Whisper of the Heart
September 11, 2022
Quick Look
Whisper of the Heart is a stunning and immersive world crafted by studio Ghibli that exudes a relaxed and nostalgic vibe. Every piece of it, from the music and the art to the characters and the story, is masterfully done.
Recommendation
Recommending Studio Ghibli movies is pretty easy, and this is no exception. The art and music are both excellent and the story is cute and light hearted. It’s difficult to give specific reasons for watching the movie without getting into spoilers because the content of the film is what gives it the atmosphere that makes me want to recommend it.
Fundamentally, this is a love story, but to describe it as a love story feels reductive. It’s more like the window into a few weeks in the life of a Tokyo middle schooler. So much about life at that age is expressed through the story. Younger people watching this movie might see their own experiences reflected in the characters. As an adult watching the movie, it was nostalgic for that time in middle school when everyday drama feels so important.
This movie gets a blanket recommendation from me. I also want to add that the art in the movie is beautiful. It feels like you could freeze-frame virtually anywhere and save it as a wallpaper.
Thoughts
There’s no real structure to this, just a few things I observed while watching. Nothing in here is particularly “spoiler” territory this time.
Perfect Score?!
I think I should justify my 5/5 rating. I will talk a bit about my rating system at the end, but this movie also transcends all of the other films I’ve reviewed up to this point. I think it really is art, whereas many of the other movies I’ve written recommendations for are entertainment more as a business than an artform.
This movie works on an animation level in that the art is not only skillful, it’s iconic. The number of scenes that I recognized even though I’d never watched the movie before attests to the fact that the vibe has become pervasive in certain circles. In particular, I recognized whole scenes that have been reused in city pop and lofi music videos.
The music is great, which I’ve already mentioned, but it’s always a good sign for your film when the music breaks out and gets a life of it’s own. In Japan, the version of Country Road (more on this later) that was written for this is now widely known.
Additionally, the story is good enough that it pushes it over the edge from a 4/5 to a full 5/5 for me. I should reiterate that I don’t consider a 5/5 to be perfect. If you think of my scoring system as how likely I am to recommend it, then a 5/5 is a perfect recommendation, not a perfect review. I will basically unconditionally recommend to anyone that they should see this movie!
Lofi Girl
There are several scenes in the movie when Shizuku is studying that look very similar to the Lofi Girl. I turns out that originally that channel used scenes from this movie as the backdrop for the Lofi music and only updated it to an original character after the channel was facing copyright issues. [1]
Country Road
This movie includes the Japanese version of the song Country Road. Ever since this movie came out that song has been pretty popular in Japan, which makes me really happy for some reason.
The first time I ever heard country road was when a group of people sang it on the back of a bus I was on in northern Canada. I was literally on a country road at that time and I think when I hear the song I’m transported back there. There’s something about this song that engenders feelings of friendship and melancholy at the same time. For whatever reason, it resonates with people and I’m happy to see that it works just as well in Japanese!