A- | An adolescent witch tries to establish herself in a new city, per witch rites of passage. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki Starring Minami Takayama, Rei Sakuma, and Kappei Yamaguchi Review by Jon Kissel |
Hayao Miyazaki released his ultimate homage to the wonder of childhood in 1988 with My Neighbor Totoro, but he wasn’t finished dissecting the first phases of life. A year later, his follow-up Kiki’s Delivery Service provides a melancholic look at adolescence, smuggled in amongst an adventure story about a witch establishing herself in a new city. It’s not surprising that Miyazaki and his fellow artists at Studio Ghibli would add depth to their films, but it is surprising in this particular package, an underappreciated gem compared to the recognition of Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke. Kiki’s Delivery Service is another of Miyazaki’s low-stakes stories without an antagonist, but when a studio makes some of the best hang-out movies in cinematic history, who needs major conflicts?
The film opens in a lush Ghibli paradise, a rural place with stone roads and lakeside views. The titular witch, voiced in the subbed version by Minami Takayama, is getting ready to leave her Edenic home for the wider world, as witches are expected to do after their 13th birthdays. Packing her broom and her talking black cat Jiji (Rei Sakuma), Kiki flies off for new adventures. She chooses a bustling oceanside city modeled after Scandinavian cities, where no one, save an enamored boy named Tombo (Kappei Yamaguchi), is all that impressed or interested in a girl flying over their heads on her broom. Luckily, Kiki is able to do a good deed for a baker (Keiko Toda) and earns a room in her attic, provided she help out around the shop. However, witches are supposed to make their way in the world using their magic, and the baker’s decidedly non-magical husband doesn’t need spells or potions to bake his bread. She decides to shuttle packages around the city on her broom, getting into various mishaps as she juggles her new responsibilities with Tombo’s pestering interest.
The lowest-inspiration version of Kiki’s Delivery Service has Kiki struggling to make her business work in the same way the lead of a bad romantic comedy can’t work for a magazine and straighten out her love life. A proto-have-it-all narrative presents itself to Miyazaki in the middle of the film, as Kiki gets held up at a delivery while a date with Tombo looms on the clock. Thankfully, Miyazaki doesn’t turn his girl protagonist into a person with grown woman problems. Instead, the film puts Kiki in the physical situation of someone striking out on their own while never forgetting where she is in her emotional life. There’s little hints about how wistful this movie is going to get in the prologue at Kiki’s hometown, where a neighbor mentions that everything changes bit by bit, or in the difficulty Kiki’s dad has in picking her up like he used to. Once fully on her own, Kiki is confronted with the looming end of carefree childhood and the slow-motion tragedies of adulthood. She experiences boredom at the bakery in a recurring shot that emerges as the signature one of the film. Her safe and comfortable position doesn’t keep her from being lonely. Most tragically, the things that used to give her joy have become commonplace. Kiki is able to establish herself in a new city, as she’s supposed to, but she’s confronted with the distance between accomplishment and fulfillment.
The character of Ursula (Minami Takayama) provides Kiki an out, or at least a way to recontextualize her new feelings. Having lost her magic and her ability to speak with Jiji, who’s out banging the neighbor cat, Kiki gets invited to stay at Ursula’s cabin in the woods, where she lives a secluded artists’ life. Miyazaki is famous for his downbeat, depressive outlook on his work and his life, a fascinating tack from a man who’s brough so much joy into the world. Ursula speaks with his voice as she talks about her process, about how she had to stop imitating other painters and find something within herself that was only hers. The film compares any talent or passion, be it painting or flying around on a broom, to a superpower, where the use of it is only enriched by suffering and struggling against it. This doesn’t fit perfectly next to Kiki’s dilemma, which is a kind of writer’s block that she breaks out of when Tombo is in danger, and the asymmetry detracts from the film, but to include something so heady in a brightly colored family film is what makes Miyazaki so singular. Hack American animation studios think they have to entertain parents with pop culture references, needle drops, and double entendres. Miyazaki instead serves adults ennui and longing while their kids are formulating requests for a Jiji doll.
Speaking of Jiji, this is one of the great comedic voiceover performances from Sakuma. Kiki’s Delivery Service is Ghibli’s funniest film on the back of this one character. Jiji is a wry commenter throughout, deeply unimpressed with the postcard vistas and blessed with impeccable comic timing. When the viewer can see a joke coming and its delivery still gets a laugh, then a movie is operating in can’t-miss territory. The downbeat second half of the film hits harder because Jiji’s loss of speech is a blow to the viewer as much as it’s a loss for Kiki. In reading about the differences between the subbed and dubbed versions of the film, the dubbed American-voiced version intimates that Kiki is getting her ability to speak with Jiji back, while there’s no hint of that in the Japanese version. It’s exactly right and in keeping with the transitory themes of the film that Jiji stop talking. Ghibli knows better.
