Only Yesterday (1991) 118m
The next time someone tells you that cartoons are for kids, shake your head sadly, mention ONLY YESTERDAY, and tell them how sorry you feel that they will never enjoy watching fine, mature works of animation. Isao Takahata's meditative story (he wrote and directed) could be seen as the finale of a progressive coming-of-age trilogy, all made by different directors and writers within Japan's Studio Ghibli. What would thematically be the first, WHISPER OF THE HEART, deals with friendship, romance and the details of life in junior high school; the second, THE OCEAN WAVES, covers the same themes in high school and post-graduation; the third, ONLY YESTERDAY, finds a woman reminiscing about elementary school while she ponders her direction in life. All three films share an animation style devoted to everyday realism, as if they were live-action dramas with an animated overlay.
The premise of the story is simple: 27-year old Taeko has a ten-day holiday and is going to spend it working on a safflower farm in the country. During this time she recalls memories of when she was ten years old and living in the city with her parents and two older sisters. The first time I saw ONLY YESTERDAY I thought I'd missed the point of the flashback sequences, but realized, on second viewing, that I had been conditioned by Western cinema's use of flashbacks as a means to comment on, or explain, the actions of the protagonist in the present. The connection in Takahata's story is tenuous at best: the scenes in the past are visualised with a different color sense than the present and the 10-year old Taeko looks and acts so differently from the 27-year old version that it's hard to imagine them as the same person. But the fact is that people change when they age (just look at Michael Apted's 7-UP documentary series if you want to see how dramatically childhood personalities can disappear in adulthood), and Takahata knows he doesn't need to make the events in the past relevant to Taeko's situation in the present. Taeko's reminscences aren't revelations, merely sketches that have stuck in her memory. How many other animated films are you likely to see that would spend screen time watching characters eat a pineapple, struggle with math homework, or discuss menstruation? And only Takahata/Ghibli would dare to animate a ten-minute dialogue scene between two characters sitting in a car. While it's true that the charm of ONLY YESTERDAY comes from the scenes in the past, the present-day story takes on a life of its own as the story develops and contributes greatly to its calm and contemplative mood.
But what's the point of the film's back-and-forth structure? It's not until after the final credits begin that it becomes plain, when both past and present coalesce (If you are lucky enough to see this in a cinema with an audience, it may pay to do as I did: inform the projectionist not to turn on the house lights when the end titles start). The point is not that Taeko is remembering specific incidents, but is remembering her personality as a child, when everyday life was full of possibilities. The predicted route of most films of this type (which, let's face it, are filmed with real actors, not animated ones) is to provide the protagonist with a choice in the final reel, and usually that choice is between a practical decision and a fanciful one. We already know, for example, that Tom Hanks is going to jump recklessly into the ocean after mermaid Daryl Hannah in SPLASH. But Taeko's choices in the story's final scene are both reasonable; it would be realistic of her character to take either one, for better or worse. You may not realize how much you've been drawn in by this film until its poignant final moments, when you find that you really do care about these characters. Like Taeko, you'll want to revisit these memories again.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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