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Blu-Ray Review: Studio Ghibli's Whisper Of The Heart
Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart was the one film directed by animator Yoshifumi Kondo before his sad, early death. He was being touted as a successor to Hayao Miyazaki, and this film stands as testament to the faith his fans, and his friends and Studio Ghibli, had placed in him.
In the West, it seems that the more fantastical Studio Ghibli pictures have proven the most popular by quite some significant margin. Perhaps it's because we're not so attuned to seeing dramas, much less teen romances, played out in animation, so movies like Whisper of the Heart immediately seem like less of a commercial proposition. Still, fortune favours the brave - or in this case, just the unblinkered.
The story of Whisper is set in mid-90s suburban Japan over the summer, a setting that is beautifully conceived and illustrated most vividly, both in sense of time and place. The narrative may be gentle, but this only allows more time to luxuriate in the craftsmanship, the rich character of the animation and the peerless background art.
Everything gets off to a suitably quiet start when schoolgirl Shizuku sets herself a challenge for the summer holidays: she intends to read twenty books. A most humble but sincere goal. Soon, she realises that somebody else has been checking the same books out of the library. She finds out who, when as if by magical intervention, the whimsical pursuit of a cat leads her to a tucked-away antique shop and an unlikely chance encounter.
As you've probably picked up, it's fragile, delicate stuff. The film is much less plot driven than even the majority of Ghibli pictures, and your experience with it is going to have more to do with atmosphere and character. There is one fantasy scene, and it's a gorgeous digression with Ghibli-standard flying and a rather winning anthropomorphic animal, but it's neither the heart nor the point of the piece. Whisper of the Heart is about young love, memory, beauty and even a little nostalgia.
But wanting it any other way would be like asking for more thorns on a rose.
The film ends on a little, sweet point of romantic closure that might seem particularly odd outside of Japanese culture. I don't want to spoil it, but I'm sure that for the film's original target audience of teenage Nipponese girls, it would have made perfect sense. I think it's particularly welcome as a deep cut into film's originating culture.
This Blu-ray features a very sharp and mostly very clean transfer of the film and Japanese and English stereo mixes that are faithful to the source. It's not always nice to say it, but the reproduction is so good, that some of the limitations of the original film materials show up at times, including noticeable shadow lines between the cels and the backgrounds. It's a regular animation hazard, but soft, 35mm prints would generally take the edge off (so to speak).
Also on the disc are a handful of supplements, most notably a picture-in-picture track that runs storyboards for the entire movie, but in time to the film as finished.
There's also a slideshow which gives a close look at background art for the film's fantasy sequence, and it's remarkable to see how deft and economically drawn the background images are, an example of great, minimal approach.
Another featurette, Four Masterpieces of Naohisa Inoue, shows the artist working on some paintings, at leisure - read: it goes on a bit. Though you may be at great pains to understand why this is on the disc, it's because Inoue is the artist of the background art mentioned above. He's showing off undoubted skill.
Less interesting are a series of trailers and a puff piece clip about the voice actors for the US dub. It won't be hard to skip either, I promise.
Ultimately, Whisper of the Heart is one of the better Ghibli films, for its brilliant mastery of tone and pace, its determined view of young romance, and the sheer artistry on display. Highly recommended.
The Studio Canal double play set, including the film on both DVD and Blu-ray is available in the UK now.
NOTE: This review has been published before, though it was incorrectly tagged so it vanished for a while. Now it's back, inly slightly rejigged. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
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Originally Posted by Joe Kalicki
