Favorite Movies 1

So I’m going to do something a little different this week, just because I feel like it. I have more books I want to do, but I just got the sound track for a movie, (sound track is not as good as I was hoping) and I am watching this movie again. What movie? From Up on Poppy Hill.

So around a year ago I started getting into anime. Really, I like any movie with a good story. I enjoy watching movies from other countries sometimes because they can be different from American story telling. Not that there aren’t good American movies, but I feel like they too often fall into the same sort of storytelling and there can feel like there is nothing new being told. One think I’ve notice is that Japanese anime often seems to focus on emotions and feelings, and not just the easy or simple ones either.

Before I got farther I think I should give a spoiler warning.

I think the reason I like this movie so much is because it would have been done differently in if has been made in America. In some ways it’s a simple story without the over the top drama so many movies seem to feel they need to have. A first it’s a very simple story about a girl growing up, meeting and falling for a boy. It focuses a lot on trying to save the school’s club house. The girl, Ume, is drawn out of her own life and mundane ways by this boy and the fight for the club house. Just as the two young people start to get closer to each other, they find out they might be brother and sister. As they struggle with this the main focus continues to be to save the club house. Only in the end does the relationship truly become of greater impatiens then the club house. Now if this was an American movie, the club house would most likely be a miner point while the relationship would focus on. Also I think they would have amped up the relationship and the potential tabooness of the relationship. At very least, in an American movie they would have kissed before finding out that they might be siblings, and more likely they would have taken it even farther. Too often if a story takes up the idea of potential siblings falling in love, they take it too far. I can see the siblings saying, “Screw the standers, we love each other and that’s all that matters.” Rather this movie keeps it all in prospective. At one point they confuse that they still like each other even though they might be siblings and don’t know what to do about it. It’s more like they can’t just shut the feeling off. Some of that I can understand, though I think too often we let our feeling have too much control over us. Any way they never take it any farther than they should. It just feels right to me.

There’s a lot of fun and humor in this movie along with drama and romance. I find it very relaxing while still giving the feels. Over all there’s an old saying that I think fits this movie. The present rides on the back of the past. For this movie I might sum up the point of the story as don’t become so enamored with the new and the future that you forget or disregard the past and were you come from.

I have watched other studio ghibli movies, but this is by far my favorite. I think I like this movie so much because it doesn’t follow the norm of what I would expect, but rather has what I would want in this kind of story. I find it very relaxing and enjoyable. I think it might fit into the category of slice of life that you find in anime. I will likely talk some more about some of the other amines and movies I like at other times too. If you have not seen this movie, it is of course one that I would recommend.