Kiki’s Delivery Service needed a little thematic tightening to reach its siblings at the highest echelon of Studio Ghibli and therefore all of Japanese cinema, but its joys are legion. Watching characters be guilelessly kind to each other is so refreshing, placing this and other Miyazaki’s on the Paddington lineage. The big catharsis at the end made my breath catch in my throat, even as I knew this film wasn’t going to end with Tombo plummeting to his death, and the epilogue has these beautiful moments within a montage that could’ve gladly warranted another 15 minutes of runtime. I love the Japanese respect for work, here embodied by the wordless baker in his element before the shop opens. Little touches like these and countless others are what make Miyazaki such a singular figure. Everything changes, bit by bit, and the day is approaching when the world will no longer have Miyazaki in it. Like Ursula, he’s been able to chisel himself into history by finding the thing that only he could do. A-
The lowest-inspiration version of Kiki’s Delivery Service has Kiki struggling to make her business work in the same way the lead of a bad romantic comedy can’t work for a magazine and straighten out her love life. A proto-have-it-all narrative presents itself to Miyazaki in the middle of the film, as Kiki gets held up at a delivery while a date with Tombo looms on the clock. Thankfully, Miyazaki doesn’t turn his girl protagonist into a person with grown woman problems. Instead, the film puts Kiki in the physical situation of someone striking out on their own while never forgetting where she is in her emotional life. There’s little hints about how wistful this movie is going to get in the prologue at Kiki’s hometown, where a neighbor mentions that everything changes bit by bit, or in the difficulty Kiki’s dad has in picking her up like he used to. Once fully on her own, Kiki is confronted with the looming end of carefree childhood and the slow-motion tragedies of adulthood. She experiences boredom at the bakery in a recurring shot that emerges as the signature one of the film. Her safe and comfortable position doesn’t keep her from being lonely. Most tragically, the things that used to give her joy have become commonplace. Kiki is able to establish herself in a new city, as she’s supposed to, but she’s confronted with the distance between accomplishment and fulfillment.
The character of Ursula (Minami Takayama) provides Kiki an out, or at least a way to recontextualize her new feelings. Having lost her magic and her ability to speak with Jiji, who’s out banging the neighbor cat, Kiki gets invited to stay at Ursula’s cabin in the woods, where she lives a secluded artists’ life. Miyazaki is famous for his downbeat, depressive outlook on his work and his life, a fascinating tack from a man who’s brough so much joy into the world. Ursula speaks with his voice as she talks about her process, about how she had to stop imitating other painters and find something within herself that was only hers. The film compares any talent or passion, be it painting or flying around on a broom, to a superpower, where the use of it is only enriched by suffering and struggling against it. This doesn’t fit perfectly next to Kiki’s dilemma, which is a kind of writer’s block that she breaks out of when Tombo is in danger, and the asymmetry detracts from the film, but to include something so heady in a brightly colored family film is what makes Miyazaki so singular. Hack American animation studios think they have to entertain parents with pop culture references, needle drops, and double entendres. Miyazaki instead serves adults ennui and longing while their kids are formulating requests for a Jiji doll.
Speaking of Jiji, this is one of the great comedic voiceover performances from Sakuma. Kiki’s Delivery Service is Ghibli’s funniest film on the back of this one character. Jiji is a wry commenter throughout, deeply unimpressed with the postcard vistas and blessed with impeccable comic timing. When the viewer can see a joke coming and its delivery still gets a laugh, then a movie is operating in can’t-miss territory. The downbeat second half of the film hits harder because Jiji’s loss of speech is a blow to the viewer as much as it’s a loss for Kiki. In reading about the differences between the subbed and dubbed versions of the film, the dubbed American-voiced version intimates that Kiki is getting her ability to speak with Jiji back, while there’s no hint of that in the Japanese version. It’s exactly right and in keeping with the transitory themes of the film that Jiji stop talking. Ghibli knows better.
Kiki’s Delivery Service needed a little thematic tightening to reach its siblings at the highest echelon of Studio Ghibli and therefore all of Japanese cinema, but its joys are legion. Watching characters be guilelessly kind to each other is so refreshing, placing this and other Miyazaki’s on the Paddington lineage. The big catharsis at the end made my breath catch in my throat, even as I knew this film wasn’t going to end with Tombo plummeting to his death, and the epilogue has these beautiful moments within a montage that could’ve gladly warranted another 15 minutes of runtime. I love the Japanese respect for work, here embodied by the wordless baker in his element before the shop opens. Little touches like these and countless others are what make Miyazaki such a singular figure. Everything changes, bit by bit, and the day is approaching when the world will no longer have Miyazaki in it. Like Ursula, he’s been able to chisel himself into history by finding the thing that only he could do. A-
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