Isao Takahata’s masterpiece is one of Ghibli’s most powerful and loveable films they ever released…
Studio Ghibli are a household name whose films are adored by millions worldwide. The announcement that When Marnie Was There could be the studio’s swan song was met with sadness, but also a quiet joy that they were ending it on their own terms, before they had a chance to hit a slump.
Undoubtedly the international figurehead of the studio is Hayao Miyazaki, the brain behind such family classics as Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Spirited Away. However, the other key figure, Isao Takahata, will often avoid mention in a Ghibli based discussion, and yet his domestic tales that are more grounded reality are among the best things that the studio has ever produced.
Takahata’s 1991 film Only Yesterday has recently turned 25, an anniversary which was celebrated with a new English dub starring Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) which aims to make the exquisite double-period piece as internationally recognised as its Miyaaki-directed peers.
The plot is grounded in 1982, Taeko is a company employee in Tokyo who is harangued by her family as to when she will get married, what she is doing with her life, and why she has chosen to participate in the safflower harvest in the middle of nowhere once again. Throughout Taeko’s time on a farm in Yamagata, she reminisces about her time as a primary school student in 1966, contrasting two versions of herself that are sixteen years apart.
Whilst Only Yesterday ostensibly straddles two different time periods, it is the flashback section set in the 60s that make up the meat of the film, and it is this section in which the film’s best moments take place: Taeko’s conversation with the boy who has a crush on her, the disappointment of eating a pineapple for the first time, the petty spats within a sibling rivalry. It’s a film that finds some minor forms of universal truth by recounting specific iterations of events that many of the viewers will also have experienced.
In these sections, Takahata effortlessly uses the medium of animation to its full potential. Without having seen the film, it would be easy to question why it bothered being animated at all, but through some very subtle aesthetic decisions it ceases to be a choice, Only Yesterday could only exist as an animated film.
The colouration and overall animation style is ever so slightly different in the different eras: everything seems more saturated in the 60s, it has more rounded edges, sometimes things seem to fade away at the edge of the frame; everything is being remembered through the eyes of a child, and everything outside of the room that Taeko is in does not exist.
Taeko remains charmingly childish at age 27, oftentimes seeming to have more in common with the teenage daughter at the farm than with anyone else. Her propensity for nostalgia is one of the most effective character traits in bringing her to life and cementing her place amongst Ghibli’s greatest protagonists.
It’s safe to say that those who are aversed to the overly sentimental will likely not get much pleasure from Only Yesterday. It’s hardly saccharine, but even with the occasionally unpleasant childhood memory that Taeko dredges up (usually to do with her father), the film remains very sweet and I am sure that some people will find it almost sickeningly pleasant.
The film’s brilliant pacing comes as a result of carefully balancing the 60s and 80s sequences with each other, one of Taeko’s childhood memories effortlessly segueing into a similar scene sixteen years later. Everything feeds into character building, as the plot itself could probably summarised in a single sentence; everything is building towards Taeko letting go of her past, but keeping the memories close enough that she remembers how she got where she is.
Though Only Yesterday is undoubtedly Taeko’s film, the supporting characters in both eras are also a joy to watch, if sometimes rather stock due to their lack of screentime. Farmer Toshio is delightfully blunt and rough, with a penchant for Romanian folk music, but he may very well be the most human of all of the characters. At once passionate about what he does, but somewhat threatened by the arrival of a city slicker. He tempers Taeko’s perpetual cheeriness as he patiently listens to her recall what could be considered mundane playground tales.
Admittedly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the new dub; it committed the common sin of having all of the child actors’ voices be incredibly grating. Truth be told, I switched to the Japanese half way through, but I thought that Ridley and Patel did decent enough jobs, though they would hardly have been my first choice for voice actors in this film.
Only Yesterday still works as a period drama, even if 25 years ago it was much closer to the periods that it tries to emulate. This is its greatest strength; it plays the 60s as a pastiche, and the 80s straight. Were a film set in the same eras made now they would both be pastiche, an act which would rob the film of much of the heart that it has. It is allowed to look back with rose tinted glasses but still be grounded somewhere that feels like it may have actually existed.
Even with stiff competition, Only Yesterday is the jewel in Takahata’s crown; somewhere where all of his strengths meet perfectly in one place to tell a simple, yet powerful story of how we cope with change. You’re better off watching it in the original Japanese, but I hope that this star-studded anniversary edition can bring the name ‘Isao Takahata’ out of obscurity, so that he can become more than just ‘The other Ghibli guy’ in the West.
Only Yesterday is available now in a 25th anniversary edition on Doubleplay Blu-ray and a 2-disc DVD version, including feature Length storyboards, the Making of Only Yesterday, behind the scenes with the voice cast, an interview with the English Dub Team, and Trailers & TV Spots.