Movie Night- When Marnie was There

Anna Sasaki, a 12 year old girl, lives in Sapporo with her foster parents, Yoriko and her husband. Who she calls Auntie and Uncle. One day while at school she collapses due to an asthma attack. Her parents send her to spend the summer with Setsu and Kiyomasa Owia, relatives of Yoriko, in Kushiro, a rural seaside town. The air is clear there and it should help Anna get better.
While she is exploring the town she sees an abandoned mansion that is overgrown and in disarray. She wades across the marsh to investigate it. As she looks around she it seems familiar to her. She losses track of time an gets trapped by the rising tide. Toichi, an old fisherman, rescues her with his rowboat. The Oiwas tell her the mansion used to be a vacation home for some foreigners, but now it has been empty for a long time. At night, Anna starts to dream of a blond girl in the mansion. She is having her hair brushed  by an old woman.
 The night of the Tanabata festival, Anna finds a rowboat by the shore and uses to go to the mansion. There she meets Marnie, the blond girl. Anna tells Marnie about her dreams, Marnie assures Anna that she is not a dream. The two agree to keep their meeting secret and the meet again at night several times.
One night, Marnie invites Anna to a party, her parents are throwing, at the mansion. The house is filled with guest. Marnie disgues Anna as a local fower girl to get her into the party. While at the party, Anna sees Marnie dancing with a boy, Kazuhiko. The two girls dance out side together later in the night. Later in the night, some of the town people find Anna asleep by the post office. The next day, Anna goes back to the mansion, but it has returned to it's ruined and abandoned state.
A while later, Anna is sitting on the shore sketching, she meets Hisako. Hisako paints pictures of the marsh and the mansion. She comments that Anna's sketches look like a girl she knew when she was young, her name was Marnie and she lived in the mansion. She then tells Anna, that the mansion is being renovated since some in moving in. Anna walks across the marsh to the mansion, she meets a girl named Sayaka, who is moving into the mansion. Sayaka has discovered Marnie's dairy, it had been hidden in the mansion. The diary talks about a party that had a local flower girl at it. Several of the pages have been turn out of the end of the diary.
Marnie reappears the next day. Marnie tells Anna her parents are always traveling abroad. They leave her at the mansion with her nanny and two maids, who abuse her physically and psychologically. Anna tells her that she hates and resents her parents for abandoning her even though she know it wasn't their fault. Else were, Sayaka found the missing pages from Marine's diary. Sayaka and her brother head for the silo looking for Anna. They find her unconscious and feverish along the way.
When Anna recovers, Sayaka shows her the missing pages and a painting Hisako gave Marine. They go ask Hisako about Marnie. She tells them Marnie's story. Marnie was neglected by her parents her whole life. She eventually married Kazuhiko and had a daughter Emily. Kazuhiko died while Emily was young, Marnie had to be sent to a sanatorum after his death. She sent Emily to a boarding school till she was well enough to take care of her. After Marnie was released, Emily Blamed Marnie of abandoning her. Emily leaves a few years later and never returns. She get married had has a daughter. She and her Husband were killed in a car accident when there daughter was a year old. Marnie takes in her granddaughter, but dies a year later. Her granddaughter was then placed in foster care.
When the summer ends, Yoriko comes to pick up Anna and take her home. She gives Anna a photo of the mansion, telling her it belonged to Anna's grandmother. Anna sees Marnie's name written on the back and she realizes that she is Marnie's granddaughter. As she leaves Kushiro she says good bey to her friends and introduces Yoriko as her mother.

I liked the story of this movie. The movie actually takes a look at how young teens look at then world. They know things about the world but they don't always understand things fully. Or they can not express their emotions fully. Other movies have tried this but they either fail by making the child annoying or to adult. This one just lets the characters be children. I like that. Anna knows she shouldn't hate or resent her parents or her grandma, but she doesn't have the maturity to do that. I really liked that. Studio Ghibli is does a wonderful job with making characters real and very believable.
I fully admit that when I watch Studio Ghibli movies I always look forward to the food scenes. Food is always animated beautifully. Also, there is normally a lot of it. In this one there are food scenes but that is not the focus of it. I'm fine with that.
The thing I did not like about this movie was the middle dragged. I felt that about 15 to 20 minutes of it could have been easily cut. I'm not saying a full 15 or 20 minutes strait, but a few minutes here and a few there. It could have easily been a 90 minute movie instead of and hour and 45 minutes. It is typical of Easter movies to have different pacing then western movies. So, it did fit with other Ghibli movies.
I do recommend this movie. I say watch it if you want a good story that is very sad. Even though the movie ends on a happy note the way there is not happy at all. It's heart braking and hard to watch at points.
Next week I'll be doing Perfect Blue.

~^.^