Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 9 August

Whisper of the Heart (Kondô, 1995) is streaming on Netflix

We’ve had a few days of ‘grown-up’ recom­mend­a­tions but that’s not the full kaupapa so here’s a sug­ges­tion for the whole family.

Whisper of the Heart starts with Olivia Newton-John’s ver­sion of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ and then – as if such a thing were pos­sible – gets even better!

This is a Ghibli film – not a Miyazaki and there­fore not worthy of a theme park – but as charm­ing a film as ever you’ll see.

It is 1995 and lib­rar­ies are trans­ition­ing to bar­code sys­tems. From the old card sys­tem, Junior High book­worm Shizuku real­ises that the books she has been bor­row­ing have all been read by a boy before her. (The pri­vacy implic­a­tions of this scen­ario are not investigated.)

Is this magic, or is someone watch­ing her and pre­dict­ing her choices?

A clas­sic Ghibli cat meets her on a train and leads her to an antique shop in the hills where the mys­tery deep­ens – and widens!

Ghibli films that aren’t from Miyazaki or Takahata tend to be ignored but this was delight­ful. Full of gen­er­ous cul­tur­al detail – as always – this film will hit the spot: romantic, nos­tal­gic, uplifting …

Almost all the Ghibli films are stream­ing on Netflix in New Zealand so I recom­mend dig­ging deep­er than just Totoro.