Whisper of the Heart
(Mimi o Sumaseba, 耳をすませば, lit. If You Listen Closely)
Director – Yoshifumi Kondo – 1995 – Japan – Cert. U – 111m
*****
A bookish high school student falls for a boy who makes violins – out in IMAX cinemas in 4K on Wednesday, September 16th and regular cinemas from Friday, September 18th in the UK and Ireland
The John Denver song Country Roads, Take Me Home, sung by Olivia Newton-John, might not seem at first glance to have anything much to do with Japanese culture. Yet it provides a foundational starting point for this extraordinary Studio, Ghibli movie which is essentially a girl meets boy story.
High school student Shizuku (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Yoko Honna; 2006 Disney dub: Brittany Snow) lives at home with her parents (voices/1995 Japanese dub: Shigeru Moroi, Takashi Tachibana; 2006 Disney dub: Jean Smart, James SIkking) and her elder sister Shiho (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Yori Yamashita; 2006 Disney dub: Courtney Thorne-Smith), a university student. Shizuku is in the habit of taking American song lyrics and translating them into Japanese for her girl classmates’ informal singing group.
Thus, she has written a translation of the song Country Roads, Take Me Home which she doesn’t think is very good. But it is considered by her peers, including her friend Yuko (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Maiko Yoshiyama; 2006 Disney dub: Ashley Tisdale), to be good enough for the group to rehearse. She has also written a spoof version Concrete Roads, specifically about her home district of Tokyo, and the group respond well, to this version too.
Something of a bookworm who lives at home with her mother, Shizuku is constantly taking books out of the local library and has about five on the go at any one time. She notices the name Seiji Amazawa in the front of many of the library books She has taken out. And starts to wonder who this person might be. Would he perhaps be a potential romantic partner?
When she accidentally leaves one of her library books behind on a park bench, she returns to find a boy reading it. He taunts her about the song Concrete Roads, which he has found in the pages of the book, telling her she should forget it.
One day, she is catching a train to the library when she notices a cat. It diffidently ignores her sitting on the seat beside her, then gets off the train at the same stop as she does. So she follows it. She is walking along roads while the cat is walking along the garden walls of houses. She is so intensely focused on the cat’s journey that she nearly gets run over by cars a couple of times. Eventually, the cat leads her to an antique shop at the top of a hill.
Inside, she is entranced by an upright standing cat statue based on a human aristocrat, which she learns from the octogenarian owner of the shop Shiro Nishi (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Keiju Kobayashi; 2006 Disney dub: Harold Gould) is named The Baron. She becomes smitten with the place, seeing it as a starting point for stories.
Returning there later, Shizuku runs into the boy, on his bicycle, who turns out to be none other than the mysterious Seiji Amazawa (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Issey Takahashi; 2006 Disney dub: David Gallagher). His passion is the craft of making violins Something, she sees him working on. He has a plan to study this craft in the small town of Cremona, Italy. Something he tells her his parents are against.
He is worried that he may not possess the wherewithal to be able to pursue this craft. And feels that being a student may be the only way he’s ever going to find out one way or the other if he has what it takes.
Shizuku, who is supposed to be studying for exams, takes this to heart and resolves to write a story about The Baron. She agrees to Shiro Nishi’s request to let him read it before anyone else.
Her parents become concerned when her school marks start dropping. Though her kindly father surmises from the girl that she is working her way through something she needs to work through and gives her his blessing.
After researching from library books and writing in her exercise book day and night, she eventually completes her story, in sequences in which The Baron (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Shigeru Tsuyuguchi; 2006 Disney dub: Cary Elwes) comes to life, and takes it to the old man as promised. He confirms that while it is somewhat rough around the edges, and could do with some more work, she has essentially written a good story. It took him back to the time in his life where he met someone a woman in Germany who bought the companion piece to The Baron, another cat statuette representing The Baron’s lover. However, the pair’s plants to meet up were dashed by the Second World War. He never saw her again.
Seiji, meanwhile has come to an agreement with his parents that he should study violin making as an apprentice in Cremona to find out whether he’s good enough to take further training there. The night before he departs, he takes Shizuku to watch the sunrise over Tokyo, and asks her to marry him. She readily agrees.
This is a far more low-key affair than many Ghibli movies. Founding director Miyazaki tends to employ, huge brush strokes – fire demons in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), spirit beings in My Neighbour Totoro (1988), a young girl in a new town in Kiki’s Delivery Service(1989), and so forth. Yoshifumi Kondo by way of contrast makes an animated film that plays out like a small scale TV drama about a young girl in high school discovering that she is a writer.
Through its settings of streets, small house interiors and the occasional train journey or park bench scene, Kondo skilfully builds up the world of his story giving the viewer a palpable sense of the local geography – for instance, that the antique shop is at the top of a great Hill, whereas the library, which Shizuku realises she is late In visiting having got diverted by following the cat to the antique shop, is that the bottom of the hill.
This gives rise to a brief but bravura sequence in which he races down steps on the side of the hill, flanked by handrails, an almost transcendent moment repeated later as she starts to imagine a story with The Baron as a living character among various strange cloud formations.
In essence though, this is a beautifully placed, slow romantic drama that would be perfect for a date movie. Although the viewing experience is such an enjoyable one that it would be a real pleasure to watch under any circumstances.
In places the attention to detail is captivating. The sequence where Shizuku follows the cat whose name we will later learn from Seiji Is Moon, although he is a stray who also goes by other names such as Muta, is a particular standout.
There is something utterly compelling about watching the creature trot on its four legs along a series of high up walls knowing exactly where it’s going. At one point, it pauses on the wall of a garden, swishing its tail to torment a dog below that can’t quite reach it when jumping up. Shizuku thinks the cat cruel and starts to wonder if she herself is also cruel.
Such introspection, like much of the film’s subject matter – reading books or creativity – doesn’t sound like something that would obviously translate into the visual storytelling medium. Yet using such devices as a walking cat knowing exactly where it’s going or the statuesque cat figure of The Baron in the antique shop, Kondo manages to give his ideas a tangible, visual form that fits the animation medium perfectly.
A live action, cinematic precedent can be found In the films of celebrated, Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu such as Good Morning / Ohayo (1959) with its loving celebration of everyday, mundane, Japanese neighbourhood life.
In short, while Whisper of the Heart may not be the best known of Studio Ghibli films, there is something about it that makes its return to the big screen, including a brief outing in IMAX, a most welcome one.
This review was from watching the Japanese subtitled version.
Whisper of the Heart is back out in IMAX cinemas in 4K on Wednesday, September 16th and regular cinemas from Friday, September 18th in the UK and Ireland. In both Japanese subtitled and English dubbed versions.
Trailer (English dubbed):