A great film. I agree mostly with the 10/10 reviews above. Excellent artwork, great attention to the details of the lives of 'The borrowers' and their habitat. The music by Cécile Corbel was great, especially in a Japanese theatre where they bother to do decent sound calibration and have great dynamic range (unlike the UK); I did at points feel like it had been inserted rather forcefully and that integration with the general BGM could have been smoother.
As a side note I have read a lot of complaints about Cécile Corbel's music for this film saying that the Japanese accent is terrible and it's not traditional but would like to point out that just because someone may enjoy traditional Japanese culture doesn't mean that modern Japanese culture does not appreciate foreign talent and that foreign culture plays a huge role in the modern Japanese lifestyle.
I would not down-rate this film on sound alone, though feel it falls short of a 10/10 in the way that the story played out. The ending to the film attempts to be highly emotional, which I would expect, but for the wrong reasons. It implies a serious bonding of spirits between Sho and Arietti which wasn't allowed to develop during the film and so rather than the bitter-sweet feeling described in a previous review, it ended rather bitterly with Sho essentially being abandoned rather hastily with a clear emphasis on the potential relationship between Arietti and Spiller. All this resulted in the feeling of a shallow story with no discernible morals behind it, which far be it from a happy ending, in the original story morals were present; giving the story a reason why it was worth telling.
So I'm giving this film an 8, it's a visual and aural masterpiece, but the 'borrowing' of the story, with no attempt to correctly adopt it for film and no show of a true understanding of its meaning leaves me content that I've seen a very impressive artistic demo.
As a side note I have read a lot of complaints about Cécile Corbel's music for this film saying that the Japanese accent is terrible and it's not traditional but would like to point out that just because someone may enjoy traditional Japanese culture doesn't mean that modern Japanese culture does not appreciate foreign talent and that foreign culture plays a huge role in the modern Japanese lifestyle.
I would not down-rate this film on sound alone, though feel it falls short of a 10/10 in the way that the story played out. The ending to the film attempts to be highly emotional, which I would expect, but for the wrong reasons. It implies a serious bonding of spirits between Sho and Arietti which wasn't allowed to develop during the film and so rather than the bitter-sweet feeling described in a previous review, it ended rather bitterly with Sho essentially being abandoned rather hastily with a clear emphasis on the potential relationship between Arietti and Spiller. All this resulted in the feeling of a shallow story with no discernible morals behind it, which far be it from a happy ending, in the original story morals were present; giving the story a reason why it was worth telling.
So I'm giving this film an 8, it's a visual and aural masterpiece, but the 'borrowing' of the story, with no attempt to correctly adopt it for film and no show of a true understanding of its meaning leaves me content that I've seen a very impressive artistic demo.