The animation is produced by Studio Ghibli. Seeing the pictures of cartoons will make people think of "City in the Sky" and "Spirited Away", because the style of painting is very similar, with soft lines and brilliant colors, it makes people feel that everything is so beautiful.
In addition to the sense of picture, the film's extraordinary should be its plot. The whole film is full of suspense, and the rhythm is just right. This kind of rhythm, which is neither loose nor tight, takes the audience step by step from guessing to being subverted to re-assuming, and finally confirming the result. Therefore, it should be greatly added to the plot.
1. Character suspense
From the very beginning of the film, the appearance of the characters has caused many doubts.
(1) Lai Zi
Lai Zi is the guardian of Anna, which is obvious, but according to the audience, she is not like Anna's mother, no matter from Anna's attitude towards her or her words and deeds. But how this relationship started and what kind of story they have between them is not explained at the beginning of the film, but is confirmed step by step as the story progresses and Anna's own narration.
(2) Eleven
This is the most mysterious character in the film besides Marnie. Eleven is an old man rowing a boat. He speaks no more than five sentences from the beginning to the end, but he appears at several key moments in the film. However, what does such a taciturn person represent, what is in his mind, and what is he? Cause his silence, these are the doubts of the film. Of course, at the end of the cartoon, Eleven said a key sentence, which also means that he is inextricably linked with the word "memory".
(3)
Compared with the Oiwa couple and Nobuko's mother and daughter, Hisako is not a character who surfaced at the very beginning. Hisako's first appearance obviously paved the way for the rest of the film. She and Anna were in the same place and painted the same house. This insertion was not for nothing, plus she told Anna that she knew Marnie. , and this narration is incomplete, as if leaving a lot of suspense, which means that she will appear later in the film and complete the previous narration.
(4) Kazuhiko
Kazuhiko is a character who appears rarely in the film and has a vague description. The first time she appeared was dancing with Marnie at Marnie's party, where Marnie told Anna that it was her childhood sweetheart, and Anna even ate Kazuhiko's vinegar because of it. The second time she appeared in the barn, when Marnie was the most panicked in the barn, the name she called was not Anna, but Kazuhiko, which disappointed Anna and was inexplicably surprised. Later, Heyan appeared in the barn with a clear image and put clothes on Marnie. However, this still does not explain who Heyan is from Marnie and what special meaning he has to Marnie. In the end, when everything became clear, Kazuhiko's mysterious identity was naturally revealed.
(5)
Marnie Marnie is the biggest suspect in the film. I don’t know how many people are like me. At first, I thought that Marnie was the result of Anna’s personality split, but in fact, Marnie was another herself. Later, when Anna took the diary and said that it was a person she imagined, she was very surprised. I'm glad I guessed right. But with the progress of the film, the appearance of Ayaka, Hisako's narration, and Anna's observation of what happened as an observer completely subverted her own thinking, and the result was really unexpected.
2. Image suspense
In addition to the characters, the appearance of images is also full of doubts.
(1) Barn
Dayan drove Mrs. Dayan and Anna through a green field in a car, Annie suddenly locked her eyes on a dark and towering barn in the distance. The darkness here is in stark contrast to the verdant green of the fields. What is suspenseful is that Oiwa's description of the barn is just a touch of water, and Anna's curiosity creates the suspense of this image. As the plot progresses, the story of what happened in the barn is finally known to the audience.
(2) Wetland Mansion
The Wetland Mansion is a mysterious image from the beginning to the end of the cartoon. From the first sight of the mansion, Anna was intrigued by it. Although the Oiwa couple told her not to approach or intervene, she couldn't restrain her curiosity and rowed to her alone again and again, until she saw Marnie and started a fantastic journey with Marnie, and the symbol of Wetland Mansion was given. meaning. There are several details about the wetland mansion in the film, that is, when Jiuzi and Anna were sketching, they were all depicting the wetland mansion on the opposite bank. Anna is drawn in sketches, while Hisako is presented in oil paintings, one in black and white and the other in color. Under normal circumstances, children should like pictures with rich colors. Why does Anna always choose to sketch? I suspect this difference in depiction is not without reason. Anna uses a pencil to describe what she sees because the mansion is almost zero in her memory, everything she sees is fresh and fuzzy to her, so is the mansion, and so is Marnie, although She also wanted to give them color, but in her mind, it was as light as a sketch, real but illusory. Therefore, at the end of the cartoon, the photo of Anna holding the wetland mansion in her hand is also in black and white, because it is her childhood memory, which has long been blurred but difficult to erase. Hisako chose the colorful oil paintings because she has deep feelings and touching stories with Marnie and the house. From the very beginning, she told that she liked the house very much and Marnie very much, and all this became a memory, so Hisako chose thick ink to express her love and recorded this memory with a brush.
