Arrietty

I loved the movie Arrietty. I had bought the book years ago when I was living in Japan, but I don't think I ever read it, and it got lost sometime when we moved house. Actually I saw Arrietty twice, the first time in Japanese, then a second time in French.

Arrietty is probably not one of the best Ghibli movies. It's a bit slow sometimes and at the final scene, I felt like the story was barely beginning. I think my favorite are Spirited Away and Howl's moving castle. Of course I also love Totoro and Kiki's delivery service, but I saw them so long ago and they are such classics, it's difficult to compare. Even if not up to the best of Ghibli standards, I enjoyed Arrietty a lot, not so much for its storyline or plot perhaps, but for the visual sense of wonderment given by the play with scale. I love the contrast between the human world and Arrietty's world, the magical scene when she discovers the dollhouse, and I like to reflect on the ingenuity deployed by borrowers, and various details linked to scale. For example, water is shown in a proper scale, with raindrops looking like little balloons next to Arrietty, and tea coming out from the tiny teapot almost in a single drop to fill the tiny teacup ; so how come fabric is so thin and flowing looking on Arrietty's body, not thick and rigid as it should be for such a small creature? Did Arrietty and her mother weave it out of spider thread? And of course, poring over drawings of Arrietty's house in the "Art of..." book is a never-ending source of pleasure, trying to work out how the rooms are organized, and which objects of human everyday life have been used as materials to build and decorate it.

Then there is the music - not so impressive perhaps the first time I saw the movie, compared to Joe's Hisaishi's sweeping orchestral themes, but I found the idea of celtic music for a Japanese animation movie intriguing, and bought the soundtrack CD. Puni and I quickly became fans of Arrietty's song, and the second time I saw the movie, I enjoyed the slow moments combining music and visuals.

 For my birthday, I got an Arrietty bag, and of course, after seeing the movie Puni and I became a bit obsessed with Arrietty's room and how to reconstruct it. So, we're going to try and make one. Of course, I can never hope to make an Arrietty doll as perfect as Amily Lau's, not to speak of her room - she recreated everything exactly how it is in the movie, down to the patterns on the wallpaper, the fabric for the sheets on the bed, the specially woven carpet.

I'm not a builder of dollhouses so I chose a ready-made doll room, even if it's not exactly right for the layout of Arrietty's room. For the doll, I'm going to use an Edith Flack Ackley pattern. So far we've got flowery paper for the walls, fake lawn for the floor, a big "D" to make the bookshelf above the bed, a table and chair, red clay for the stool, miniature books and a light bulb. Now we need time...

  

 

 

 

 

Comments

[noxy]

Oooo, how lovely! I've never seen Arrietty, but I did see The Borrowers, which is the live action movie, and where I fell in love with the name Arietti. (one of my dolls is named Arietti)

Good luck on your room! I'm sure it will look amazing! :D

[Ama]

Hi Hélène, I added your blog to mine but I'm not sure if it's in the right way (no picture appears, while it does with others) if you know how to do please tell me !
Nice song, funny I was expecting to see a japanese singing ;)

[Ama]

(I forgot to specify, not to my art blog but to a new one about EDs)