November Movies (When Marnie Was There)
Nov. 30th, 2017 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerIt hasn’t been much of a month for movies, I’m afraid. Aside from the new Thor, I only saw two other movies, and both were rewatches.
I nearly skipped Miracle on 34th Street because I’ve already seen it and didn’t like it much the first time around; but it was showing at the ArtCraft and I thought it might cheer me up to go.
And in fact I did have a nice time. I liked the movie better this time around, possibly because I went in with rock bottom expectations, and also having an entire theater laughing at the funny bits really draws out the humor in a film. (A few years ago, I went to a theatrical screening of Winter’s Bone - which is not a funny movie - but it has a few funny moments, and I found it almost jarring when the theater did laugh, because when I had watched it on my own I found it so intense I wouldn’t have dreamed of laughing.)
And I also rewatched When Marnie Was There, which I watched a year and a half ago and never posted about - and then last June I read the book it was based on, and never posted about that - because it’s difficult to write about things that are important to you, I guess. Young Anna is an outsider with no idea how to form connections with other people: she’s not even sure that she wants to connect with other people, although there’s some clear sour grapism going on here, because she also clearly thinks that it’s impossible. They’re inside the circle. She’s outside. The gap can’t be bridged.
And her friendship with Marnie, a girl her age who lives in a wonderful mansion on the edge of the sea, becomes an anchor for her that helps her create other emotional ties to people and begin to feel at home in the world.
The movie and the book are both good - although quite different in some ways! - Marnie & Anna’s friendship is emotionally intense in both book and movie, but in the movie it has a more romantic vibe.
Normally I wouldn’t mind this, but in this particular case - well, the big ending reveal is that Anna’s friend Marnie is also her dead grandmother, who has come back in child form as a ghost or a spirit or maybe a time traveler, who knows. (I’m not complaining about the ambiguity: this is the kind of book where the magic is more satisfying if it’s never explained. If you try to explain everything you end up with things like that weird Indian in the Cupboard sequel where she tried to explain why the cabinet brought plastic figurines to life and - nah, dude, that needed no explanation, you ruined it.)
Anyway, in the book the realization that Marnie is Anna’s grandmother brings things beautifully full circle: Marnie, who died when Anna was a small child, helps Anna escape the loneliness that bedeviled Marnie’s own life. In the movie the romantic vibes give it a kind of weird incestuous undercurrent.
I was wondering if maybe I had overemphasized that romantic aspect in my mind the first time I saw the movie - maybe I was making too much of the rowing in the moonlight (there’s a bit where Marnie gives Anna a rowing lesson, which of course necessitates sort of cradling Anna in her arms and guiding the oars) and dancing in the moonlight and hugging and screaming “I love you!” and all that blushing?
Upon rewatch, though: no, there’s totally a schoolgirl crush vibe going here. I’m not sure why it’s there, but it’s there.
Despite this I do still recommend the movie, provided that’s not super squicky to you, because I think it does a lovely job on the emotional aspects otherwise. If it weren’t for the incest thing I would be super into Marnie & Anna’s budding schoolgirl magical time-spanning romance, and I still really like the friendship.
...I actually wrote a book with a similar friendship, not long before this movie came out, so as you may imagine I felt both delighted and annoyed when I learned of the movie’s existence. I love this thing so much I wrote my own version! Which now looks like a rip-off! Dammit!
And I really like the way that their friendship leads Anna to build friendships with other people - to befriend Sayaka, the budding girl detective who is now living in Marnie’s old house, and Hisoka, an artist who knew Marnie when she really was a girl - and even to try to make up with Nobuko, the officious but kindly local girl who tried to befriend Anna when she first came to town. Anna viciously spurned these overtures because she felt so awkward and out of place that the attempt seemed unbearably invasive to her, rather than friendly.
And of course the animation is gorgeous: the seaside, the forest, the beautiful house where Anna spends the summer, and above all the Marsh House itself, where Marnie lived and Sayaka lives, by the side of the salt marsh by the sea.
