The opening frame of Kiki’ s Delivery
Service is positively disarming in its calmness.
We are not conditioned to be taken aback by such things – a light breeze across the clouds and grass, a dancing shimmer upon the water, a still landscape of forest and hills, a soundscape silent save for the noises of rustling brush and softly chirping birds. Yet the evocation of serenity is absolute, and as we are gently shocked into tranquility, the image pans to introduce us to a young girl, lying in the brush and listening to the radio, her bright red bow and unassuming dress blowing in the breeze, no different than the grass and water around her.
It is from this stillness that Kiki, the film’s protagonist, emerges, and it is within the composure of the brief but powerful opening sequence that follows that the stylistic, thematic, and emotional template for the film to come is set. Very little happens – Kiki gazes at the sky, closes her eyes, and opens them having made a decision, before getting up and running off out of the frame. Yet in so deeply, deftly illustrating this simultaneously fleeting and crucial moment in Kiki’s life – the moment in which she definitively chooses to leave home – these six shots and 47 seconds prime us for a film that is entirely about life’s interludes, those small moments in which a person’s individualism and personal spirit are forged. The film as a whole depicts only a brief ‘moment’ in Kiki’s life – the final scene reveals that the entirety of the film’s action is summarized in Kiki’s first letter home to her parents – and yet within this moment an impossibly rich character study is weaved, one that touches upon themes as significant as generational conflict and globalization, as intimate as social anxiety and the challenges of independence, and as broad and ethereal as the nature of talent and paradoxes of emotion. It is about that moment in a person’s life when one finally manages to find perspective on oneself, feeling confident about one’s own individual spirit and function in society, and while such breakthroughs are only the first step towards true, sustained independence, the detail and passion with which Miyazaki breathes life into this moment, and into all the even smaller moments that comprise it, renders the film a deftly piercing illustration of the foundational significance of those first steps we take when leaving the calm and comfort of home.
We are not conditioned to be taken aback by such things – a light breeze across the clouds and grass, a dancing shimmer upon the water, a still landscape of forest and hills, a soundscape silent save for the noises of rustling brush and softly chirping birds. Yet the evocation of serenity is absolute, and as we are gently shocked into tranquility, the image pans to introduce us to a young girl, lying in the brush and listening to the radio, her bright red bow and unassuming dress blowing in the breeze, no different than the grass and water around her.
It is from this stillness that Kiki, the film’s protagonist, emerges, and it is within the composure of the brief but powerful opening sequence that follows that the stylistic, thematic, and emotional template for the film to come is set. Very little happens – Kiki gazes at the sky, closes her eyes, and opens them having made a decision, before getting up and running off out of the frame. Yet in so deeply, deftly illustrating this simultaneously fleeting and crucial moment in Kiki’s life – the moment in which she definitively chooses to leave home – these six shots and 47 seconds prime us for a film that is entirely about life’s interludes, those small moments in which a person’s individualism and personal spirit are forged. The film as a whole depicts only a brief ‘moment’ in Kiki’s life – the final scene reveals that the entirety of the film’s action is summarized in Kiki’s first letter home to her parents – and yet within this moment an impossibly rich character study is weaved, one that touches upon themes as significant as generational conflict and globalization, as intimate as social anxiety and the challenges of independence, and as broad and ethereal as the nature of talent and paradoxes of emotion. It is about that moment in a person’s life when one finally manages to find perspective on oneself, feeling confident about one’s own individual spirit and function in society, and while such breakthroughs are only the first step towards true, sustained independence, the detail and passion with which Miyazaki breathes life into this moment, and into all the even smaller moments that comprise it, renders the film a deftly piercing illustration of the foundational significance of those first steps we take when leaving the calm and comfort of home.
Jonathan R. Lack, "Seeing With Eyes Unclouded: Representations of Creativity in
the Works of Hayao Miyazaki"
http://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1921&context=honr_theses
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