Whisper of the Heart

jpn Mimi o Sumaseba. 1995. Movie. 111 min. Comedy/drama. org Aoi Hiiragi (manga). dir Yoshifumi Kondo, Hayao Miyazaki. scr Hayao Miyazaki. des Kitaro Kousaka. -bc

Whisper of the Heart is that rare Studio Ghibli production that was directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. The story of an adolescent girl discovering love and its capacity to inspire her creative side, it is a moving, funny, heartwarming tale filled with beautiful imagery and music.

Shizuku is a fourteen-year-old girl on summer vacation who is intrigued by the fact that all the books she borrows from the library have been checked out previously by someone named Seiji Amasawa. One of her summer projects is to read twenty books; the other is to write new Japanese lyrics for the John Denver song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” In the course of her activities she follows a strange wandering cat and is led to an old antique shop at the top of a high hill, in whose window she sees a small statue of a cat in full dress suit. She meets the owner of the shop, an elderly gentleman named Mr. Nishi, who tells the story of the Baron, as the cat statue is known, and his separation from a matching female cat figurine. Shizuku’s path keeps crossing with that of a boy from school who keeps returning things she’d left behind, including the “Country Roads” lyrics, which he derides as corny. Their initial encounters are antagonistic, but when she sees him at the shop and learns he’s Nishi’s grandson, she becomes intrigued by him.

A fateful encounter with the boy at the shop begins with her singing her new version of “Country Roads” while he accompanies her on violin, and ends with her learning that he is indeed Seiji Amasawa and he had spent the summer checking out books hoping Shizuku would take note of his name and seek him out. He tells her of his aspiration to make violins. As the two grow closer in the new school year, Seiji embarks for Italy to fulfill his dream of working with a great violin maker. Feeling unworthy of him because she’s not doing anything creative with her own considerable talents, Shizuku is inspired by the story of the Baron to write her own story and resolves to get it finished by the time Seiji returns from his two-month trial period in Italy. Her schoolwork suffers as she puts all her waking energy into completing the story, and her parents, sister, and teachers all get concerned. But soon she is finished with the story and takes it to Mr. Nishi, who had asked to be the first to read it. . . .

The character design is relatively simple for a film of such otherwise abundant detail, but the short lines, round faces, and big eyes are most effective at conveying sudden changes in facial expressions, especially in Shizuku, who goes through wild shifts in emotion within the space of seconds and makes us believe every one of them. A useful tool employed to show embarrassment is the reddening of characters’ cheeks in situations where their true feelings about each other are called into play. There are frequent moments where both Shizuku’s and Seiji’s cheeks redden and we know all we need to about what they’re feeling.

There is a strong sense of place in the film as every aspect of the newly built suburban development, Tama New Town, constructed on a paved-over mountain, comes alive in exquisite detail, from the winding streets, concrete walkways, and crowded shopping district to the schoolyards, libraries, and elevated train lines. We see every corner of the family’s cramped apartment and the way father, mother, sister, and Shizuku each have to meet their study, writing, and leisure needs and still manage to have meals together and keep the place clean and tidy. When the older sister announces she’s moving out, the viewer is as relieved as Shizuku, who has to sleep on the bottom of a bunk bed.

Within this relentlessly modern setting, there is Grandpa Nishi’s antique shop, filled with wondrous objects suggestive of other ages, other places, and other worlds. Nishi shows Shizuku a magnificent old clock standing floor to ceiling, in which, when it strikes twelve, a sheep figure turns into a fairy princess and a king figure appears in place of one of the numerals to gaze for a scant minute at his beloved. Every object we see in the shop is painted in painstaking detail.

This is a stunningly beautiful work, arguably one of the finest animated films ever made, and quite possibly the best single work featured in this book. No one film has ever captured the turbulence of adolescence, with an emphasis on the unleashing of one’s creative energies, with such artistry, exuberance, and honesty. Granted, it’s largely a rosy picture, focusing on the most positive aspects of these characters and a social environment that is far more nurturing than we’re used to in depictions of Japanese middle school life, but there are still enough moments of awkwardness, embarrassment, and romantic disappointment to create a balanced, truthful picture. Shizuku is flush with the bloom of a young person just discovering her powers and learning to enroll others in her vision. We see the clash of her creative dream with the mundane demands of everyday life and with the needs of the cramped household she shares with her parents and college grad sister, and the momentary dampening of her romantic dream when she learns that Seiji is going away to Italy. But she presses on, inspiring and engaging the viewer.

