![]() ![]() ![]() Isao Takahata was a master of creating compelling stories from the clouds of everyday life, and Only Yesterday captures the subtle joy of a slice-of-life story. In that moment, she’s like a human standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and Yonebayashi manages to make everyday kitchen items look alien and monstrous as she takes them in with intimidated wonder. And then there’s the moment where she emerges into the vast empty space of a human kitchen for the first time, after a movie largely spent at mouse level, or in comfortingly well-appointed, close spaces. Pod silently supports his daughter and smiles at her daring, and Arrietty alternates between boldness and nervousness. ![]() But these events play out softly as a sweet coming-of-age ritual. On paper, the sequence might play like a thrilling heist movie, with Arrietty fighting off an immense, aggressive cockroach, ziplining up a narrow vertical space, and rappelling off a cabinet to the ground far below. At 13, she’s permitted to accompany her taciturn father Pod into that house for the first time, on a quiet raid to get some supplies: a single sugar cube and a single tissue. Arrietty is a Borrower, a doll-sized girl whose equally teeny family lives inside the walls of a human family’s vast country house. It’s a hushed, drawn-out experience where the biggest action is a character stopping to gape. The most memorable moment in Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Secret World of Arrietty, based on Mary Norton’s Borrower books, isn’t dynamic or explosive. ![]()
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