(JAPAN 1991 118 min)
Director / Writer Isao Takahata
by Stephen Russell-Gebbett
Isao Takahata is less well known than his Studio Ghibli colleague Hayao Miyazaki. People may know his film about a pair of children orphaned by war, Grave of the Fireflies, but might not be able to put a name to it; let alone a face to the name. He is less well known but, some would say, no less talented.
Only Yesterday is about Taeko; that is Taeko at 27 and Taeko at 10. On her way to the countryside to help pick Safflowers, she recalls, through flashbacks, her younger self. She wonders if the woman she has become is someone the young Taeko would be proud of. The literal translation of the Japanese title Omohide Poro Poro is “memories come tumbling down”.
To distinguish between the past and the present, Takahata fades the edges of the image of the past, unfinished and indistinct in retrospect, and draws with softer lines the safer and more welcoming world of a child. The present is depicted in sharp lines, the past as if in watercolour (Takahata used a watercolour wash, digitally created, in My Neighbours the Yamadas).
Taeko’s life now appears, in some respects, directionless. She takes joy from life when it comes but does not know where to go to get it for herself. The life of young Taeko is all about firsts: her first taste of pineapple (it’s bitter), her first taste of love (it’s sweet) and her first period. These are the awkward trials that all young people both relish and struggle through. Taeko in the present day has no more trials, no more hurdles that the trip into adulthood puts in your way. Those are the hurdles that make you grow and strive harder or fly skyward with love’s first blush. Taeko is grounded.
Takahata’s oeuvre has more of an adult’s perspective than Miyazaki. Childhood fantasy is further in the background whilst the fantastic challenges of real life move into the foreground. His colours are more muted. The emotional palette is perhaps less intense. It is definitely wider. That is not to say that he cannot make great mischief, from the bizarre shape-shifting raccoons of Pom Poko to the light family farce of My Neighbours the Yamadas, to the somehow likeable spoilt brat antics of Jarinko Chie. Nevertheless the frivolity is infused with a realism tilting towards, but not falling into, the cynical.
Trying Pineapple - Taeko's sister in the blue sweater is yawning. How many animations would add details like this for characters who are not the focus of the scene?
There are parts of Only Yesterday where Takahata (adapting from the manga by Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone) takes stock with his character and retreats from constantly energising her story. A long section is devoted to explaining and showing the process of gathering up the flowers. What animation would feel like a light-hearted school soap opera one moment and a documentary another? You can understand it when he says he is influenced by both The French New Wave and Italian Neorealism. What animation would devote almost a minute to the sun rising over the hills as the women work (top)?
At first this interlude in the fields seems to be a stop-over. Naively we think that if the protagonist does not move, then the story will not. Yet it is not an interlude. It has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, the flowers and their careful, assiduous cultivation from seedling to full bloom are a metaphor for the growth of our heroine (I say heroine not because she battles evil or changes the world for the better but because she is a likeable, positive presence whom we care and root for). Secondly, the later scenes bring about a dawning in us and in her that the flower of maturity may not bloom forever but that its beauty should be enjoyed for as long as possible.
In other words, growing up may be exciting but the benefit of being grown up is reaping the rewards of childhood in full.
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This is, for lack of a better word, succulent film-making. The delicate lines and powdered colors have an air of fleeting memories and the whole thing seems wrapped up in a dream state that we want to stay in. Miyazaki is always considered the master from this region but I dare-say that Takahata is right there in the mastery department. His films a supremely detailed and beautifully rendered with a kind of flow to it that sees none of the trade mark choppiness that animation from Japan often produces. Here, the movements are more to akin to the graceful flow of Disney and this is part and parcel to the detailed delicacy of the characters.
Like GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, this film is a masterpiece of emotion and growth and is as vitally important as any live action film trying to tackle the same nerves and subjects. Frankly, I prefer this over live action any day of the week.
Dennis,
Well said. Succulent indeed. You’re right on the “choppiness” too.
It is harder for live-action to have the same delicacy without being soppy or too ephemeral. I would say the best in that regard are Kenji Mizoguchi and Hou Hsiao Hsien.
Thanks.
I don’t quite see the siimilarity to GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (one of animation’s most powerful pieces in every sense, and a defining anti-war statement) Dennis, but I am more than intrigued and appreciate the depth in both the style and prevailing themes. Again a marvelous choice, aimed to enlighten as well as to celebrate!
