Reflections: Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

6 March 20236 March 2023 ~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

photo of the cover of the GKids blu-ray release of the animated film Kiki's Delivery Service, showing Kiki smiling as she flies towards the left on her broom, with Jiji the black cat perching on her shoulderbag and birds flying by — *Kiki, Jiji, and a radio*

It is so strange to see Kiki in more colorful clothes at the start of the movie. I completely forgot this was in the film.

Kiki meets another witch who seems like a snob but nevertheless takes time to answer her questions; she might be showing off and acting fancy, but she isn’t mean or rude. Jiji says the cat is stuck-up, but later he says the same thing about a different cat and learns otherwise.

I notice this other witch’s dress isn’t actually black.

With all the other times characters act like snobs, is Kiki guilty of this too, in her early treatment of Tombo?

Osono: the warmth and comfort of being welcomed by a stranger into her kitchen to share a hot drink—not as a daughter but also not quite as a friend, seen as still a child but able to make your own decisions, given extra kindness and understanding but not indulgence. Later Ursula the painter does much the same, though as less of a stranger by then.

A silent baker shamelessly showing off—for the cat.

An artist in the woods, independent and following her own path; and, we learn, she has previously had to break from her old practice of copying other painters.

This aged dog is an artistic ancestor of Heen in Howl’s Moving Castle.

Kiki, you need to say thank you to that dog.

Kiki tells Osono she can’t make deliveries now, and seems genuinely afraid she’ll be asked to leave the bakery attic. She ought to know Osono wouldn’t throw her out, but she is still thirteen years old, not as grown-up internally as she often seems.

Someone you care for is in mortal danger, and there is no hope for him but you, and yet the one special thing that makes you able to help is the thing that isn’t working at that moment.

A dirigible captain who knows his priorities: speak to the boy to give him instructions and reassurance, not to the crew, who know their jobs and signed on for this task knowing the risks.

“There are still times I feel sad . . .”

By the end of the movie, Kiki still doesn’t have a special skill or focus. She flies . . . which is the basic thing that all witches do. This always leaves me dissatisfied; but perhaps the point is her acceptance that right now, being able to fly on a broom (and talk to a cat) is enough.

Miyazaki elements: of course the flying machines, and flight in general; the need to find a balance between the old ways and the new ways; expressive faces as always; and a girl with grim determination as invisible power courses around her, making her hair rise up.

•

There is no single trigger for Kiki’s crisis of confidence. We see her repeatedly regret the way she must dress while other girls get to look nice. She encounters the other witch who has a speciality, while she does not. She’s learned that the town has rules and habits that don’t make allowances for witches. Staring in boredom out a window, she looks up with interest at the sight of a young man, only to watch him leave with a cheerful young woman in a light-colored dress. We can imagine, though it’s never hinted at in anything she says, that Kiki second-guesses her decision to leave home before preparing herself better and maybe learning some of those potions her mother wanted to teach her. Possibly she asks herself if she gets along better with adults than people her own age because she’s old-fashioned and behind the times. She admits that she doesn’t find flying fun. She ends up wet and bedraggled face-to-face with a well-to-do birthday girl in her party dress, who treats Kiki like an unimportant laborer—treatment in keeping with being a deliveryperson. Then she gets upset that Tombo is friends with this girl.

It isn’t as simple as Kiki wanting to be like the birthday girl, though, because it seems clear Kiki considers her rude and ungrateful, someone who speaks dismissively of a good and thoughtful grandmother. Kiki may want what the richer girl has, but she wouldn’t want to be her. Is it possible to have it both ways, being fashionable and glamorous but at the same time pure in heart and respectful and kind? Does being the second mean she’ll never be the first?

•

I imagine this conversation as Kiki returns the broom at the end of the movie:

Kiki (bowing): Thank you so much for letting me borrow this!
Street sweeper: Oh, not at all! I’m glad it was useful!
Kiki: It’s a good broom. Please continue to take good care of it.
Street sweeper: Oh! Well, if you like it so much—you could have it!
Kiki: Oh, no! I couldn’t! It belongs with you. It wouldn’t like to be given away.
Street sweeper (looking with puzzlement at broom-head): Is that so . . . ?

