Cute romance films are a dime a dozen, but no one portrays the pure-heartedness of love like Studio Ghibli. Written by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his son, Goro Miyazaki, From Up on Poppy Hill is one of the best examples this. Although neither extravagant nor groundbreaking, the movie is, nevertheless, another wonderful work that is too often overlooked.
Set in 1963, Yokohama, Japan, the story follows a sixteen-year-old high school student named Umi Matsuzaki. Right off the bat, we see that she’s soft-spoken, dependable, and remarkably mature for her age. With a father who died at sea and a mother studying abroad, the job of running the family’s boarding house is left to Umi. And every morning, without fail, she raises a set of signal flags to honor her father’s memory.
One day, Umi sees a poem about the signal flags in the school’s newspaper and wonders who could have noticed, much less understood, the flags. Unbeknownst to her, she later meets the poem’s author, Shun Kazama, when he pulls a reckless stunt to raise awareness for the “Latin Quarter”, an old building that houses the school’s clubs and is in danger of being demolished. After visiting the Latin Quarter herself, Umi suggests to Shun and Shiro, the student body president, that they renovate the building and prove to the school board that it isn’t a lost cause. All the students come together to work on this project in a heartwarming show of community, while Umi and Shun quietly begin to fall for each other in the foreground.
Their romance is sweet and gradual, borne of a genuine enjoyment of each other’s company rather than simple attraction. Many of their formative moments are quite simple—a bike ride together in the evening, sharing food, or working side by side in comfortable silence as they copy and print papers. Miyazaki manages to capture an enchanting depth of intimacy in what is just everyday life in a seaside town, truly making magic out of the mundane.
Beneath the endearing romance plotline, however, lies a subtler emotionality in the form of the film’s historical context. Taking place one year before the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, the movie depicts a country caught between the devastation of World War II and the desire to present a brighter, modernized public image. In Umi’s backstory, we see that her father was killed when the supply ship he commanded was sunk by mines in the Korean War. Both Shun and Umi are forced to work through complicated family affairs that arose as a result of the post-war environment—leading to a shocking plot twist that may be more than it seems. At the same time, they and the other students are fighting to save the antiquated Latin Quarter clubhouse from being steamrolled to make way for the Olympics. This juxtaposition of preserving the past while also looking to the changes of the future is created with a somewhat heavy hand, but it ends up adding a sense of “big picture” realism to an otherwise quaint and inwardly-focused storyline.
In comparison to many other Studio Ghibli movies, From Up on Poppy Hill does not stand out as particularly revolutionary. Goro Miyazaki’s debut film, Tales from Earthsea, was poorly received, and before it, he had no experience with animation. However, this project proved to be a lesson in growth and one of his biggest successes to date. Where he was clumsy in metaphorical imagery, he made up for with beautiful literal imagery—meticulously detailed shots of the clubhouse interior, softly-lit dream sequences, and scenes of characters awash in the radiant glow of a sunset. Where he lacked in fantastical creativity, he instead delivered a lovely coming-of-age story that touches on family, loss, and love. If you’re looking for something sweet and sentimental, From Up on Poppy Hill is definitely worth the watch.
