SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
With its episodic structure, minimalist art and a focus on the mundane, My Neighbours the Yamadas is a charming departure from traditional Studio Ghibli fare.
When I visited the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo last year, I found out that the museum actually has special short movies made specifically for the viewing pleasure of museum guests (a surprisingly exclusive group, given how popular the museum is). These shorts are on monthly rotations and visitors are limited to one screening per visit, so it’s especially hard for a person to see everything on show. When I was there, the current offering was Koro’s Big Day Out, a charming colour-pencil short about a puppy who follows a schoolgirl out of the house one morning and winds up getting lost and having a grand adventure on the streets of suburban Tokyo. In some ways, that short reminds me of Isao Takahata’s My Neighbours the Yamadas. While both undoubtedly have great style and animation, on top of being pretty darn cute to boot, they lack much of the drama, excitement and sophistication that define the studio’s better works. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with a small-scale adventure that’s just plain cute, but if you’re a Ghibli fan, this isn’t necessarily the best way to convince your friends that these films are really as great as you say they are.
The film is quite a departure from the studio’s usual fare, with a minimalist art style and episodic story structure that give it a delightfully down-to-earth feel. We’re treated to small slice-of-life vignettes: snapshots of the lives of the Yamada family, from hardworking parents Takashi and Matsuko, to their kids Noboru and Nonoko, and their grandmother Shige. These vignettes, which are linked thematically by light philosophy about the value of family rather than by an overarching narrative, depict a kind of mundane household drama that shows us the relationships between the different members of the family. The film’s drama reaches its greatest height when we see Nonoko lost at a department store or watch as Takashi and Shige squabble over who gets to confront a rather inconsiderate trio of motorcyclists racing down their local cul-de-sac at night; that is to say, not particularly high stakes at all. It all feels familiar enough that cultural barriers are not a concern, and it has impressive acuity when it comes to showing us how people act in real life, while the comedy and undeniably mischievous, playful spirit make it more than funny enough to sustain an audience over its hundred-minute runtime.
It’s best approached with no expectations. There’s nothing particularly archetypical about any of its characters, and it’s unlikely to wow you with sophistication and nuance on that front, but that’s the point. These characters are meant to be ordinary folk living entirely ordinary lives. If it does manage to impress, it’ll be because of its art style and animation. It’s a highly stylised minimalist look that combines rough hand-drawn graphite pencil strokes for outlines with soft, painterly watercolours for filling in spaces and shapes. There’s a certain deference to the newspaper comic strip that it adapts, with characters and a world that look more like rough storyboard sketches than anything, and it gives the film a kind of freshness and vital energy that’s hard to ignore. Despite being made in 1999, it still more than holds its corner these days while Disney’s animators brag about how many eyebrow hairs their characters have. The apparent simplicity of this film makes that all seem a little silly. Look closely and you’ll find understated sophistication and detail, with its vignettes delivering quick bursts of gorgeous high-energy animation and sequences of small-scale household chaos.
Despite all that, its status as one of the studio’s lesser known works is perhaps well earned. While it’s undoubtedly an enjoyable watch, the lack of a central narrative and the atypical visual style might be off-putting to someone who’s never seen a Studio Ghibli movie before. As such, it’s best treated as a niche offering for veteran fans best able to appreciate this charming film as the departure from the traditional format that it really represents.
Comments