The Secret World of Arrietty is an animated movie that was created by Studio Ghibli and released in 2010. The movie was directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who is a Japanese director. The movie was based on the 1952 novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton, which was the start of a series of books of the same title. The movie follows a young doll doll-sized girl named Arrietty, played by Mirai Shida, and a human boy named Sho, played by Ryunosuke Kamiki. As well as Arrietty’s father, Pod, played by Tomokazu Miura, and her mother, Homily, Shinobu Otake. Sho’s housekeeper Haru is the main antagonist and is played by Kirin Kiki, and Sho’s aunty Sadako is played by Keiko Takeshita. Another character shows up later in the movie named Spiller, played by Tatsuya Fujiwara, who plays a major role in resolving the plot. The movie never states a specific time period or location, but the scenery is reminiscent of rural Japan, and the only technology in the movie is a rotary phone, so the movie takes place in the not-too-distant past.
Protagonists
The Movie has two main protagonists, a young girl named Arrietty, and a young boy named Sho. Arrietty is a creature called a borrower, which is a small, doll-sized person that hides from humans and survives off misplaced items that humans will not notice are gone. Arrietty’s whole family are Borrowers, and they live beneath the floorboards of Sho’s family house. Arrietty’s parents are very cautious around humans. it is revealed later in the film that there used to be more families of Borrowers living near them, but they all either disappeared or fled from humans. The lack of other Borrowers in the area has a distinct effect on the Borrower family; they have not seen any other borrowers in a long time, and they are not sure if there are any other Borrowers alive at all. As a result, Arrietty is very adventurous and desperate to try new things; she is not always good at listening to her parents' warnings about humans, and it gets her into trouble. Arrietty’s mother is a very anxious person; she has lost a lot of family members in her life, and as a result, she is very paranoid, especially when it comes to her daughter. Arrietty disobeys her parents and interacts with humans in hopes of making their lives safer, but she puts them all in danger and causes them to lose their home.
Sho is a human boy who is struggling with a potentially deadly heart condition. He was sent to live in a rural house belonging to his family so he could relax, leading up to a major procedure done to try and help his heart. Sho’s parents are not very active in his life; his parents are divorced, and his mother spends all her time at work. His aunt shows the most interest in him, and the housekeeper for the cottage is asked to take care of him. Sho sees Arrietty early after arriving at the house and is immediately curious about the Borrowers. His family always tells stories about small people, and Sho wants to try and help the Borrowers live better lives. Because of his condition, Sho is used to being cared for and protected, he wants to do that for someone else. However, Sho’s attempts at helping Arrietty’s family ultimately put them in danger, leading to Haru, the housekeeper, capturing Homily and trying to have the Borrowers exterminated. Sho’s fixation on the borrowers resembles a white savior complex. Sho wants to help a marginalized family feel more positively about his life, but he instead increases the stress and danger the Borrowers live in.
Conflict
Arrietty and her parents experience many conflicts together, but also between each other’s ideas and worldviews. The entire family lives in an isolated area away from any other Borrowers. For at least fourteen years, they have not interacted with anyone but each other and are unsure of whether there are any other Borrowers left. They also must live in hiding from Humans discovering their presence and from animals who want to eat them. The constant danger of their lifestyle has a huge toll on their mental well-being. Arrietty’s ideas about humans also go against the advice and lifestyle of her parents. Arrietty does not realize how dangerous humans are and how serious her parents' rules are until it’s too late. Her interactions with Sho piqued his interest and led him and Haru to interfere with the Borrower’s lives. Sho is trying to help the borrowers, and Haru is trying to hurt the borrowers; both end up causing them problems. Even though he meant well, Sho still ended up terrifying and endangering the Borrowers.
Climax and Resolution
While looking for a new place to stay, Pod meets a young Borrower who lives in the wilderness named Spiller and takes him to meet the family. Spiller tells Arrietty that he does not have a family, and he must live on his own off the land, this helps Arrietty realize how important her family is to her, and how lucky she is to have the life she does. Not long after that, Sho decides to move the kitchen out of a dollhouse and attach it to the Borrower’s house. He wants them to have a nice kitchen, but by ripping the ceiling and walls off the house and attaching the doll kitchen, he terrifies Homily and accidentally reveals the location of the Borrower's house to Haru.
The Tension reaches its highest when Haru rips open the Borrower's house and kidnaps Homily, trapping her in a jar and calling exterminators to capture the rest of the family. Sho agrees to help Arrietty save her mother, and in helping, he absolves himself of the fault and comes to realize how difficult it is being a borrower, and that forcing gifts on them was not the way to help them. The family immediately departs after this, with one final goodbye to Sho, where he thanks Arrietty, saying that she inspired him to keep fighting to survive through his condition. Seeing the impossible odds Arrietty and her family have overcome and how passionately they value survival renews his desire to survive as well.
