"Valley of the Heart" may be said to be one of the lesser-known animations produced by Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, but even so, it still does not detract from the excitement of this film. This animation depicting young people chasing their dreams draws the desire, hesitation and firmness of love and dreams in the interplay of reality and imagination. It was a wild and uninhibited age, it was a desire to live out one's beliefs, but it was also a feeling of seeking recognition and companionship.
The protagonist of the animation is Shizuku Tsukishima, a middle school girl. This little girl who loves to read suddenly found that almost all the books she borrowed had the name "Senji Tianzawa" on the library card. That is to say, this Every time a person finishes reading the book she wants to read before she does. For a person who is addicted to the world of reading, although this is a blow, if you think about it from another angle, it is also an indescribable excitement. Many imaginations fly, and reading has a different meaning since then. And the name "Amazawa Seiji" quietly fermented in her heart.
And just by accident, Tsukishima Shizuku met a fat cat with a unique and arrogant appearance on the way to the library to deliver meals for his father. She was curious and followed the cat to a room with A little mysterious shop "Earth House". And then I got to know the owner of the store, Xisira, this amiable grandfather, not only invited Tsukishima to visit, but even selflessly shared the story in his heart. In that warm and caring atmosphere, Tsukishima Shizuku seems to have found a place for youth to settle down. Because here, freedom, imagination, freedom and freedom, the elements of youth are allowed and seen.
With the development of the story, one day Tsukishima Shizuku accidentally met Amazawa Seiji in the campus. It was surprising that the character who had stayed in the imagination suddenly appeared in the real world. What was even more unexpected to her was that the Sishram she loved turned out to be Seiji's grandfather. Shizuku and Seiji got to know each other gradually over the course of several encounters, and the mode of getting along has changed from bickering at the beginning to heart-to-heart talk. The youthful feelings between the two gradually brewed, and the competition derived from reading in the past also quietly fermented in each other's hearts.
In the film, Shizuku is curious about Seiji's engrossment in making violins. Seiji immediately talks about his dream of becoming a great violin maker. Although he has started, he still has a very long way to go. What's more, in order to further embark on the journey of his dreams, Seiji hopes that after graduation, he will go to Italy to learn to make violins. Although such an idea has not yet been approved by his father, although Seiji is still uneasy in the face of his dream blueprint for the future, he still chooses to bravely step out and strive for all possibilities. That is the fearlessness of youth, and that is the adventure of youth, but at such a young age, there is still anxiety and fear of self-doubt.
Even so, in Seiji's heart, he cared about Shizuku, making him claim to be ahead and extraordinary, so he was willing to challenge. Just like when he found out that Shizuku, who also likes to read, left his name on many library cards, he forced himself to read harder. In this way, it was enough for Shizuku to discover on the library cards. His name and his extraordinaryness. Caring about love has turned into the courage to follow dreams, and it has become a backing to remind myself from time to time.
However, looking at Seiji who was going all the way, Shizuku's heart also quietly rose. If the two were in a reading competition, Shizuku could follow closely. So what about this path of dreams? How should she face and outline. The meaning and purpose of life were originally in the distant future, and youth was still in unfettered freedom, but now it is all messed up. Or should I say, because I don't want to fall behind, because I don't want to admit defeat, and I don't want to be a drag, so I want different ideas to become active instantly.
That is also the splendor of youth, in the mutual influence of peers, imitation and learning. In the desire of love, growth and transformation. Just when Seiji told Shizuku that he had obtained his father's consent to go abroad to experience the life of making a piano before graduation, as a measure to follow after graduation, Shizuku's heart also had a great change. That is a blessing, that is a kind of envy, but it is also a kind of stress and anxiety. The energy accumulated by reading for a long time, many stories are turned in my heart. Coupled with the encouragement of Nishihara, Shizuku resolutely decided to try to embark on the dream journey she outlined, about writing, about novels.
However, that is not easy! This is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in youth. How to embark on the road of dreams, that beauty at first glance, often feels uneasy and fearful after practicing. Because dreams have to face the collision of reality after all, and whether they can survive it depends on self-persistence, inner desire, and of course the power of love. This is difficult, and it is more difficult than imagined. After all, when the dream stays in the dream, it is the dependence of youth, and it is also the dwelling of imagination. However, if you embark on the road of realizing your dreams, you will see many obstacles in reality, and you will see overwhelming pressure and challenges. What you will face is the cruelty of broken dreams, and it will still be the remains of the place where you originally lived. How can this not be disturbing, how can it not be terrifying.
There are two scenes in the movie that depict such a mood. The degree of closeness is admirable, but it is also shocking. One is that Shizuku was in a dream, and she was eager to grab that shining gem, which seemed to be eager to prove her ability, that seemed to be the prototype of a shining dream, but after she caught it, it turned into a jewel. dead chick. This fully shows Shizuku's inner fear and unease. The reality is mercilessly forcing her dreams, making her fear and hesitating. The gem is the self she believes in, the self who strives to outline and pursue her dreams. However, the dead chick is not another face of the inner soul, the one who doubts himself and fears failure.
