Karigurashi no Arrietty (The Borrowers) - The Full Trailer

Here is the complete, two-minute trailer for Karigurashi no Arrietty.  The movie is about to be unleashed upon Japan, and I'm very hopeful that it is successful.  This looks wonderful.  It also looks confident, assured - at least the shots from the trailer suggest as much.

I think Yonebayashi may emerge as a stronger director than either Goro Miyazaki or Hiroyuki Morita.  I can't see if a unique style or vision has yet emerged, or if this will be a safe, by-the-numbers Studio Ghibli affair.  But I can see a skill in these shots, the use of sweeping panoramas and compositions.  That one shot of Arrietty riding up an elevator was especially impressive to me.  If nothing else, this demonstrates a control and confidence that that Morita and the younger Miyazaki, sadly, lacked.

Of course, a movie trailer's job is to get people to go see the movie, and clever editing can repair almost anything.  But I came away feeling very hopeful for Arrietty.  I felt that Father Miyazaki was right.  They had found their homegrown director at last.

As always, I'd expect to see this movie at the Venice Film Festival in September, with rollouts to the West sometime next year.  This does present a paradox, however.  The Borrowers is a popular work of English literature, but the Ghibli movie essentially transports it to modern Japan.  How much of a challenge would that prove for translators?  And how will the book's fans respond?  And just what is Ghibli's obsession with British fantasy literature, anyway?