Speaking from experience, being 14 years old is miserable. Really, any year where you're confined to middle school is nothing short of a nightmare. In this passage of life, you’re caught between your youngest years and some of the quasi-independence that comes with high school life. Anyone who claims to have positive memories looking back on themselves at 14 years old is lying, It’s a passage of life you grit your teeth through, not look back on with wistfulness decades down the road.
Maybe it's because of that baked-in anguish of that age that cinema has largely ignored centering narratives around people in that age range. Exceptions exist, as they always do, of course, like Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade. Traditionally, though, middle schoolers are supporting players in movies, if they exist at all. Whisper of the Heart, a 1995 adaptation of the Aoi Hiiragi manga Mimi o Sumaseba, dares to subvert this standard. Director Yoshifumi Kondō and screenwriter Hayao Miyazaki follow 14-year-old Shizuku Tsukishima (Yōko Honna). There is no greater fantastical importance (like a “chosen one” narrative) demanding the chronicling of her existence. Tsukishima is an ordinary person, albeit one headlining an extraordinary movie.
Whisper of the Heart immediately establishes its richly humanistic gaze with an opening montage (set to a woman singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads”) cutting between various parts of our nighttime Tokyo. These images quietly establish the profoundly lived-in depiction of Tsukishima's surroundings for the rest of the story. Said narrative concerns her engaging in very simple, mundane trials of adolescence. She grapples with her sister over their responsibilities in taking care of the house. Her best friend, Yuko Harada (Maiko Kayama), needs Tsukishima's writing skills to create a new version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. Then there’s the protagonist’s quest to uncover the identity of Seiji Amasawa, who has checked out so many of the books at the local library that she’s devoured.
As esteemed film critic Willow Catelyn Maclay put it, Whisper of the Heart “luxuriates in small moments until they become profound.” That’s a sentiment I can’t get out of my head whenever I think about Heart’s compelling nature. An early sequence where Harade and Tsukishima sing aloud the lyrics of the latter’s John Denver-inspired tunes, like “Concrete Roads.” Kondō keeps the camera static as the pair bond over these words. This streamlined visual approach echoes how immersed Harade and Tsukishima are in these songs. They’re not budging from this park bench, so the camera doesn’t suddenly swirl around or cut away either. This unhurried approach lets viewers truly appreciate this critical friendship.
Similarly moving is a sequence where Tsukishima sings one of her “Country Roads” pastiches with a boy who turns out to be none other than Senji Amasawa. As they harmonize together (him playing the violin, her singing), this boy’s grandfather and two of his companions join them with their own instruments. It’s a lovely bit of bonding and musical unity, just the kind of sweet slice of everyday humanity Whisper of the Heart is so good at portraying. The fact that this sequence caps off with Tsukishima being irritated to discover the boy she’s crooning with is Amasawa punctuates everything with the humorously realistic jaggedness of middle school emotions.
Amasawa’s workstation, where this impromptu musical performance occurs, radiates with the kind of cozy animation that is Whispers of the Heart’s bread and butter. The animation wizards at Studio Ghibli are famous for their ability to draw yummy-looking food, striking creature designs, and unforgettable fantasy realms. In these more grounded confines, I was struck by how these artists conjure up a discernibly realistic world for Tsukishima to inhabit that also isn’t a visual eyesore. Opting for “realism” isn’t an excuse to saturate the screen with grey hues and a lack of visual personality.
Instead, locations like Tsukishima’s apartment home radiate with a profound lived-in quality. I could smell the newspapers and magazines piling up in Tsukishima’s domicile. An alleyway that a mysterious cat travels down is rendered with such strikingly stark yet beckoning shadows that it’s understandable why Heart’s protagonist travels down this uncertain terrain. There’s a hominess to the way light pours into Tsukishima’s precious library that makes it instantly understandable why this would be a go-to refuge for this 14-year-old.
Many of the places that carve out special places in our memory aren’t grand abodes exuding prosperity or fantastical flourishes. Instead, they’re often ordinary locations we make extraordinary in the grand scope of history. One person might just see a dusty old music store. Another soul sees where piano-based passions blossomed. So it is with Whisper of the Heart’s quietly insightful animation. The detailed backdrops and visual care afforded to mundane domiciles are stunning to look at in the moment. On a macro scale, though, these elements reflect how precious memories can occur anywhere.
Precisely executed variations in this animation style also leave a tremendous impact. Especially unforgettable is the visuals in a sequence where Shirō Nishi (Keiju Kobayashi) recounts an important story set in World War II to Tsukishima. That yarn concerns how he came to own a glorious cat baron statue while falling in love with a woman in Paris. In these glimpses of yesteryear, the younger forms of Nishi and his lover are blacked out, save for their clothes. My heart ached watching this vivid suggestion that, even as Nishi’s memory fails him (perhaps even the face of the woman he loved sometimes eludes him), the emotions linger.
Nishi and Tsukishima are on opposing sides of existence. One is an elderly man clinging to mementos and other ways of remembering the past. The other is a young girl forming her important memories and starting to realize the greater complexities of the world. This dichotomy makes their sequences together so emotionally rich, I could feel my eyes beginning to water every time they spoke to one another. One such conversation concerns Nichi imploring Tsukishima to pursue her writing goals even if her words aren’t perfectly formed. To illustrate this point, Nishi uses a "beryl" fragment to indicate to this 14-year-old "the rough stone is inside you, you have to find it and then polish it" and to not "expect perfection at first."
These moving words of affirmation inspire Tsukishima to say two sentences I can't get out of my head: "I'm scared. What if there isn't a beautiful crystal in me?"
Growing up means realizing how inescapable failure and vulnerability are. These two qualities don’t vanish the moment you graduate high school. They follow you like a storm cloud, always making you question whether or not there’s a “beautiful crystal” inside your being. Miyazaki’s script cuts straight to the soul with Tsukishima’s subdued expression of vulnerability. Such a moment wouldn’t work nearly as well if Yoshifumi Kondō didn’t wield a deft command of naturalistically getting audiences invested in Tsukishima, Nishi, and everyone else in Whisper of the Heart’s world. Kondō’s sole directorial effort (he tragically and suddenly passed away in 1998) is a masterpiece uncovering so much potent pathos from understated corners of life.