Saturday 26 July 2008

Only Yesterday [1991] [Isao Takahata]

Isao Takahata is well known for his WW2 story, Grave of the Fireflies. That film is deservedly highly acclaimed for its tender and tragic vision of war-time orphans, offering a story that’s at odds with the usual conventions of anime, straying far away from fantasy and heavy confrontations and concentrating on the realistic and true to life. Only Yesterday shares that films humanistic values but focuses more on a personal dilemma, more detached from the outside world and self-reflexive. Grave of the Fireflies worked as a window into the past, a vision of a global tragic event scaled down, Only Yesterday is more relatable and profound because of its individualistic subdued style, character development and in turn offering a more concise study of human nature that’s debatably more fundamental than coping with tragedy, in this case focusing on the effects and even the act itself of recalling memories, the difficulty in overcoming one’s own mistakes, and of the complexity of reflection and change.

Taeko, an unmarried 27 year old, born and raised in Tokyo decides to go and visit her sister’s in-laws in the countryside, while on the train she starts to remember events from her life when she was a young girl of about 11. We witness her past and see her find out and worry about puberty, struggle with maths problems and become more interested in boys. There isn’t an exact structure to the recall of events, they function as real memories, avoiding the neatness of having each one fit firmly into the story and serve to show everyday moments of development of the younger Taeko, despite an apparent lack of magnitude each one has had a cumulative emotional effect on her present in her as an adult, and we can see that Taeko enjoys dipping into her past as much as we do.

Taeko isn’t a large character, in both childhood and adulthood, but through the film we do get to know her immensely and I found myself calm in her company and fascinated with her memories and the slight jolts they give her, watching them build up, her character changing and in many ways becoming the person that she was prevented being as a child. Atmospherically Only Yesterday reminded me of Ozu’s best, relaxed and timid but capable of surprising me and forcing a powerful reaction out of little narrative, such as Taeko recalling her time in a school play and the passion she put into the single line that was attributed her. Being a Studio Ghibli film the animation is naturally fluid and stunning to admire, there are little touches of brilliance in the animation that aid the characters and story structure. During the memory sequences the colour is noticeably less prominent in the background, and the edges of the frame have a faded hue to them, accentuating the act of recollection and drawing attention to the people and less on the surroundings. I wasn’t surprised to read that the facial expressions were, in an unusual move, animated after the dialogue had been recorded, giving the people more physical detail and presence, making them seem more human in a medium that makes doing so a task in itself.

There are several moments in Only Yesterday that aren’t related to the narrative but still revelatory of Taeko’s inner meditations and conclusions. One in particular is of her and the others farming in the fields , they all stop and watch in awe as the sun peeks over a mountain and pours light across the field. This and the others like it serve more as moments of life than of character, showing snippets of emotions and reactions universally present in our behaviour, but still remaining connected to Taeko and her gradual development. Another of these low-key moments is Taeko and a man she meets, Toshio, engaging in small-talk and slowly getting at ease with each other. In scenes like these we see that the film isn’t intending to make grand, sweeping statements about behaviour and thought, it’s more concerned with those which could be labelled as ordinary, the special qualities of which arise not from a extreme demonstrations of emotion, but fundamental truths exposed in Taeko’s past and present that make watching the film and going on her journey an empathetically involving one, showing us that these (often ignored in cinema) day-to-day trials and experiences can be just as important as the grander, life-changing ones found in Grave of the Fireflies. Only Yesterday stands as one of animations most mature works of genius, joining the likes of Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa as one of Studio Ghibli’s best pieces of pure cinema.

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