Another scene is when Shizuku finally finished her first novel after all the hard work, with a trembling heart, she held the work to Sisram with both hands. The period of waiting for the evaluation was extremely difficult, it was like the selection of gems and dead chicks, it was like the difference between light and darkness. The road of life is actually not so narrow and biased, but for youth, the belief in betting on youth can hardly hold any impurities. The belief about everything and nothing may make people feel stupid, but it is not also the persistence and frivolity of youth. When Nishira finished reading and looked back to find Shizuku, he found that Shizuku was crouching on the cold balcony outside, and it made people feel distressed. In addition, when Shizuku told Shizuku that his writing was excellent, Shizuku's entire emotional explosion, the constant denial and doubt, fully expressed the almost unbearable pressure and anxiety inside. This is the track where dreams and reality intersect!
Seeing Shizuku who kept blaming himself for not being able to write his works well, Nishihara did not refute it in a wilful way, but told the journey of life through the concept of rough stones. Sisram said it very well, the natural rough stone that has not been tempered does have its attractiveness, but it is rough and straightforward, and it is still not perfect, and it has to be pondered. Just like writing a novel and making a violin, it is like looking for the rough stone from the psychological point of view, and after finding it, it has to be tempered. However, "finding" is actually not easy, perhaps because it is not easy, it always makes people think that it is enough to shine brightly. As everyone knows, finding it is only the first step, and after finding it, you will often see inadequacies. At this time, the next thing is to hone. However, there is a gap that is difficult to bridge, that is, the frustration and loss after seeing the inadequacy. If you understand that all this is nothing more than making yourself work harder to hone yourself and ponder the original stone in your heart, then there will be more possibilities on this road. However, if you are discouraged or even self-deprecating because of this, then this heavy setback may not only shatter the prototype of dreams in your heart, but also disintegrate the arrogance and desire of youth.
It is lonely. Just seeing the creations before the case, and the crouching figure, can understand the pain. After all, you have to taste it and bear it yourself. External support and encouragement may be able to support the power of succession, but the leap and courage must come from oneself. Shizuku is like this, so why not Seiji? Even if the animation mainly depicts Shizuku's mental journey, Seiji, who has a background of leaving his hometown, can't avoid such challenges and hardships. In the animation, Seiji mentioned that he would sing the meaningful song that Shizuku sang repeatedly in a foreign land. The first two sentences in the lyrics: "Don't be afraid of being alone, live bravely, and dream. Endure the loneliness and be strong." Incorrectly reveals the inner feelings of the two. The road of dreams that was supposed to be bright is full of loneliness and fear.
What is youth, that is to pursue and realize the meaning of life that is exclusive to oneself, that is the weaving and practice of dreams, that is beautiful and moving. However, youth is also a chaotic and turbulent age. The interlacing of information is confusing, and the ruthlessness of reality is even more frustrating. The helplessness, anxiety and fear are also the mark of youth. Maybe it's hard to endure, but only through such a turning point can we have the opportunity to realize the regretless and wonderful youth.
Through the story of Seiji and Shizuku, "Valley of the Heart" conveys the romance and hardships of youth, as well as the aspirations of dreams and love. It is worth mentioning that the author's depiction of the background and details of daily life gives people a sense of closeness. The deliberately created ordinary seems to tell that the element of youth exists in everyone's heart. How to see and cherish the extraordinary in the ordinary is like how to mine the gems in the original ore. But I still remember what Grandpa Xisira said, it exists in my heart!
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"The Valley of the Heart" (originally called "Er を す ま せ ば" in Japanese, English name "Whisper of the Heart", the original meaning is to listen to the ear) is an annual animation launched by Studio Ghibli in 1995 The movie is also the only theatrical animation film officially directed by Kondo Yoshifumi. Kondo has produced quite a few well-known animation works, such as "Giant Star", "Lupin III", "Pretty Beautiful", and Studio Ghibli's "Grave of the Fireflies", "Witch's Delivery Service", "Childhood" Masterpieces such as Bit Bit, "Porcupine", "The Voice of the Tide", "Battle of the Heisei Tanuki", "Magic Princess", etc., can be said to be the strongest general under Hayao Miyazaki. It is a pity that after the "Magic Princess" in 1997, Kondo Yoshifumi died suddenly due to aortic dissection in 1998, which caused a major blow to Studio Ghibli, and Miyazaki also announced his retirement.
