Mary and The Witch’s Flower
This 2017 film is the first from Studio Ponoc, founded by Yoshiaki Nishimura, formerly of Studio Ghibli. Much of the crew of this new studio is from Ghibli, including director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who previously directed When Marnie Was There and was lead animator on Spirited Away. Unsurprisingly, with this kind of pedigree, Mary and the Witch’s Flower could easily pass for a Studio Ghibli film. From the looks of things, Hayao Miyazaki’s legacy is in good hands. Ponoc has comes strong out of the gate.
The premise of Mary and the Witch’s Flower is admittedly not bold or new (and in fact closely resembles the aforementioned Spirited Away), but the movie is nonetheless beautifully crafted. It is basically a hundred minutes of eye candy, with likable and fluidly animated characters moving across imaginative and intricately detailed environments, complete with the requisite aerial sequences that were Studio Ghibli’s hallmark. This is simply one of the best-looking animated films I’ve ever seen.
Our heroine is young Mary, who has recently moved into a pleasantly shabby old manor out in the country, where she now lives with her great aunt and awaits the arrival of her parents. It is late summer, and she is restless and bored. When she follows a black cat into the nearby forest, she stumbles upon an old broom and a flower that can give her magic power that lasts a single night.
The flying broom whisks her away to Endor College, a school of magic run by the grandmotherly but faintly menacing Madam Mumblechook and her mad scientist sidekick Doctor Dee. With her bright red hair, black cat, and seemingly prodigious magic powers, Mary fools Mumblechook into believing she’s a new student. A grand tour of the school, featuring fantastical scenery and whimsical goings-on, commences.
By the end of it, however, Mary has let slip that she got her power from a flower—a flower Dee and Mumblechook covet. To get their hands on it, they kidnap Peter, a young boy with whom Mary had earlier been having spats (suggesting that he’s a love interest), so Mary must use more of the flower’s energy to attempt a rescue.
For an animated children’s film, Mary and the Witch’s Flower is a little slow getting started as it introduces us to our protagonists and their setting. At about the twenty-minute mark, however, it picks up and thenceforth maintains a good, steady pace. Near the middle, it appears ready to deliver a let-down of a deus ex machina ending, but it neatly dodges that problem and proceeds to deliver a satisfying climax.
If it falters at all, it is in having too small a cast. During Mary’s tour, we see much of the faculty and studentry, but these characters strangely disappear when the plot gets moving, so that it looks as if Mumblechook and Dee are the only people in school. A careful viewer might also notice some fudging in the portrayal of how long Mary’s borrowed magic lasts; she keeps going at the end after it seems she should have run out.
At its heart, Mary and the Witch’s Flower is essentially a Frankenstein story. It’s hinted early on that Mumblechook is probably up to no good, and the tour of the school ends with the sinister reveal that she and Dee conduct heartless experiments on animals; they are, basically, a fantasy version of vivisectionists, researchers so thirsty for knowledge that they use inhumane means to acquire it. Their ultimate plans for the magic flower, when finally revealed, is arguably a good one, even if their means of reaching it is foolhardy.
In the typical manner of anime dungeonpunk, Mary and the Witch’s Flower blurs the line between magic and science, what with its steampunkish machinery and even the casual comment that electricity is a type of magic. At one point, Mary throws away one of the flower’s blossoms, saying she doesn’t need magic—and since magic here is clearly a metaphor for technology, we may interpret that as either a call for simpler living or perhaps merely a condemnation of unethical experimentation, a theme already developed earlier in the movie.
In any case, whatever the message is, the movie is not preachy or heavy-handed, so the viewer can simply enjoy the delightful visuals and make up his own mind about what it means.
I highly recommend this, and I think it would be an excellent film for families with children. It’s not often on here that I get to discuss a title that I think kids and adults can enjoy equally, but this is one. I’m eager to see more of Studio Ponoc’s work.
