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From up on Poppy Hill
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:CreationDate: 2012-09-23 19:39:15
:Id: anime/review/poyy-hill
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 4
:original: https://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/from-up-on-poppy-hill
I went to see this movie, at the UK preview during the Terracotta Film
Festival at the Prince Charles Cinema in London, thinking that it
couldn't be worse than Gedo Senki / Tales from Earthsea, the other
movie directed by MIYAZAKI Goro (宮崎 吾朗). You can say that I had
very low expectations. It turned out that Miyazaki Junior has been
learning a lot about directing, and probably also about using the best
that Ghibli has to offer. From a quick look at the list of people
involved, it seems that Gedo Senki was filmed by the "B team" at
Ghibli, while the best people were working on Howl's Moving
Castle. Not so with Poppy Hill: it looks better, it flows better, I
felt I could care for the characters. Sure, the story is much simpler,
and the fact that Miyazaki Senior worked on the screenplay has surely
helped. Nonetheless, the result is a very pleasant movie, and has
changed my opinion of Goro: I'm now looking forward to his next work.
So, what's the film about? It's about Japan in 1963, about the
long-term consequences of the Korean War, about responsibility,
community, political engagement, love, family. Every aspect is touched
upon with a very light touch, you're never forced to notice. It could
just as easily be seen as a standard school-age "girl meets boy"
story. But the various aspects of the historic and social context do
help shape the story, and make it richer as a result.
The main character, a schoolgirl named Umi, runs a lodging house for
women while her mother is away (studying medicine in America). Her
father, a military sailor, died during the Korean war. At her school,
the boys' clubhouse, an old and dirty building, is going to be
demolished and rebuilt. The boys are struggling to convince even their
schoolmates, never mind the school administration, that destroying
what is, essentially, a historic building, would not be wise, that
erasing history will not make your future brighter. They don't have
much success until Umi suggests to clean and renovate the place (no,
I'm not telling you how it goes, although you can probably guess). In
the meantime, she falls in love with Shun, who works for the school's
newspaper.
I was impressed by the role of women in this story: even if Japanese
society is portrayed as male-centric, we have many independent and
strong females. Umi runs the lodging house, not just cleaning and
cooking, but also handling the finances. Umi leads the girls and the
boys of the school to renovate the clubhouse (and the girls are not
the only ones that clean!). Umi's mother and one of the lodgers are
medical doctors. On the other hand, due to the historic setting, all
school officials are men, and marriage is an unavoidable part of any
woman's life.
There are some debatable directorial choices: very animated scenes
alternate with mostly static ones; in a couple of cases background
songs seem to intrude on the dialogues; some "camera movements" looked
jerky. But all in all, Poppy Hill delivers a good story on several
levels, and "cleans" Goro's name of the disaster that was Earthsea.
Finally, some comments on the English subtitles: they are pretty
accurate, although the lose several subtleties in the way people refer
to each other. For example, while the subtitles often use the given
name of people, the Japanese soundtrack uses surnames and
honorifics. Also, Umi is always called Umi in the subtitles, but her
friends call her "Meru" most of the time; this is sort of a pun, since
"umi" means "sea", and "Meru" is pronounced like "mer", the French
word for "sea" (the connection with French is established in the
title, コクリコ坂から: "コクリコ" reads as "Coquelicot", poppy in
French).