"Marnie in Memories" film review
3. Symbolic suspense
(1) Ship
Ships are a frequent image in the film. However, the ship is not only an image, but also a symbol. Although the image of the boat appears several times, there are differences in the boaters, the people on board, and the owner of the boat. First of all, the boat was rowed by Mr. Eleven. He carried Anna. Anna did not laugh at Eleven's taciturnity like other children. On the contrary, it formed a harmonious picture with Eleven. This boat symbolizes the trust and friendship between Anna and Eleven. Later, Anna came to the river to play alone at night, and found an empty boat by the river. She didn't know who the owner of the boat was, so she boldly rowed to the other side of the river by herself, met the mysterious girl Marnie and graciously made peace with her. She talks and plays. Watching the video carefully, it is not difficult to find that there are two heart problems that Xing Na has the most difficulty to overcome, one is her distrust of everything, and the other is that she does not dare to communicate with others. However, the moment she rowed the boat to the other side, she slowly learned how to communicate with strangers. Therefore, this boat trip symbolized the beginning of Anna's bold communication with people. Finally, when Anna left the town and was returning to Sapporo, she saw a boat on the river with Uncle Eleven and her good friend Ayaka. They waved goodbye to her, and she said goodbye to them happily. This boat symbolized Anna's bid farewell to her past self and bravely welcomed her new life.
(2) Party
Party is a symbol in cartoons that seems real but not real. The party is the representative of Marnie's happiest moment. At the party, she can reunite with the parents she misses, dance with her beloved Kazuhiko, dress herself up beautifully, and make herself the focus of everyone's attention. However, in the end the truth is that the so-called party that Marnie said does not exist at all, it was entirely her imagination, because she was alone for too long, she longed for fun, because she was trapped for too long, and she longed for freedom, because She had been desolate for too long, and she longed to be loved.
4. Narrative suspense
The best part of the film lies in the suspense formed by the narrative techniques.
(1) Perspective suspense
The film starts from Anna's point of view to gain insight into what happened. From Anna's perspective, she saw the hospitality of the Oiwa couple, the beauty of the village, the kindness of Ayaka, the loneliness of Eleven, the heart of Marnie, and so on. However, the best part is that when Hisako told Marnie's story step by step, Marnie's story appeared on the screen in a flashback. At this time, Anna was observing everything that happened in the story as a bystander. The picture of the story is false, and the image of Anna is real. It seems that Anna is accompanied by Marnie all the way. This should be the biggest highlight of the film.
(2) Focusing on suspense
The story will always use internal focus in the most suspenseful place, to whet the audience's appetite and let the audience move forward with the rhythm of the film. Marnie's diary in the film is a good weapon. When Caixiang discovered Marnie's diary and suspected that Annie was Marnie, this diary became a suspenseful thing. Xing Nai looked through Marnie's diary, as if she saw the real Marnie, but found that a large part of it was torn off, and the torn diary became the main object of the later narrative. Therefore, Caixiang tried to find the incomplete diary all the time. Hisako's narration is also a highlight of the film. Hisako met Anna when she first sketched from life. Anna knew that Hisa was painting the Wetland Mansion and knew that she knew Marnie, but she did not ask her to tell Marnie's story without reservation, but instead told this. The secret continues to hide. Hisako's beginning means that she still has to tell the story in the end, because although Marnie chose Anna, the memory chose Hisako. After all, Hisako and Marnie were the same generation. It is much more natural to tell the story in a way that focuses on the inside than Anna herself thinks of the past. There is also a tiny detail in the film that is suggestive. On the night of Tanabata Festival, Anna was wearing a beautiful kimono to play with other friends, but Nobuko discovered that her eyes were blue, like the eyes of foreigners. Marnie's image in the film is blond and blue-eyed, which hints at the extraordinary relationship between Anna and Marnie.
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