Hayao Miyazaki's adaptation of anime scripts for girls' manga, the most well-known are "The Valley of the Heart" and "From Safflower Sakae", the former was directed by his lover Kondo Yoshifumi, and the latter was directed by his Miyazaki Goro. Although both are Miyazaki's scripts and also describe a youthful love story, the director's talent is evident in both films. Goro Miyazaki's story is pointless, completely out of rhythm, and the level is worse than the student's work; in contrast, Kondo has perfectly recreated the soul of the script, and every detail is fascinating.
"The Valley of the Heart" is a very realistic animation work, and all the scenes are taken from the real scene of Tama City at that time. Before there were no movies, we could only rely on static paintings to record the appearance of a city; after the introduction of movies, the general movie records the appearance of a city in an era is far more realistic than animated movies, and animation seems to be more suitable for dealing with unrealistic situations. scenes and stories. However, "Valley of the Heart" not only does the exact opposite, Kondo also uses the transformation of various real scenes to deal with the first act of this story.
Stations, shopping streets, cement apartments, campuses, these scenes are the daily life of the heroine Tsukishima Shizuku. The audience changes with Tsukishima's perspective, as if they were in Tama City, Tokyo in the summer of 1995. Tsukishima's greatest interest is to borrow books from the library to read. She found that every library card has a name, Seiji Amano. This layout appears one after another, implying that Amano is a special existence to the girl Tsukishima. Tsukishima encounters a black-haired boy who knows Tsukishima's name, further allowing the audience to unravel Amano's true identity.
The first act ends with a cat. Tsukishima delivers a bento for the librarian's father, but follows a lazy gray cat on an adventure up the hills and discovers an antique shop, Earth House. The narrow road on the hill is actually like the tunnel in "The Hidden Girl", the other end of the tunnel is a different world; and the Earth House is the "different world" of Tsukishima. Tsukishima met an old grandfather and a doll cat duke at the Earth House, and finally ended up with a black-haired boy.
However, Tsukishima did not immediately connect with this other world, but temporarily returned to the real world—the entanglement of family, school, further studies, friendship and love. Tsukishima begins to feel the pressure of reality and returns to Earth House. Returning to the Earth House this time, Tsukishima Fujin entered the internal workshop, and found out that the black-haired boy was Amano Seiji, and at the same time knew Amano's dream-to become a violin craftsman. Amano's dream makes Tsukishima question his future path. This scene is very well designed. The Earth House is a different dimension of Tsukishima. Tsukishima enters the second basement of the Earth House, indicating that Tsukishima has gone deeper into this different world; the interior design and scenery of the Earth House are indeed unusual, making the audience’s emotions follow Tsukishima’s. Get high. The Earth House is different from the design of ordinary cities, and it also brings out the novel atmosphere of Tsukishima's "listening to the ears".
Director Kondo Yoshifumi perfectly combines the narrative mood and the atmosphere of the scene. In terms of scene processing, whether it is brightness, chroma or perspective, it is very accurate. In contrast, Goro Miyazaki's scene setting in "From Safflower Sakae" is not inferior to that of "Valley of the Heart", but Goro Miyazaki has two fatal flaws. The brightness is too full, which not only can't show the different light and shadow effects of day and night, but also can't be close to the character's mood. Another fatal flaw is that the scene design is too clean and simple, and there is no sense of life at all. And these two points are the most successful things about Kondo. There are books and clothes scattered everywhere in Yuedao’s room, and the living room is full of sundries. Even the pottery cups that hold the barley tea are outdated. In terms of light and color, the color of the morning is more blue, and the color of the sunset is more The colors of yellow and noon are saturated and bright, and the luminosity of night is bright and dark.
Film is a kind of visual art. The director can’t just split the script, ignore the visual elements such as color, light and shadow, composition, etc., and shoot directly according to the storyboard, especially for animated films. The realistic scenes and delicate visual processing techniques of "Valley of the Heart" are definitely important elements of its artistry, and director Kondo Yoshifumi is absolutely indispensable.
Who said the pursuit is not an escape
The theme of this film is "pursuit". Tsukishima pursues the new world, and also pursues himself through the understanding of the new world. As creators, I believe Kondo Yoshifumi and Miyazaki must project their own life experiences on the character Tsukishima. From the point of view of others, Tsukishima is just a girl who likes to read books. She occasionally writes lyrics to be praised by everyone, but she is still far from being a writer. Tsukishima's original motivation for writing novels was not pure, most of the factors were to stand at the same height as Amano, not really like writing. Tsukishima's writing novels caused his ranking to drop and conflicts with his family. It seems to be a growing resistance to "determine the direction of his life", but who said that this would not be a deliberate distraction to escape the pressure of schoolwork ? From the perspective of others, pursuit can also be an escape.
