The Secret World of Arrietty

Sinking below the grass line to capture a smaller world in exact detail, “The Secret World of Arrietty,” released in 2010, gives exactly what its title says, unfolding this secret mileu through carefully particular animation. Jesse Cataldo said in their review, “As befitting the Ghibli brand, the colors are magnificent, the emotional tone mature but wide-eyed, rendering an ordinary country house’s environs as a lush sea of greens, browns, and yellows.” The result is a patient, sad adventure story that also feels comfort and small, cinematically enlarging a classic story without over-increasing its scope.

Cataldo said, “Using Mary Norton’s 1952 novel The Borrowers as a starting point, first-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi applies Ghibli’s usual free license, bending the source material toward its specific pastoral style.” The film starts with the introduction of Shawn, voiced by David Henrie, who’s been sent to the country to heal for a risky heart operation. Shawn is the type of sensitive, sadly grown-up child that often gets the focus in this type of coming-of-age tale, and his prescribed diet of bed rest makes him bored, wanting for the very excitement that the doctor’s said he can’t do. Things form at a intentional pace, as he eventually finds out the family of tiny people who live beneath the house, first meeting red-haired Arrietty, voiced by Bridgit Mendler, a spirited 14 year old who isn’t afraid of going up against an evil housecat, despite the fact that it’s more than twice her size.

Arrietty lives out of sight underneath a pile of bricks inside an underground crawlspace, along with her parents, Homily (Amy Poehler) and Pod (Will Arnett). Their hidden house is beautiful, with green plants and painted screens over the windows, but difficult to keep reserved. Food and other necessities need dangerous trips to the above world, and the family’s life is dependent on the constant gaining of borrowed objects, a cube of sugar or a dropped hairpin, tiny unwanted items that for them mean nutrition.

Cataldo said, “Shawn’s involvement in the lives of the borrowers grows through his budding friendship with Arrietty, which continues despite her father’s warning against making contact.” Case hints that there’s been contact between humans and borrowers in the past, with sad results. We never learn the exact nature of this ancient incident, beyond its dangerous outcome and the existence of a tiny dollhouse, built by Shawn’s grandfather for the borrowers to occupy, a beautifully handmade house that now is vacant in a spare bedroom. This mystery is one of the little specifics that makes “The Secret World of Arrietty” feel naturally and colorfully alive, while getting necessary seriousness and heft to this friendly story.

By keeping with this balanced style, the film never seems too worried with giving loud thrills, going by on a steady buildup of drama and danger, avoiding the dangerous racing around that has limited off otherwise great children’s films of late (most of the Pixar movies). Cataldo noted, “Focusing instead on sensible specifics, Yonebayashi shapes a world that’s dazzlingly detail-oriented, processing the routine elements of the borrowers’ existence with amazing meticulousness.” This is helped by some fantastic sound design, which increases the crunch of leaves into a boring roar, the ring of a grandfather clock into a room-shaking masterpiece. Arrietty’s first trip to the house above, which is basically the film’s big opening scene, is unveiled with amazing patience, every step of the way accounted for, a part that makes this feel less like fantasy than the careful portrayal of a fully resided-in world.

Cataldo said, “As is often the case with American reworkings, which tend to prize star power over vocal dexterity, some of the voice work feels bumpy.” For example, Arnett’s gruff variety has been used so often for funny moments in the past that his lines here, spoken in arrogant monotone, often sound accidentally funny. There’s also a weird danger attached to the housekeeper Hara, voiced by the late Carol Burnett, whose crazy wanting to kill the little people is unexplained and a little strange for the Ghibli universe, where even villains usually get some concerned blinding. Cataldo said, “She serves as a threatening fool and inevitable comic relief, the usual broadness of the humor slightly spoiled by how inexplicably vicious the character is.”

Otherwise, “The Secret World of Arrietty” is classic, if a little minor, Miyazaki, even with another director in charge. Cataldo ended their review by saying, “Life lessons are imparted with startling tenderness, the inevitable separateness of humanity and nature is gently reinforced, and a plaintive look is taken at a vanishing way of life, resulting in a bittersweet picture of childhood woven with painstaking care.”

In the end, if you haven’t seen this movie, you shouldn’t have even read this review. This is one of my all time favorite Ghibli films, and I think everyone should see this. It’s also another environmentalist movie that is all about saving the earth and it does a job well done when they told that message. In fact, all the Ghibli movies are in some way shape or form about saving the environment. I know that is a recurring theme in every film, but I guess that’s what Studio Ghibli was aiming for. Like I have already said, you need to see this movie because I think you’ll love it.

Stay tuned tomorrow where I look at another great film that could be underrated in “Studio Ghibli Month.”