Introverted and antisocial as she is, even Anna understands immediately that Marnie – with her Gilded Age outfits and her Addams-family household of distant parents and imperious servants – does not exactly intersect with everyday reality. Anna dreams about the ravishing blonde girl named Marnie (voiced in English by Kiernan Shipka), who under certain conditions can be seen in that house, long before she meets her. Nesbit and “The Secret Garden” to ancient fairytale.Īfter a slightly draggy opening, Yonebayashi and his animators create a ravishing backdrop for Anna’s enigmatic adventures, a marshy, beachfront cove (which admittedly resembles Cornwall more than Japan) where a wordless old fisherman gives Anna boat rides and an abandoned mansion, accessible only at low tide, looms in the distance. You couldn’t ask for a more time-honored setup: It’s the summer-getaway story, the magical friend story and the hidden-retreat story, channeling everything from E.

An isolated, asthmatic and artistic child on the cusp of puberty, Anna is sent from the city of Sapporo to a remote seaside town by her well-intentioned guardian, to stay with a jovial aunt and uncle she barely knows. I’ve only seen the Japanese version of this film in most American theaters you’ll hear Hailee Steinfeld as the voice of Anna Sasaki, this story’s androgynous orphan heroine. Robinson) transferred to a Japanese context and laden with just a little adult-oriented psychology.

Yonebayashi’s film is more like a classic, mid-period Ghibli offering, an adaptation of a Western children’s book (in this case, a 1967 novel by English author Joan G.

Ghibli should probably have closed its doors after either Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” or co-founder Isao Takahata’s gorgeous, hand-drawn “Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” both of which are highly original works and very close to animation masterpieces. If it doesn’t measure up to the studio’s best and most fantastical films, notably such Hayao Miyazaki classics as “Spirited Away,” “Princess Mononoke” and “My Neighbor Totoro,” it has some of their essential spirit and carries the sad, sweet flavor of farewell.Īrguably “When Marnie Was There” is a bit of an anticlimax, although this work from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, a longtime Ghibli animator and Miyazaki lieutenant who also directed “The Secret World of Arrietty” in 2010, is highly enjoyable on its own terms. “When Marnie Was There,” a wistful, lovely and faintly sinister fable about a lonely tomboy and her spectral new friend, may well be the final animated film produced by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli.

When marnie was there studio ghibli