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The Little Girl Who Conquered Time - 1983
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Written by Wataru Kenmotsu
Based on the novel "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" by Yasutaka Tsutsui
Starring Tomoyo Harada, Ryōichi Takayanagi, Toshinori Omi
Yukari Tsuda & Ittoku Kishibe
I've often daydreamed about being able to time travel. I'm such a nostalgic person - I usually go to sleep each night recounting this or that period in my life. I'd love to see old places, friends and relatives again. Being able to time travel a day or two at will would be the cherry on the cake - I'd use that to go back and ace exams, impress girls, learn instruments, play sport and generally enjoy the hell out of having foreknowledge. Said the wrong thing to my girlfriend? Go back and fix it. Been walking around for 10 minutes with toilet paper stuck to my shoe? Time travel will take care of that. Movies like The Little Girl Who Conquered Time interest me, because they take that fleeting, ethereal fantasy and play it out like it could really happen. I didn't quite get what I was hoping for though - this movie has such a light and delicate touch that it kind of feels like the time travel component was incidental. It's a very slow-moving, contemplative movie - and I'm never quite enjoying it while I'm watching it. It didn't quite mesh with my personal tastes.
Otherwise known as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, this 1983 Japanese science fiction movie features Tomoyo Harada as Kazuko Yoshiyama. Yoshiyama is stargazing on a class excursion one night with friend Goro Horikawa (Toshinori Omi) when they both literally bump into Kazuo Fukamachi (Ryōichi Takayanagi). The trio form a close bond, but it's not long before Yoshiyama is having fainting spells, and at times feels like time is stuttering out of synch. To try and work out what's happening to her, she gets closer to plant-loving Fukamachi - someone who seems to have answers as to what's happening to her. When she starts waking up and reliving the same day over and over again, Yoshiyama feels her entire world coming apart at the seams - having foreknowledge turns out to be a benefit here and there, but why is this happening to her? And why is Fukamachi so obsessed with flowers and skipping days off school to go collect specimens? The answers will lead to a heartbreaking revelation for her.
This movie has some really nice features. Take for example the dimly lit cinematography in the science lab where Yoshiyama faints - it's very unique and it's own thing. As is also the frequent transitions from black and white to colour, which often intermingle whereupon there will be both at the same time. I often think of the contrast in terms of dead and alive, stagnant or creative - but I found the reasoning harder to pinpoint in this. Perhaps it was the presence of love's flame being lit, hope, joy or all of the above. Cinematographer Yoshitaka Sakamoto also worked on Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's insane (and very enjoyable) film Hausu. The score by Masataka Matsutôya was also exceedingly pleasant, and for me one of the most enjoyable facets to the movie. I had another couple of listens to his song, "Toki o kakeru shôjo" after watching the movie - and apparently it was very popular in Japan at the time, with many different versions being released. It's very cute and original having Yoshiyama sing the song to us during the closing credits while life goes on as normal in the background.
Features are features though - getting into the movie itself was much harder for me. It's a film with a protagonist walking around in a daze much of the time, and I never relaxed into it's ultra-slow incremental tempo. With some slow movies what I get in each moment is enough by itself, but with The Little Girl Who Conquered Time I was a little bit restless, and not totally in love with any of the characters or mood. Every now and then there's a little flourish with editing and visual effects which suit the manner of a filmmaker who would make a film like Hausu, but for the most part Yoshiyama is sleepily plodding through scenes lost in deep contemplative thought. Brief schisms in the universe don't do all that much to trigger any reasonably interesting development in the plot - and I'm left thinking that this is a movie where it's absolutely essential to love the mood of quiet Japanese neighborhoods, glasshouses, and classrooms. This has more to do with coming to terms with the challenges of approaching adulthood and falling in love than time travel itself. The quiet moments spent with someone you're developing feelings for.
As with time travel, I also think a lot about those quiet moments - and I can't help thinking that I was on the wrong track with this movie. It's a time travel movie with an extraordinarily different approach - and instead of gaining by flitting through the ether and teleporting here and there we lose, because love is very much of the here and now. The time we can trace directly. I think it was a nice touch having the little kissing statues in Yoshiyama's room - something directly related to childhood. This is a kind of coming of age movie about an awakening and a cleft between things we hold dear from the past, and the completely new yearnings and desires that seem to have sprung up from nowhere - always beckoning for us to let go of the past and move forward. To follow sudden and irrepressible urges. It doesn't feel all that different to Yoshiyama's anxiety-inducing zipping around in time. One day in class she's totally unprepared, and the next she's a completely different person - overprepared.
In the meantime, I appreciate a movie that pays tribute to memory, for as I said - I'm a hopelessly nostalgic person. While I didn't enjoy the movie as much as I thought I might, it feels good to at least be on the same page as to it's overall themes and contemplations. Time, is a strange and puzzling thing to think about - but that's why I love thinking about it. It's probably just as well I can't time travel - it looks stressful, and at times desperately sad. Best to take things one day at a time, and not do anything to disrupt one's precious memories of days gone by.