All actions hide many possible motives, and the stated reasons are not necessarily the closest to the truth. Tsukishima's father is rational and open-minded. He does not fully agree with his daughter's persistence, but he is not in a hurry to deny it. He just kindly tolerates the willful daughter who refuses to say anything. Time will prove everything. Whether Shizuku writes for escapism or chasing dreams, as time goes by, her every subtle decision and every unintentional act will gradually prove whether this paranoia is a pursuit or an escape.
The most cruel symbol of this film is the nightmare that Yuedao had when he stayed up late to catch the draft. She kept searching in the azure stone cave, and a voice kept urging her: "Hurry up and find it! It's too late!" She reached out and held a glowing azure stone, but when she opened her hand, she found that it was just an unfeathered one. Dead chick. Effort never means results, and even the self-righteous talent of the absolute majority is just fool's gold. So why do we need to develop talent? Why go out of your way to accomplish something that may be meaningless? Tsukishima was frightened into a cold sweat by the nightmare, but for those who have worked hard to pursue their dreams, the cruelty and cruelty of the theme of this passage makes people shudder even more.
However, this is also a necessary process to pursue your dreams. Only those who understand the treacherous road but still insist on crossing the thorns will have the opportunity to truly grasp the glittering lapis lazuli. After all, the suffering described in the film is not as good as one ten thousandth of what these artistic creators have encountered in their decades of creative career. Tsukishima's image is not only the projection of Miyazaki and Kondo, but also the projection of all art creators and all those who pursue their dreams. The conversation between Tsukishima and Grandpa Amano after the novel was completed was very profound. The calm and wise grandpa Amano told Tsukishima that she is a rough stone, and as long as she is polished and polished in the future, she will surely shine as a gem. Tsukishima, who has never really written a novel, sees his own shortcomings from writing, but at the same time arouses his desire to create. The will to "want to continue writing" and "want to write better" determines how far a person can go. The real pursuit is not frivolous rhetoric, but a continuous, uninterrupted effort—a pursuit in this way is not an escape.
I didn't feel anything at all when I watched "Valley of the Heart" when I was in my country. The tone of the whole film was too realistic, not as dreamy and romantic as Hayao Miyazaki's famous works; the flight of the girl and the cat duke on the poster turned out to be just a The heroine's little episodes and fantasies in the film. Animation should be a dream. At that time, when I was young, I watched "Valley of the Heart", and I only saw the reality but not the dream. When I rewatched it after fifteen years, I deeply realized that I was too young to really understand this movie. "Valley of the Heart" is a work in which adults re-view life from the perspective of teenagers and girls. The so-called dream must actually be rooted in reality.
However, this was not something I could understand at the time. Because for young people, everything is too natural. It is natural to have all kinds of opportunities in life, it is natural to waste time on the things you love, and it is natural to move towards distant goals. But most teenagers failed to grasp this most miraculous time. They just swayed in overly complicated choices and drifted in overly beautiful youth. They didn't realize that they had missed too many possible scenery until they were no longer young. Most of us are neither Shizuku nor Seiji immature and precocious. We may be the dull baseball boy Sugimura, the girl Harada who is in love, or the fully socialized college student Shiiko Tsukishima. Our dream is not far away, we just want to fall in love with the person we like, and we just want to find a place in the huge trend of the world without too much hard work. We looked up close and just wanted to go with the flow.
Will Tsukishima become a writer in the future? we do not know. Will Amano become a violin craftsman in the future? We don't know either. What we believe is Tsukishima and Amano standing side by side on the hill, staring at the sunrise. The sun appeared, and everything was inlaid with golden radiance. There is wind on the mountain, and the boy and girl make a lifelong oath to each other, and it seems that they can see eternity at this moment. We look forward to dreams and myths. The appearance of "Valley of the Heart" is so realistic and the essence is so dreamy. After all, it is a myth about teenagers and girls written for adults.
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Although there is an element of love in the Valley of the Heart, almost every cartoon of Hayao Miyazaki has it, but it has never been the key point of it. The Valley of the Heart is also a process of explaining self-growth. A piece of rough stone, with beautiful crystals in the rough stone, told Awen that they are all rough stones that have not been pondered, and that beautiful crystals will appear after pondering, but sometimes they may lose the rough stone after pondering. beauty, and Awen replied, "I don't know if I am such a beautiful rough stone, I just want to try hard"
I don't know if I am such a beautiful rough stone, I just want to try hard.... Hayao Miyazaki is really a master.
In fact, what I feel most about in the Valley of the Heart is the lyrics of Country Road after the final credits are adapted.
People have grown up and sometimes lose themselves in this society, and they should stop and check the real one every now and then. Whether I still exist, everyone has a different way of living, there is no need to care about it, the more mature you are, the more you can see the truth, and when you see the truth, you will understand your ignorance and naivety.
I still remember how I really look, there are always people from time to time Remind me and help me, and some people have lost their souls, so there is no need to feel sad or angry for soulless people, the only thing we can do for them is to expect them to RIP~ XD
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