What a beautiful film.

When Marnie Was There is the most recent, and possibly last, feature length film from the legendary anime production company Studio Ghibli. It is a coming-of-age tale, a journey of self-discovery and healing, a ghost story, and a love story… but not the kind you might think.

When Marnie Was There is directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, based on the novel of the same name by Joan G. Robinson. It’s also the last feature film from Studio Ghibli, who later announced an indefinite hiatus of their feature length division, following the retirement of Studio Ghibli maven/legend Hayao Miyazaki.

When Marnie Was There focuses on the relationship of two young girls – Anna Sasaki and Marnie. Anna is a troubled 12-year-old, living in Sapporo. Anna is a self-loathing outcast who suffers from asthma. After suffering a collapse at school, her caretaker Yoriko Sasaki sends her to stay some family friends – The Oiwas – in the rural seaside town of Kushiro, to breathe in the clear air for the summer.

Once Anna arrives in Kushiro, she discovers the apparently dilapidated Marsh Manor, where she meets a young, beautiful, ethereal Marnie and things get weird. The bottom drops out of everyday reality, and the audience is left guessing as to what is real, what is fiction and what is fantasy.

When Marnie Was There is a masterpiece, thanks to a large cast of excellent, well-rounded and real characters and the trademark Studio Ghibli artwork. Lush, luscious hand-painted scenery spares no expense or detail – the grass moves, the water glistens – as the audience falls into a world of friendship, imagination, and young love.

*What follows is an extended analysis and may contain spoilers. Be advised.*

Anna Sasaki is a troubled girl. She hates herself, has no friends, has asthma. She is being raised by her aunt, which is made very clear at the beginning of the movie and sets off warning bells that all is not as it seems with young Miss Anna. What happened to her parents? Questions like these act as a fishhook, luring the audience into the ethereal mysteries of Kushiro.

Life in Kushiro agrees with Anna at first. She is an avid artist, spending her days idyllically drawing on the pier, or in the back of the stoic and silent Toichi’s boat. It is here that she catches the first glimpse of The Marsh Mansion, which is only accessible by land when the tide is low.

When Anna first encounters The Marsh Mansion, it is deserted and dilapidated. She falls asleep at the mansion, only to have the tide come in while she is sleeping. Toichi, the silent boatman, comes to her rescue, but Anna sees a lighted window as she retreats.

On the night of the Tanabata festival, Anna has a disagreement with a local girl, who she calls a “fat pig” after she starts prying into Anna’s origins and runs away to the Marsh shore. Crouching in mud in her peach pink yukata, Anna meets Marnie, a beautiful blonde hair girl from across the marsh.

This is when things begin to get strange.

Marnie claims she has lived at the Marsh Mansion “for ages”. She says her parents aren’t home all that often, and she is frequently watched by the servants and her elderly Nana. When Marnie Was There does not come right out and tell you what’s going on. It leaves you guessing, pulling you further and deeper into the mystery.

Anna and Marnie become secret friends, meeting every day at high tide. Their relationship borders on the sensual, as Marnie shows Anna how to row, how to dance. On one particularly memorable evening, Marnie takes Anna across the marsh to one of her parents extravagant parties. Disguised as a flower girl, Anna is welcomed by Marnie’s parents and friends, despite having been terrorized by the terrible Nana upon arrival. Marnie’s father gives Anna a glass of wine, and we find her a little later, asleep at the table.

Anna and Marnie dance in the moonlight, and Anna wakes up by the side of the road, missing one shoe.

As all of this is happening, Anna’s caretakers, the Oiwas, are the ultimate chill. They never get upset, never turn on Anna, never try and confine her. The husband, Kiyomasa, carries her inside like a sleeping babe. In the morning, it’s all pancakes and watermelon, as Kiyomasa talks about how he lost thousands of shoes growing up. One wonders how different so many difficult coming of age stories would be with understanding guardians like this. Because of the Oiwas, Anna never second guesses herself or feels like a terrible person that needs to flee. Although, to be fair, Anna needs no help in self-recrimination.

Anna meets another painter by the marsh, who tells her that the Marsh mansion is being renovated. She meets one of the new inhabitants, a young girl named Sayaka with round Harry Potter spectacles and leagues of spirit Sayaka lives in Marnie’s old room and has discovered a diary with missing pages. She thinks Anna IS Marnie and wants to know what happens, or what happened.

From this point, it is fairly clear that something is amiss. At first, Anna thinks Marnie is a creation of her imagination. But then how did the diary get there? And how could she have known the things she did, about the parties and dancing with the flower girl?

Reading the diary, it turns out that Marnie had a rather lonely and unhappy life. Her parents were busy socialites who treated Marnie well when they were there but that was, unfortunately, a small percentage of the time.

The rest of the time, Marnie was brutalized by the servants and by Nana. Marnie was particularly terrified of an abandoned silo, where it was said that ghosts lived and would eat your soul. One night, the servants dragged her to the silo and left her there, when it began to pour.

Sayaka discovered the missing pages of the diary where it is revealed that Marnie was rescued from the silo by her childhood friend Kazuhiko. Anna and Sayaka remember that the artist by the marsh, a woman named Hisako, and rush to solve the mystery.

Hisako tells the girls the full, tragic story of Marnie’s life. She escaped from Kushiro and married Kazuhiko. The couple had a baby daughter, but tragedy was not yet done with Marnie. Kazuhiko died early, due to illness, and Marnie went mad with grief. She had to be institutionalized and their daughter, Emily, was sent to a boarding school to be raised.

Emily would never be her daughter again.

She ran away at the age of 18, on the back of a motorbike, and wasn’t seen for years. When next she was seen, she had a baby girl of her own. Despite her anger at her mother, Marnie was a part of the new family’s life.

Until tragedy struck. Again.

Emily and her husband were killed in a car crash, and the final twist of When Marnie Was There is revealed. Anna’s parents were killed in a car crash, and she had been watched by her grandmother for a year, until she also passed, leaving Anna in the foster care system.

The walls come tumbling down, as Anna realizes she was not unwanted or unloved by her family. They loved her very much, even stretching beyond time and the grave. As Anna departs Kushiro for the summer, she is a new person, complete and whole, with loving and healthy relationships all around her. She is sure of herself and confident, as she says goodbye to all of her new friends. And there is not a dry eye in the house as Marnie is spied, leaning out the window of the Marsh mansion and waving goodbye.

Personally, I loved the character development and the extensive cast the best about When Marnie Was There. There is something miraculous about watching the scars of someone’s heart stitch and mend until they are no longer damaged. The relationships in When Marnie Was There may focus around young girls, but this story and these characters are relatable by absolutely everybody, plunging you back into the heat haze of your own childhood.

I would place When Marnie Was There in the tradition of Magical Realism, along the lines of Jorge Luis Borges and, most specifically, the quiet psychodramas of Haruki Murakami. Like Murakami’s protagonists, Anna has a rich inner world which ends up flowering and erupting into waking life.

When we see this – dreams becoming indistinguishable from reality, hearts being healed – realms of possibility open. The flat, finite mundane world starts to fissure and crack and we wonder, “What is possible today?”

Combined with compelling characters, excellent pacing, and eye-popping artwork, When Marnie Was There is a stone-cold classic – destined to be a new favorite film, spanning generations.

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