The Little Girl Who Conquered Time - 1983
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Written by Wataru Kenmotsu
Based on the novel "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" by Yasutaka Tsutsui
Starring Tomoyo Harada, Ryōichi Takayanagi, Toshinori Omi
Yukari Tsuda & Ittoku Kishibe
I've often daydreamed about being able to time travel. I'm such a nostalgic person - I usually go to sleep each night recounting this or that period in my life. I'd love to see old places, friends and relatives again. Being able to time travel a day or two at will would be the cherry on the cake - I'd use that to go back and ace exams, impress girls, learn instruments, play sport and generally enjoy the hell out of having foreknowledge. Said the wrong thing to my girlfriend? Go back and fix it. Been walking around for 10 minutes with toilet paper stuck to my shoe? Time travel will take care of that. Movies like The Little Girl Who Conquered Time interest me, because they take that fleeting, ethereal fantasy and play it out like it could really happen. I didn't quite get what I was hoping for though - this movie has such a light and delicate touch that it kind of feels like the time travel component was incidental. It's a very slow-moving, contemplative movie - and I'm never quite enjoying it while I'm watching it. It didn't quite mesh with my personal tastes.
Otherwise known as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, this 1983 Japanese science fiction movie features Tomoyo Harada as Kazuko Yoshiyama. Yoshiyama is stargazing on a class excursion one night with friend Goro Horikawa (Toshinori Omi) when they both literally bump into Kazuo Fukamachi (Ryōichi Takayanagi). The trio form a close bond, but it's not long before Yoshiyama is having fainting spells, and at times feels like time is stuttering out of synch. To try and work out what's happening to her, she gets closer to plant-loving Fukamachi - someone who seems to have answers as to what's happening to her. When she starts waking up and reliving the same day over and over again, Yoshiyama feels her entire world coming apart at the seams - having foreknowledge turns out to be a benefit here and there, but why is this happening to her? And why is Fukamachi so obsessed with flowers and skipping days off school to go collect specimens? The answers will lead to a heartbreaking revelation for her.
This movie has some really nice features. Take for example the dimly lit cinematography in the science lab where Yoshiyama faints - it's very unique and it's own thing. As is also the frequent transitions from black and white to colour, which often intermingle whereupon there will be both at the same time. I often think of the contrast in terms of dead and alive, stagnant or creative - but I found the reasoning harder to pinpoint in this. Perhaps it was the presence of love's flame being lit, hope, joy or all of the above. Cinematographer Yoshitaka Sakamoto also worked on Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's insane (and very enjoyable) film Hausu. The score by Masataka Matsutôya was also exceedingly pleasant, and for me one of the most enjoyable facets to the movie. I had another couple of listens to his song, "Toki o kakeru shôjo" after watching the movie - and apparently it was very popular in Japan at the time, with many different versions being released. It's very cute and original having Yoshiyama sing the song to us during the closing credits while life goes on as normal in the background.
Features are features though - getting into the movie itself was much harder for me. It's a film with a protagonist walking around in a daze much of the time, and I never relaxed into it's ultra-slow incremental tempo. With some slow movies what I get in each moment is enough by itself, but with The Little Girl Who Conquered Time I was a little bit restless, and not totally in love with any of the characters or mood. Every now and then there's a little flourish with editing and visual effects which suit the manner of a filmmaker who would make a film like Hausu, but for the most part Yoshiyama is sleepily plodding through scenes lost in deep contemplative thought. Brief schisms in the universe don't do all that much to trigger any reasonably interesting development in the plot - and I'm left thinking that this is a movie where it's absolutely essential to love the mood of quiet Japanese neighborhoods, glasshouses, and classrooms. This has more to do with coming to terms with the challenges of approaching adulthood and falling in love than time travel itself. The quiet moments spent with someone you're developing feelings for.
As with time travel, I also think a lot about those quiet moments - and I can't help thinking that I was on the wrong track with this movie. It's a time travel movie with an extraordinarily different approach - and instead of gaining by flitting through the ether and teleporting here and there we lose, because love is very much of the here and now. The time we can trace directly. I think it was a nice touch having the little kissing statues in Yoshiyama's room - something directly related to childhood. This is a kind of coming of age movie about an awakening and a cleft between things we hold dear from the past, and the completely new yearnings and desires that seem to have sprung up from nowhere - always beckoning for us to let go of the past and move forward. To follow sudden and irrepressible urges. It doesn't feel all that different to Yoshiyama's anxiety-inducing zipping around in time. One day in class she's totally unprepared, and the next she's a completely different person - overprepared.
In the meantime, I appreciate a movie that pays tribute to memory, for as I said - I'm a hopelessly nostalgic person. While I didn't enjoy the movie as much as I thought I might, it feels good to at least be on the same page as to it's overall themes and contemplations. Time, is a strange and puzzling thing to think about - but that's why I love thinking about it. It's probably just as well I can't time travel - it looks stressful, and at times desperately sad. Best to take things one day at a time, and not do anything to disrupt one's precious memories of days gone by.