Unlike so many Studio Ghibli productions, Whisper is firmly set in the real world, with no intimations of fantasy or supernatural elements other than a quartet of dream sequences and imagined scenes from Shizuku’s story. The suburban backdrop is a concrete, recognizable place with clear-cut geography and a sense of community. Fans of the film who actually visited the town that served as the model would know exactly how to find their way around. Yet this landscape, which can take on a soulless, oppressive cast in a more downbeat work, glows with color, light, and pleasant sounds via a life force supplied by its idealistic characters and the sense of hope they all project, from Shizuku and Seiji and their youthful dreams to Shizuku’s mother, who is going back to school for an advanced degree, to Grandpa Nishi, who tends his shop and dreams of reuniting the Baron with his female counterpart, to the cat, Moon, who first sparks Shizuku’s curiosity and leads her up the high hill to Nishi’s shop and who lives free on the good will of several different families claiming it.

The music by Yuji Nomi, supplemented by different versions of the song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” underscores and bolsters Shizuku’s emotional journey every step of the way, never overwhelming the action, but keeping pace with it, gently following in its grand sweep.

The voice actresses who perform the role of Shizuku in both the Japanese original and the English dub deserve singling out. To capture the character of Shizuku, who projects such a captivating mix of confidence, drive, awkwardness, and insecurity, the actress has to have just the right timbre of voice, and the right inflection to make us feel the complex range of emotions she’s going through, especially when the character’s facial expressions so expertly reflect this. Both Yoko Honna and Brittany Snow understood the character and conveyed what she was going through as expertly as any voice performer could have done.

The Cat Returns (2002, movie)

The Cat Returns was a sort-of-sequel by Studio Ghibli based on a manga by the same author. It tells a side tale of the Baron.

John Denver’s song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” figures prominently in the film, heard first over the opening credits as sung by Olivia Newton-John, whose recording of the song was a hit in Japan. In the original Japanese version of the film, Shizuku translates the lyrics of the song into Japanese and even writes new lyrics describing her town, under the title “Concrete Road.” She performs it once with her best friend, Yuko, and later has some classmates perform a revised version with new lyrics she’s written. She later sings this version solo, with Seiji accompanying her on violin, and the two are joined midway by additional instruments, thanks to Grandpa Nishi and two of his friends. She also sings it solo over the end credits. In the English dub, Olivia Newton-John’s version is also heard over the opening credits, but when we hear Shizuku singing her new lyrics to Yuko, it’s a completely new English version, designed to be sung at their graduation. She later revises this version for the scene with her classmates and sings the revised lyrics, in English, with Seiji on violin. Not until the end credits of the English dub do we hear the Japanese version as sung by Yoko Honna in the original.

There’s a great comic-dramatic moment when Shizuku finally learns that the boy she’s been gradually getting to know is indeed the elusive and mysterious Seiji Amazawa, whom she’s been exceedingly curious about. Her outburst of anger, expertly covering a mix of joy and relief, provokes the old men in the shop who witness it into great roars of laughter.

A standout set piece in the film is the one where Shizuku follows the cat, Moon (Luna), after spotting it on her subway car. She is intrigued when it gets off at her stop and she determines to follow in its tracks, going up back alleys, crossing through people’s yards, climbing over fences, and trudging up a long, steep hill until the cat leads her, possibly by design, to Nishi’s antique shop and her first glimpse of the Baron.

There are two brief but breathtaking sequences illustrating Shizuku’s story about the adventures of the Baron, a cat in human clothing who takes the heroine on a wild flight over an idyllic old town. These parts were directed by Miyazaki.

This was Yoshifumi Kondo’s first (and only) directorial feature. He had worked in various capacities (design, animation director, animator, character design) on other Studio Ghibli films as well as pre-Ghibli works by directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, compiling a list of credits that include Panda! Go, Panda!, Anne of Green Gables, Future Boy Conan, Grave of the Fireflies, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Ocean Waves, Pom Poko, and Princess Mononoke. He also designed characters for the 1987 series version of Little Women. Kondo died of cancer at the age of forty-seven in 1998.

Hayao Miyazaki wrote and produced the film, based on a manga story by Aoi Hiiragi. The score is by first-time anime composer Yuji Nomi.

In Pom Poko, Studio Ghibli’s production of the year before, the raccoon-like tanuki were displaced from their natural mountain home by developers building a new suburban bedroom community, Tama New Town, on the Tama Hills, outside of Tokyo. Whisper takes place in that development.

advisory Nothing to worry about at all. Suitable for the entire family.