Whisper Of The Heart

By Patrick Samuel • January 9th, 2012

WHISPER OF THE HEART (Blu-ray)
StudioCanal

Release date: January 9th, 2012
Certificate (UK): PG
Running time: 111 minutes

Year of production: 1995

Writer: Hayao Miyazaki
Director: Yoshifumi Kondo

Country of origin: Japan
Original language: Dubbed English

If you’re old enough you might be able to remember a time when school libraries weren’t just a place for DVD’s, Blu-rays, internet connections and music collections.

There was a time when they were a home for books, lots and lots of books. Along with those books were checkout cards that told you when your items were due back. Those cards showed your name, which also meant that it showed everyone else names who borrowed that book before you did.

That was before it all went computerised with plastic cards, barcodes and scanners to issue books. Now all those names are held on a database and not on the checkout cards.

Whisper of the Heart is written by Hayao Miyazaki and directed Yoshifumi Kondo and it’s the charming animated story of Shizuku Tsukishima, a 14 year old girl in Tama New Town, Tokyo, who should be studying for her exams but instead she is preoccupied with reading as many books as she can. That’s until she discovers that every book she checks out have already been checked out by a boy called Seiji Amasawa, as the checkout card indicates.

It’s not long before Shizuku starts daydreaming about him and her friends tease her about her first ever crush. Seeing as they both share the same literary interests they could be a perfect match for each other and she desperately wants to meet this mysterious Seij. There’s also an annoying boy she keeps bumping into, he comments on her hearty appetite and her corny song lyrics and it drives her into a rage, but eventually she starts to wonder if this annoying boy could be Seiji.

They do meet and the course of their blossoming friendship is beautifully written and rendered here for the screen.

There’s a sense of adventure and discovery as Shizuku’s world is opening up before her but at the same time Miyazaki brings our attention to themes such as modernisation, education and following our own paths in life. This is perhaps best represented in the scene where Shizuku is sat down by her parents for a talk about her falling grades and her father says to her “It’s never easy when you do things differently from everyone else.”

For fans of Miyazaki and of Japanese animation and culture, Whisper of the Heart is something they will no doubt already be familiar with, but for those who are new followers, it’s a beautiful and thoughtful tale about growing up and learning to follow your heart.

Patrick Samuel

The founder of Static Mass Emporium and one of its Editors in Chief is a composer and music producer with a philosophy degree. Static Mass is where he lives his passion for film and writing about it. A fan of film classics, documentaries and World Cinema, Patrick prefers films with an impeccable way of storytelling that reflect on the human condition.

You can find his music on Soundcloud .

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