Chie the Brat
Japan, 1981
Directed by Isao Takahata
Chie the Brat isn’t available in the west and that’s a damn shame because this is precisely the kind of thing Japanese animation (and Japanese cinema) does so well. It isn’t a story about fighters with wacky hairdos talking endlessly about power levels, nor is it a boob and gore fest, and there are no giant robots involved in a psycho-religious plot to alter the course of humanity. It is a simple, lucid, comical story about a broken family’s attempts at reconciliation.
Studio Ghibli was still several years away when Takahata brought the comic Jarinko Chie to the screen but it is the first proto-Ghibli film to live up to that studio’s mammoth reputation and it is the first Takahata project to fully exhibit his characteristic approach to making films — “embellished reality” you might call it. Takahata’s films are episodic, often of the “slice of life” variety. Think of Yasujiro Ozu’s silent comedy I Was Born But as an animated feature and you’re on the right track. Instead of a plot with an apparent trajectory, we are given discrete scenes of everyday life: for instance, a Parent Day at school that blends the very real dread of embarrassment with the absurdist humor of misunderstanding, the private concealed visits between Chie and her mother in which Chie shares what she cannot with her father, or the briefly reunited family’s trip to an amusement park, where life momentarily brightens before old scars surface again.
Great animation breathes new life into even the most ordinary parts of real life. but it’s undervalued – nearly non-existent – here in the states where the profane, sexual, and violent are misconstrued as “mature.” Chie the Brat sees life as it is and attempts to find perspective in it – genuine maturity.
– Jonas Erickson
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