- Should I be surprised that the most impressive detail in The Secret World of Arrietty involves water droplets? This is a story about little people called Borrowers and their strange and often dangerous interactions with the larger world, but I'll be damned if I can get my mind off the water. Every time a Borrower runs up against a dewy plant leaf, they come away covered with these absolutely gigantic beads of water that they have to manually brush or shake off. And of course they do! Surface tension and molecular adhesion would be a big deal for such tiny creatures, just as it is for water bugs. Leave it to Studio Ghibli to capture a detail like that so memorably that it practically dominated my experience of the film.
- Not that the rest of the film would have been ignorable under normal circumstances. This tale of a microscopic girl named Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler) and her equally small parents Pod and Homily (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) is engrossing from beginning to end, in large part because of its creative and extraordinary visuals. At such small scales, stray chessman are reappropriated as statuary, a binder clip becomes a hairpin, and a dollhouse transforms into a luxurious mansion. The Borrower's small-scale residence, hidden underneath a closet floorboard in a regular house, seems miles away from that house's kitchen, making the Borrowers' food runs feel more like mountain-climbing expeditions. The little people are always worried that the big people will see them, and we soon begin to understand why.
- But admittedly the first regular-sized human to notice Arrietty doesn't seem like much of a threat. His name is Shawn (David Henrie), and he's a sick boy who has come to stay with his aunt Jessica (Gracie Poletti) while he prepares for heart surgery. One day, he spots Arrietty deftly evading the house cat out in the garden. On another occasion, he helps her to escape from a hungry crow. Pod and Homily scold Arrietty for being so careless, but can we really blame her or Shawn? They're the only two children around, even if they happen to be two very different sizes. Unfortunately, Jessica's cantankerous housekeeper Hara (Carol Burnett) decides it's her mission to find and destroy the little people, which makes the budding friendship between Arrietty and Shawn an increasingly risky arrangement.
- I think it's fair to say that Studio Ghibli's animation and art design set the world standards for animated features, and this film, directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, is no exception. What I was reminded of while watching The Secret World of Arrietty, however, is that many of Studio Ghibli's films are also infused with a certain sadness that rarely appears in American cartoons. Spirited Away, for example, is a genuinely touching film about the loneliness of moving, even if it is couched in a magical adventure. Films like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky hint at the horrors of war by describing idyllic civilizations long since laid to ruin. In this film and My Neighbor Totoro, it's illness that creeps in at the margins of the story. Neither film is obsessed with death, but the possibility lingers in a way that makes the entire affair seem that much more real. Considering that these are tales of cat buses and little people, that's an impressive accomplishment.
