Time Out’s 50 Greatest Animated Films:

Time Out’s 50 greatest animated films:

Whisper of the Heart (1995)

Directed by Yoshifumi Kondo

You could sit through ‘Whisper of the Heart’, one of Studio Ghibli’s lesser-known masterworks, and ponder: did this really need to be an animated movie? Eschewing the expressionist flights of fancy most associated with the medium, Kondo’s film is more of a muted family drama that takes place in a very basic and very real Japanese neighbourhood while adopting as its focus the growing pains of sprightly teenage heroine, Shizuku. It traces her persistent attempts to become an author, mainly of pop song lyrics, but takes a sweetly-realised romantic detour when she develops a crush on a fellow student who yearns to be a violin maker in Italy. A lavish dream sequence involving a statue of a Germanic cat in tails and a top hat is the only time we depart from reality, but here is a film that uses the gifts of the animated form to magnify the tiny magical minutiae of everyday life. Things like an ornamental grandfather clock that tells a story when it chimes, or a cat that jumps on a train and leads Shizuku to an antique shop… The realist backdrop in turn makes these small moments feel all the more pertinent, especially as the film works hard to convey the uplifting notion that inspiration can take many weird and wonderful forms – it’s just waiting for you to find it. How else could an ad-hoc chamber music rendition of John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ bring a big, salty tear to your eye? A beautiful film. (x)