Bittersweet Memories

A Miyazaki production you may not have seen

Hidden beneath the layers of your adult-self, obscured in the forest of past experiences and your relationship with your family, lies perhaps the more real part of yourself. Maybe this version of you is 10 years old and walks alongside, not directly influencing your actions or speaking to you, but a distant reminder that you're the sum of your history plus unfulfilled desires. That's the gist of the film Only Yesterday, produced by Hayao Miyazaki in 1991. It was never released in the US, and with the success of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya last year, Studio Ghibli decided to record an English dialogue track and send it to Western audiences.

The main character is Taeko Okajima (voiced by Daisy Ridley), a single woman with a "good job in Tokyo." She travels out to the country to pick flowers historically used for rouge by aristocrats during Japan's feudal era. The process is slow, painstaking and entirely manual labor, but she can't wait to get started. Taeko's perception is split between memories of her childhood when she was 10 years old and her current experience in the countryside. During the childhood moments, she's back with her family in Tokyo, where she grew up, nearly reliving that portion of her life wherein the disappointments and difficulties in being a small girl in mid-sixties Japan are in sharp contrast to the pastoral idealism that she's partaking in as an adult.

The crux of the film forms around the notion that the dreams and wounds of youth influence who we are (duh), but more than that, they inform how we see ourselves, how we engage in our own personal dialogue. Taeko begins to question what it is to be happy and successful. Only Yesterday is a touching love letter to the era of youthful idealism and the regrets of adulthood. It's challenging not to be struck down to your core when watching it. And though the film is well steeped in post-war Japanese culture, the personal takeaways transcend those cultural boundaries. There's a character in this movie somewhere that you can connect to, even if you can't connect to the lead. The writing is so strong that you genuinely feel emotions for every person, and that is a rare feat for any motion picture, animated or otherwise. There are some definite feels here.

The pacing is a remarkably slow burn, especially when compared to more modern US studio system flicks. The runtime is a bit long for what the movie is, and it's a difficult slog at times to push your way through. Yet, it's well worth the effort to keep your butt in the seat and make it past the first half.

The handdrawn animation is simply beautiful. Every cell is colored with extreme care, and it shows. This is par for the course for any Miyazaki film, and Only Yesterday does not disappoint. You could level the criticism that the animation isn't used to its potential. Indeed, this could be a standard motion picture with living, breathing actors on screen instead of cartoon characters, so why animate at all? However, there's a subtlety in the color and character design that couldn't be done easily with real sets and people. The animation captures your attention, where it might otherwise run astray. It's not your standard fare for anime; there are no talking cats or robots or earth-shattering psychic powers. There's just a woman grappling with who she's become and who she was as a child.

Overall, the latest foray by Studio Ghibli (for Americans) can be hit-or-miss. It's really not the most exciting or powerful movie you'll ever see, but if you're lucky, you might just learn a little something about yourself after you leave the theater.

Only Yesterday
Directed by Isao Takahata
With Ridley and Dev Patel
CCA PG, 118 min.

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