Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2015

The Contenders:

Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out (winner)
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There

Marsh House

Film: When Marnie Was There (Omoide no Mani)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Probably the biggest compliment that can be paid to an animated film is that it creates characters that, regardless of the story or the fantastic elements that might be included, are very real and very human. There’s a moment in the first 15 minutes or so of When Marnie Was There that, more than anything else, sold the story to me. Our main character, Anna, is crossing a marsh at low tide and stumbles just a little. She doesn’t fall, doesn’t trip, and doesn’t stumble for any reason other than that she places a foot wrong for just a second. It’s completely unnecessary and completely human, and it’s a thing of beauty. It shows such lovely detail of making a character a real person, and it’s one of the little things that makes Studio Ghibli films worth watching.

Anna (voiced in the English version by Hailee Steinfeld) is a 12-year-old girl who feels out of place. She lives in Sapporo with foster parents, and keeps to herself, spending her free time sketching. After a serious asthma attack, Anna is sent for the summer to visit with her foster mother’s relatives Kiyomasa (John C. Reilly) and Setsu (Grey Griffin). It is there that she encounters an old, dilapidated mansion that seems to draw her to it. In her dreams, she sees the mansion inhabited by a young girl with blonde hair.