Sam,
As Dennis said, this is a film especially worth seeing because it treats its subjects in a delicate, unfussy way very rarely found in live-action film.
There is another film quite similar to this high up in the Countdown.
NO, Sam, dear friend, you misunderstood me slightly here. The themes and the story-lines are very different with these two film (and I am inclined to tell you that I prefer FIREFLIES, as you rightfully stated, because it’s one of the most powerful and creative anti-war films-I saw FIREFLIES recently and am still overwhelmed by the experience), but what I am praising THIS film for and compairing ii with FIREFLIES is in the animation. Unlike other Japanese animation (including Miyazaki) there is much less of choppy and jerky movement in the work of Takahata. His characters move with a far more graceful flow and this, like the movement seen in classic Disney animation (the best flow in the art of animation), is, I feel, due to more drawings for a specific movement. To explain, Janusz Kaminiski took every fourth or fifth fraime of film out of the Omaha Beach sequence to give SAVING PRIVATE RYAN a more newsreel like quality, and to heighten the tension of the scene, the choppiness of that sequence involves the subtraction of frames, the movement of a particular soldier or person is incomplete. In Japanese animation, most movement is parred down to its basics in individual drawing so the process is sped up and ready for completion far more quickly than, say, the animation of classic Disney films or Pixar, they labor to give you more drawings or images so when the film is run 24 fraimes per second, the movement of a character is more flowing and natural. Lets say a movement of Dumbo moving his foot will take one second to do in animation. The artists will produce TWENTY FOUR drawings to make the movement happen. Take the same movement and apply it to most Japanese animation houses (who pump out there work at the same time they’re pumping out work for shows like the American THE SIMPSONS – yes, they have their animation sent to these places for quick completion) and they will most likely produce LESS than TWENTY FOUR drawings for the same TWENTY FOUR FRAMES PER SECOND. This is why, as beautiful as most of Japanese animation is, the reason you get alot of jerkiness and choppiness in the movement. The Japanese are known, famously, for concentraiting more on character design, story and background design in animation than they are in the actual “movement” of a character in “animation”.
GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, like the film above, are rare examples of Japanese animation where the same concentration of design and construction are applied to the process that makes everything move. Takahata is one of the few from that region that goes the extra mile to make the movement just as beautiful as everythin g else around it.
I adore ONLY YESTERDAY, but his masterpiece is GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. The similarities in both of them is the supreme artistry that Takahata brings to each film he makes…
Reading my statement above describing the labor that goes into the making of an animated film made me realize something…
People who make animated films have to be off their rocker!!!! It’s a meticulous and time consuming art (particularly if the artist is doing it without the aid of computers) that is very much about repitition and redrawing each character again and again but with a slight difference in each and every drawing. Try making a simple “flip-book” of, say, a man walking fromn one side of a page to another and you’ll get the idea of the time consuming meticulousness that goes into a film that runs for over 90 minutes. Animators are often known to give up their social and family lives in sacrifice for the art that drives them. They are a rare breed that should be given just as much, if not more, respect than the masters of live action film-making. The process of animation is far away harder and more time consuming than even the most complicated live action filmmaking. Take into consideration a film like WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? that combines both styles of film-making and the process is DOUBLED.
My respect for guys like Miyazaki, Disney, Bruce Timm, Brad Bird, John Lassiter, William Hannah and Joseph Barbera, Max and Dave Fleischer and the supreme Chuck Jones is ten fold. The fact that they are bringing there dreams more closer to life than any live action film ever could is worthy of a respect that would include me getting on my knees and bowing to them…..
“People who make animated films have to be off their rocker!!!!”
Haha! Probably. Especially those who don’t delegate to teams of artists to complete the vision. I can think of three animators especially who will be coming up in the Countdown.
I really enjoyed GF and will mark this down too, as a must see.
Thanks once again for an interesting review! Cheers!
My pleasure, Coffee Messiah.
Reblogged this on loveyourtoast and commented:
Saw Only Yesterday at the Belcourt; eternally grateful. Probably one of the top five most beautiful wonderful movies I’ve ever seen.
Thanks very much Kelly! It is indeed wonderful. I like more it more.
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