This becomes quite explicit when Anna, perpetually dressed like a boy, jealously watches Marnie dance with a young man, then questions their mutual devotion. Fighting all of these, however, is a first-love story - a passionate connection between two damaged souls. Unfolding in painstakingly realized interiors and painterly landscapes, “Marnie” is a muddled merger of ghost story, fantasy, time travel and coming-of-age. Like a princess in a fairy tale, Marnie moves in stardust and traffics in mystery. Seduced by Marnie’s ardent attentions, she barely notices their ominous undertones or her own lapses in memory whenever her new friend is around. The seemingly abandoned mansion in the marsh where Marnie lives is transformed at high tide by glamorous parties - a glittering world that welcomes Anna as one of its own. Sulking outside the “invisible magic circle” inhabited by her peers, she pours all her emotions - including spikes of violence - into her drawings.īut when Anna meets Marnie, a golden-haired beauty with an unsettling tendency to appear and disappear at odd moments, everything changes. Orphaned at a young age, Anna is an unusually prickly heroine who derides her anxious foster mother (“She whines like a goat!”) and simmers with self-loathing. Its emphasis on the richness of nature and the fortitude of young girls, though, remains intact as Anna, an asthmatic 12-year-old, is sent to live with relatives at the seaside. Possibly the last feature of its kind from the much-lauded Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli (whose founders, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, recently announced their retirement), “Marnie” is psychologically darker and less fantastical than most of the studio’s previous output. Others, however, could experience the story’s sweetly supernatural drift as a veil for gnarlier intimations of child abuse, sexual awakening, ethnic confusion and even mental illness. Robinson will seem a simple tale of friendship found and unhappiness banished. To the tinies, this gorgeously animated adaptation of a 1967 young-adult novel by the British author Joan G. ![]() Suggestion and subtext jostle for attention, and the extent to which they intrude will depend mainly on the age of the viewer. ![]() Beneath its calm, exquisitely detailed surface, “ When Marnie Was There” bubbles with half-formed ideas and undeveloped themes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |