Director – Taichi Ishidate – 2020 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 139m
***1/2
Violet Evergarden struggles to come to terms with the loss of the man she loved in the war… then discovers that he may still be alive – in cinemas for six days from Thursday, July 1st
Being a companion piece / coda to a long-running anime series, it’s possible this may leave the newcomer feeling somewhat adrift, at least for the first reel or so. Young girl Daisy’s grandmother Ann has just died. We learn very little about Ann beyond the fact that she used to regularly receive letters from her own mother beyond her mother’s death.
This was accomplished by Auto Memory Dolls, not as you might suppose some sort of animate toys but rather girl employees of the CH Postal Service who wrote letters for people close to death for their loved ones to receive and read afterwards. That business is on the verge of disappearing as the new technology of the telephone takes hold, wiping out the market for the Dolls’ services.
One such Auto Memory Doll was Violet Evergarden who had previously worked in the war where she was weaponised by Major Gilbert. He disappeared after the war while she is both tormented by memories of him during wartime and in love with him in his absence, hoping that one day she’ll somehow see him again but suspecting this to be a forlorn hope.
She picks up a new Doll client in the form of Yurith, a young boy dying in a hospital who wants to write letters to his parents, his younger brother and best mate feeling in particular that he’s given the latter two a bad and, indeed, unfair deal. Then her boss discovers a letter in storage in the CH depot and thinks it might be written in Gilbert’s handwriting…
Most of the narrative takes place in the past when Violet is still alive, although quite a few scenes cover Daisy’s attempts to find out more about her as the narrative returns periodically to the framing device. It’s a long film and slow, at times almost painfully so, with the emphasis on talking about feelings in an effort to get them out in the open and understand them, something you might imagine more suited to a stage play or radio drama than film or animation. Yet it works, thanks to the care lavished upon the character designs, the background layouts and the Japanese voice cast.
It’s clearly about attempting to regain things which appear to be lost, particularly with regard to relationships. Just occasionally the orchestra seems to swell just a little bit too much. The Kyoto Animation Studio (A Silent Voice, Naoko Yamada, 2016) who produced the film suffered an arson attack mid-2019 in which over 30 people died so there was always a possibility this film might not have been completed.
As it stands, the subject matter echoes life with men not returning from the war and the likes of Violet trying to sort out their resultant emotions. Similarly, it has additional resonance in a world coming out (as we hope) of pandemic lockdown. You need to be in the right frame of mind to see it, otherwise the slow pace and long-running length may prove too much. For those in a reflective frame of mind, however, it proves worth the effort.
Violet Evergarden The Movie is out in cinemas in the UK for six days from Thursday, July 1st.
Trailer: