats others Indifferent and even mean, the acquaintance with Marnie made Anna open her heart, and her personality changed. Not only did her relationship with her adoptive mother improve a lot, but she also made other friends. The photo at the end of the film completely opened the knot in Anna's heart. She was never a lonely child, and there was always someone who loved her. Anna, who was still babbling in her cradle, fell asleep to her grandmother's gentle songs and stories every night. It was the Marnie of memory, the love that was always there.
This film was prepared by Maro for teenage girls. The author is not a girl for a long time, but I was moved to tears when I saw the second half. There are so many Ghibli films, and there are only two that moved the author to tears. In addition to "Marnie in Memory", there is also "Arrietty, a Girl Who Borrowed Objects" released in 10 years, and the directors of these two films are both Milin Hongchang, familiar people call him Maru.
Hayao Miyazaki once said in the TV series "The Origins of Japanese Films: The Seventh Status of Japanese Films": "Performance is very important to animation creation, and a performance full of passion and vitality is more shocking than a symbolic performance. I'd rather watch cartoons that are full of passion but less technical than a Rotoscope (motion capture system) where the movements are so smooth and seamless." The characters in the animations express their emotions through expressions and movements completely dependent on the artist's pen axe It is this kind of performance that Maro desires and is good at.
Recent photos of Malo
Maro, who loved animation when he was a student, immediately dropped out of university to join Ghibli and started as an original artist after watching the Ghibli movie "Listen to the Heart", which depicts the delicate heart of a girl. Maro, who is good at drawing many vivid expressions, is the original painting of important scenes in many Ghibli movies. In "Spirited Away", the parents of Chihiro who strayed into the town to eat and drink, Sophie, who was puzzled and excited when she met Hal in "Hal", and the new girl in "Pinfish on the Cliff" Ponyo who burst out of the world, etc., are all works of Maro.
Milin Hongchang's performances
"When "Ponyo Girl", I felt that this kid can really make animations by himself, and Maro-style animation has been formed." In 2009, Hayao Miyazaki announced that Maro will be the next work "The Borrowed Girl Arrietty" The director of ", learned the lessons of constant conflict with himself when he was director of Kondo and Goro Miyazaki. Miyazaki said that this film will not interfere in any way, and will never point fingers. As one of the few supervisors trained by Ghibli himself, Maro took the baton from Hayao Miyazaki.
Compared with Hayao Miyazaki, who presents grand themes such as human peace, human and nature, Maro prefers to depict more delicate emotions. He modified Hayao Miyazaki's script, and changed the original set of the communication between the little people and human beings into a love story between a little people girl and a human teenager. Not only did he make changes to the script, but Maro focused on depicting every scene showing the inner emotional fluctuations of the little human girl.
In the scene where the little human girl and the human boy met for the first time, Arrietty had to leave quickly because she violated the rules of not being discovered by humans, but at this time she was also attracted by the boy. At the moment when Arrietty turned and left, her body was still facing the direction of the boy, and the next moment her eyes were lowered, her face was melancholy, and her chin was tightened. In order to depict the complex mood of the girl in these 4 seconds, Maro used 32 original paintings.
Such a delicate and real-life performance can also be seen in "Marnie in Memory". For example, in order to avoid the adults who came out of the wetland mansion, Marnie took Anna and hid in the grass and put her arms around her shoulders. Xing Nai, who has always been closed to herself, was jumping around by Marnie's hugging deer, her expression was cautious and shy, but she couldn't help but look up at her blond, blue-eyed sister who was hugging her.
Still bearing the fame of Hayao Miyazaki's "Loaned Girl Arrietty", it won the first domestic box office in Japan with a box office of more than 9 billion yen, and also became Ghibli's highest box office film in North America. After Hayao Miyazaki retired, "Marnie in Memory", which was independently directed by Maro for the first time, only earned 5 billion yen at the box office, and the reviews were mixed. As the first and last film of Ghibli after leaving Hayao Miyazaki, "Marnie in Memory" depicts a large number of girls' inner world, plus the character design of short-haired shirt and overalls, and the background picture with strong expressionism style, Although it completely got rid of the shadow of Hayao Miyazaki, it also made it difficult for many audiences who are used to Ghibli's natural and fresh style to accept. In addition, the first half of the plot of this film is too loose, and the frequent interlacing between dreams and reality makes it cloudy and foggy to watch if you are not careful. Someone on the forum commented that if the clues for finding the diary could be explained at the beginning, forming a rhythm of uncovering the suspense step by step, it might make the plot more compact. The author believes that such a comment is reasonable, but we don’t know how Maro and Ando Yaji discussed the script at that time, and if Miyazaki was there to supervise the film, we also don’t know if the movie would go in another direction.
The expressionist backdrop found everywhere in the film
But there is one point, Ghibli is going to leave the older generation of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takada after all. The "Marnie in Memory" directed by the young director Maro, as the finished product of trial and error, is already very valuable in the author's opinion. What is even more commendable is Maro's consistent devotion and persistence to the performance that expresses the delicate feelings of the characters. Compared with the "Son of the Monster" brought by Mamoru Hosoda, who was known as the "successor of Hayao Miyazaki" last year, it is gorgeous. Rei's 3D scene is wrapped in a story of congenital deformities. In order to cater to the characters that are randomly inserted by audiences of different ages, the author very much misses "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", which was born in the summer of 10 years ago, Mamoru Hosoda. Great story for high school boys and girls. Maro said in an interview that "Marnie in Memories" is for little girls the same size as Anna in the film. What is the age of twelve or thirteen, the puberty has not yet arrived, and it is not far from being naive. Some are ignorant and do not know its shape, and some are sentimental and do not know its source. If I saw such a film made for me when I was twelve or thirteen years old, it would probably resonate more.
Maro announced at the beginning of 2015 that he had resigned from Ghibli. He said that he would continue to work as an animation supervisor in the future. He hoped to export a film with a different style from "Marnie in Memory" and a happy film like Ponyo. When the new program "Volleyball Boys Season 2" was broadcast last fall, the author found Milin Hongchang's name in ed, and I thought it was the same name and surname at the time. After checking on the Internet, I found out that Maro is indeed the original artist in "Volleyball Boys". I don't mean to despise TV animation. "Volleyball Boy" is also a work that remains on the author's top 5 animation. But I feel a little regretful, after all, this is a supervisor who has shown his head and feet in Ghibli, and a supervisor who insists on showing the delicate emotions of the characters.
Looking forward to Maro and expecting him to bring us better works.
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