Only Yes­ter­day (1991)

When you boil it all down, much of the mag­ic of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li derives from the abil­i­ty that two elder­ly Japan­ese gen­tle­men have of reimag­in­ing them­selves as gan­g­ly young girls. Where that might sound hor­ri­bly seedy in any oth­er con­text, this is a case of dis­cern­ing and empa­thet­ic artists chan­nelling their feel­ings, their thoughts, their wis­dom and their aspi­ra­tions into the minds of oth­ers and still form­ing char­ac­ters who are unique and – even though fab­ri­cat­ed through ani­ma­tion – ter­ri­fy­ing­ly real.

Taeko, the ​“star” of Isao Takahata’s 1991 fea­ture, Only Yes­ter­day, is a pan­theon-lev­el Ghi­b­li hero­ine, even though the film remains one of the less­er-known titles in the studio’s stag­ger­ing body of work. In this film she doesn’t real­ly have a quest to embark on or a phys­i­cal goal to achieve. It’s more of a psy­cho­log­i­cal itch to scratch. Her jour­ney is one which is more meta­phys­i­cal, whisk­ing her back to the days of her event­ful youth and exam­in­ing the things that she believes forged her into the woman she is today. A desire to take a break from the bus­tle of inner-city Tokyo and head to the coun­try­side to pick flow­ers with her extend­ed fam­i­ly serves as the cat­a­lyst for sub­se­quent rev­e­la­tions. As in many Ghi­b­li films, nature itself is a ton­ic for the soul.

Some may read Only Yes­ter­day as some­thing of a sequel to Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 mas­ter­piece My Neigh­bour Totoro, although this time the sur­re­al sym­bol­ism of cud­dly wood­land crit­ters and cat-shaped busses is replaced by frag­ments of mem­o­ries that take a while to sat­is­fy­ing­ly inter­lock. The film is a sim­ple paean to spend­ing time think­ing about your life and your iden­ti­ty. It says that we should remem­ber the things that have hap­pened to us and build on them rather than purge them in a blind search for future hap­pi­ness. It’s very pro nos­tal­gia, sug­gest­ing it’s not only impor­tant for per­son­al growth, but vital.

This is hushed, del­i­cate, detail-ori­ent­ed film­mak­ing of the high­est qual­i­ty. The sto­ry is told through glances and expres­sions, and is more inter­est­ed in cap­tur­ing inner feel­ing than it is plot points or con­ven­tion­al char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. This new dig­i­tal restora­tion of the film can be seen with the voice tal­ents of Daisy Rid­ley and Dev Patel.