I nearly skipped Miracle on 34th Street because I’ve already seen it and didn’t like it much the first time around; but it was showing at the ArtCraft and I thought it might cheer me up to go.
And in fact I did have a nice time. I liked the movie better this time around, possibly because I went in with rock bottom expectations, and also having an entire theater laughing at the funny bits really draws out the humor in a film. (A few years ago, I went to a theatrical screening of Winter’s Bone - which is not a funny movie - but it has a few funny moments, and I found it almost jarring when the theater did laugh, because when I had watched it on my own I found it so intense I wouldn’t have dreamed of laughing.)
And I also rewatched When Marnie Was There, which I watched a year and a half ago and never posted about - and then last June I read the book it was based on, and never posted about that - because it’s difficult to write about things that are important to you, I guess. Young Anna is an outsider with no idea how to form connections with other people: she’s not even sure that she wants to connect with other people, although there’s some clear sour grapism going on here, because she also clearly thinks that it’s impossible. They’re inside the circle. She’s outside. The gap can’t be bridged.
And her friendship with Marnie, a girl her age who lives in a wonderful mansion on the edge of the sea, becomes an anchor for her that helps her create other emotional ties to people and begin to feel at home in the world.
The movie and the book are both good - although quite different in some ways! - Marnie & Anna’s friendship is emotionally intense in both book and movie, but in the movie it has a more romantic vibe.
Normally I wouldn’t mind this, but in this particular case - well, the big ending reveal is that Anna’s friend Marnie is also her dead grandmother, who has come back in child form as a ghost or a spirit or maybe a time traveler, who knows. (I’m not complaining about the ambiguity: this is the kind of book where the magic is more satisfying if it’s never explained. If you try to explain everything you end up with things like that weird Indian in the Cupboard sequel where she tried to explain why the cabinet brought plastic figurines to life and - nah, dude, that needed no explanation, you ruined it.)
Anyway, in the book the realization that Marnie is Anna’s grandmother brings things beautifully full circle: Marnie, who died when Anna was a small child, helps Anna escape the loneliness that bedeviled Marnie’s own life. In the movie the romantic vibes give it a kind of weird incestuous undercurrent.
I was wondering if maybe I had overemphasized that romantic aspect in my mind the first time I saw the movie - maybe I was making too much of the rowing in the moonlight (there’s a bit where Marnie gives Anna a rowing lesson, which of course necessitates sort of cradling Anna in her arms and guiding the oars) and dancing in the moonlight and hugging and screaming “I love you!” and all that blushing?
Upon rewatch, though: no, there’s totally a schoolgirl crush vibe going here. I’m not sure why it’s there, but it’s there.
Despite this I do still recommend the movie, provided that’s not super squicky to you, because I think it does a lovely job on the emotional aspects otherwise. If it weren’t for the incest thing I would be super into Marnie & Anna’s budding schoolgirl magical time-spanning romance, and I still really like the friendship.
...I actually wrote a book with a similar friendship, not long before this movie came out, so as you may imagine I felt both delighted and annoyed when I learned of the movie’s existence. I love this thing so much I wrote my own version! Which now looks like a rip-off! Dammit!
And I really like the way that their friendship leads Anna to build friendships with other people - to befriend Sayaka, the budding girl detective who is now living in Marnie’s old house, and Hisoka, an artist who knew Marnie when she really was a girl - and even to try to make up with Nobuko, the officious but kindly local girl who tried to befriend Anna when she first came to town. Anna viciously spurned these overtures because she felt so awkward and out of place that the attempt seemed unbearably invasive to her, rather than friendly.
And of course the animation is gorgeous: the seaside, the forest, the beautiful house where Anna spends the summer, and above all the Marsh House itself, where Marnie lived and Sayaka lives, by the side of the salt marsh by the sea.
