Miyazaki Madness, Part 7: "Whisper of the Heart" and the joys of creativity

An underrated Ghibli classic written by Miyazaki and directed by Yoshifumi Kondō

On Thursdays, I’m publishing reviews of classic movies, including pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). In this series, we are examining the filmography of my all-time favorite movie director - and newly minted two-time Oscar winner with his win for The Boy and the Heron - Hayao Miyazaki! We will be looking at all of his theatrical feature films along with the movies he wrote but did not direct, for a total of 15 weeks of Miyazaki Madness! The series continues today with the 1995 film Whisper of the Heart, which Miyazaki wrote and storyboarded. Enjoy…

Whisper of the Heart

1995, Dir. Yoshifumi Kondō

Composite of excerpts from the book Fade to Lack, published 2013, and my 2014 Honor’s Thesis, Seeing With Eyes Unclouded

Of all the films I’ve seen in my life, few stray as close to my own heart as this simple tale of a teenage girl discovering her artistic drive. In Whisper of the Heart, writer Hayao Miyazaki and director Yoshifumi Kondō craft an experience of immense emotional and thematic complexity, one that resonates so completely with my own worldview and personal history that when watching, I feel as if it were made just for me. Whenever anyone asks for my thoughts on education, romance, depression, creativity, or ambition, I could just refer them to this film, for Miyazaki and Kondō illustrated my feelings better than I ever could.

The core question of the picture is this: How does one actualize oneself within the confines of a world one had no hand in creating? Early on, protagonist Shizuku shares with a friend a set of parody lyrics she created for John Denver’s “Country Roads,” a song that’s crucial throughout the film. “Concrete Roads, everywhere,” she sings. “Cut down all the trees/Filled in the valleys/Western Tokyo, Tama Mountain/My hometown is concrete roads.” It is ostensibly a gag – one both Shizuku and her friend laugh at, and which the male lead of the film, Seiji, will make fun of later – but the lyrics resonate because there is a truth to them, a truth so deeply sublimated within these adolescents that it is easy for them to turn it into comedy. They have grown up in this world of ‘concrete roads,’ of natural settings being eroded by urbanization, of individual identity giving way to vast and imposing social structures, and unlike John Denver pining for the simple comforts of West Virginia, they have never known anything else. This is a world they had no role in forging, and given the rigid social template of contemporary life – school, college, work, etc. – it is unlikely they will have any power to shape it in the future. Even if they did, they would be one of many angling for influence – one dot in that imposing blur of lights that opens the film. How does one exist in such a world and become a self-fulfilled individual at the same time?