Arrietty resolves her arc by accepting that their new circumstances are her fault and apologizing for uprooting their life. Her parents do not deny her faults but tell her that they forgive her, and they are excited to move forward and make something new with her. How Arrietty’s parents approach her apology is very important, at no point do they deny that her actions were foolish and caused them to lose their home, but they are never angry with her, they trust her to see the consequences and they believe in her ability to learn from her mistakes on her own. The family travels with Spiller to a new home where they will no longer be isolated from other Borrowers, where they do not have to feel misunderstood and alone anymore.
Setting and Scenery
The most evocative location in the film is easily the Borrower’s house; this location does as much to flesh out the characters as the dialogue, if not more. The entire movie is hand-drawn with incredible detail, which makes every shot feel rich and lively. However, the Borrower’s house is alive with detail, every element of the house is designed to look handmade by the Borrowers out of lost human items. The sadness the Borrowers feel about having to leave their home is always fully understood by the audience because every scene inside the house emphasizes how much love they put into this home. The walls are decorated with large pictures of beautiful scenery and sheet music, every piece of furniture is hand-made from leftover materials and is painted colorful and elegant style. Fabric pieces like beds and curtains are sewn by hand, and all metal pieces are hand-welded by Pod in his workshop. The Kitchen is decorated with pictures of the sea, a watch is hanging on the wall like a clock, and flowers and leaves are laid out around the kitchen for use in cooking. Every item in their home is something other people forgot or overlooked, but the Borrowers make each one feel like a treasure. In a way, the home they’ve built is an extension of themselves, overlooked and undervalued. The labor the family has put into creating this space for each other makes it feel like a tragedy, and when Sho damages the house to add the doll kitchen, it feels almost disrespectful to the work they’ve made to make their own space, as beautiful as the doll kitchen is, the act of replacing the work the family put in together with a human made fancy kitchen disrupts the safety the Borrowers worked hard to cultivate.
Emotions
Two scenes in the movie elicit anxiety in the viewer, one is towards the start of the movie, and the other directly mirrors it at the climax. Sho and Arrietty’s first interaction perfectly establishes how terrifying humans can be from the Borrower’s perspective. The first night after Sho moves in, Arrietty enters his room to collect a tissue for her mother, but before she can take the tissue, Sho spots her, and they make eye contact for a long time. Arrietty staring up into Sho’s eyes makes the viewer feel small and helpless; this escalates as the background noises fall away, and we can only hear Arrietty’s heartbeat and Sho’s loud breathing. This encounter is only a brief moment, but the pacing makes it feel as though it goes on forever. Arrietty tries to shrink away from view but cannot escape Sho’s gaze, even as Sho tries to reassure her that he isn’t going to hurt her. The magnitude of his presence fills both Arrietty and the audience with fear as well as the shame of getting caught.
This scene is mirrored during the climax when Haru captures Homily, the angle Haru’s face is seen makes her wrath feel inescapable. Just like Arrietty froze in Sho’s gaze, Homily completely breaks down before being captured, unable to escape or contain her terror, she is completely helpless. The animation perfectly captures this feeling, making the audience cower and panic alongside her. In that long moment, the audience is made to understand exactly what Homily was so afraid of the whole movie, as she is made to live through her worst nightmares. Haru not only terrifies and kidnaps Homily, but she also dehumanizes her, trapping her in a jar like an insect and calling exterminators to get rid of her family like they are pests. The scene makes the threat the humans pose feel very personal to the audience. It allows the viewer to inhabit the marginalized position that the borrowers are in, feeling completely at the mercy of a world that hates and fears them.
Art and Design
The animation in this film is a triumph of art and design; every shot is a hand-drawn masterpiece with incredible vision and purpose behind each shot. Each background is designed with clear intentions, and the scenery is integral to the emotional art of the film’s narrative. The contrast between the pieced-together and loving Borrower home and the quaint but empty Human home tells a specific story about the circumstances in which each family has had to live. With the borrowers working hard to make everything by hand to make their home comfortable, and the human house having some nice decorations, but being noticeably devoid of life in comparison.
The design for the doll house is also incredibly evocative. The furniture and appliances in the doll house are all beautifully shiny and pristine, beaming warmth and wealth off their surfaces. The doll house is very alluring, but it is not real; it was designed for the borrowers by someone who did not know them. The house was designed to convince the Borrowers to trust the family, to satisfy the Humans’ whimsical idea of the little people in their stories, not to keep them safe or respect their desires, privacy, and lifestyle. The design for these three houses is so different in such deliberate ways, and simply by existing in these locations, the characters in this movie come alive with personality and nuance.
Final Review
I would strongly recommend this movie, especially for the scenery and design. The creativity that oozes out of the background of every scene makes it clear that a lot of care was put into this movie from every person who helped make it a reality. The story is appealing for all ages, it is equally whimsical and thrilling, with lovable characters and inspired worldbuilding. The film will make you care for its characters and sympathize with their mistakes and circumstances. This movie is a great introduction to films from Studio Ghibli and will assuredly capture the hearts and imagination of any audience.