Reflections: The Aristocats (1970)

19 November 202114 January 2022 ~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

photo of the cover for the special edition Blu-ray of the Disney movie The Aristocats — Cover of the Blu-Ray for *The Aristocats*

I remember this movie from my childhood—not seeing it, primarily, but rather listening to the songs on a record. (Yes, a record; I do go back that far, though I wasn’t yet born when the movie was first released.) Thinking of it always gives me a sensation of energy, happiness, and excitement. The soundtrack still delivers that, because the film is a full-on jazz and swing party.

I did see the movie as a child, too, but I couldn’t tell you just when.

• The art in the movie retains a sketchy quality, not fully polished, sometimes with unerased pencil marks preserved below the coloring. A couple of spots might’ve needed a little more cleanup, but generally I appreciate it, and it’s in keeping with the film’s overall lively, spontaneous tone.

• The fact that the characters are cats, whose movements are naturally slinky and sinuous, provided a lot of leeway for the romancing between O’Malley and Duchess to be quite sensual. It would NOT be G-rated if human characters did the same things.

• The two boy kittens get kind of a bad deal. They don’t have much chance to shine, while their sister Marie, by comparison, gets a spotlight. Personally I think Marie is awesome, so I’m not too upset by this.

• A simple glance at Duchess’s kittens will show you they are not purebred, except maybe Marie, which suggests Madame has not been too concerned with show-cat breeding standards, foreshadowing her attitude towards one Thomas O’Malley.

• “Rich person leaves all the money to a pampered pet” is a premise you can find in many places (for instance, a Martha Speaks episode about a dog who inherits several million dollars), and generally the person leaving all that money to an animal comes off looking crazy, or at best pitiably eccentric. Madame in The Aristocats, however (who sets off the action by changing her will, not by actually dying) is someone the audience is led to take seriously: she might be lonely but doesn’t feel ridiculous. Much of this is due to her character design, which is stately and elegant; her graceful movements; and her warm, caring expressions and vocal tones. A comic-relief character would likely have been short and round and had glasses that kept slipping down her nose, combined with shaking, fumbling, and fidgeting—without changing any dialogue or plot points.

• Edgar the butler had a LOT to put up with over the years. For instance, who else was going to clean up all that paint the cats left on the piano? And that scene was framed as a regular event.

• It’s interesting how unconcerned the rich, pampered, diamond-collar-wearing Duchess is regarding class. She has no trouble accepting O’Malley or Scatcat or their run-down housing, and it’s O’Malley, not her, who brings up the class divide. He’s not prejudiced against her either, but he knows this is an issue and that someone like her is likely to look down on someone like him. Rejecting plot cliches, both characters can acknowledge their vastly different backgrounds without being hindered by them and without those differences being the source of the attraction.

• Listening to “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” when I was a child, I didn’t know the slang meaning of “square.” It was some years on before I understood that setting music back to the cave man days was a bad thing; I had some vague idea this meant it was so amazing you felt like you’d been knocked through time.

• The movie has a short “drunkenness is comedy” scene, which to me isn’t so much offensive as quaint, a relic of a different time. Within the story it’s arguable whether the goose was inebriated by choice or as one step in a recipe, which may affect how you judge the scene.

• The dogs with their highly un-Parisian “classic hillbilly” accents are not my favorites.

• My only serious problem with this movie, today, is the presentation of a certain cat among Scatcat’s jazz band. The group is international, with Russian and Italian and supposedly British (I would peg him as Californian, but the credits say otherwise) cats all jamming together. But along with them is a Siamese cat: Siamese by breed, but back then that was considered close enough to merit full-blown racial caricature as Chinese. It’s great that the Asian cat is included as an equal in the band, with no hint of being secondary to the others, but . . . the square-teeth design and the atrocious stereotype dialogue are really hard to stomach. Overall he doesn’t have much screen time, but he actually gets more lines than the other band members (except leader Scatcat), so it’s especially sad that it’s cringe-inducing. In a better world he would’ve been drawn with regular pointy cat-teeth and speak sensible dialogue.

A Friendly PSA

6 March 202131 May 2021 ~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

This shot shows Diva licking from a cereal bowl, but you really shouldn’t let a cat do this. An occasional taste might not do much damage, but milk and soymilk aren’t good for cats (despite our cultural fixation on cats’ love of milk).