Enjoying The Silence Of 'Only Yesterday' (Studio Ghibli) - Video Essay

It's hard for me to fully explain and put into brief words what it is about Studio Ghibli's Only Yesterday that means so much to me. Whenever I tell people that it's my favourite film and they ask me to explain why it's my favourite film, I can never really give a straight answer because there is just, there is something inherently beautiful about it. I've watched it four times now. The first two times I cried multiple times near the end. The third time I watched it with a friend and I was too anxious about the fact that they might not enjoy it so I was kind of too focused on that and the fourth time was last night and I'm on antidepressants now so I couldn't, I just couldn't cry. My brain was like we're not doing that today but I'm going to explain the plot to you and I hate explaining what plots of films are because I'm just not good at it but I feel like this is a hidden gem of a film so I'm going to explain what it is and maybe you'll want to watch it. Only Yesterday is a film about a woman named Taiko who goes to the countryside to go and see some old family friends and to farm and while she's there she has flashbacks to when she was in fifth grade. I don't know how old fifth grade is, I'm not American so we'll just say late primary school. There's something about both of these flashbacks and the present day which is just so beautiful but one thing in particular is that it really wants you to enjoy the silence of it. The art as an adult is much more defined and you know there are a lot of beautiful landscapes and you know there's lots more colours. It looks a bit more realistic than anything but it's still just beautiful to look at and when it's the flashback scenes of her as a kid there's a lot more of a kind of a white outline to it. There's a lot of white around the edges, it's a bit more pale. I feel like the reason for that is because people have this assumption that your memory is just a pure storage box and everything in there is exactly the same as you remember it but it's not. When you think back to a memory it's kind of distorted or there are little things changed and the whole thing's not there and I feel like in these flashbacks that's what it's trying to get across is it's not as vibrant as it is in real life in the scenes in the present day because the memories aren't all there. They're childhood memories and they're even more kind of distant. The white colour palette, the pale colour palette kind of gets that message across but one thing that is for certain is it as I've already said it wants you to enjoy the silence of it. When you remember memories they're not all fully there. All the conversations, all the words said aren't there so a lot of the memories are mainly visual and I feel like the film tries to get that across but even in the present day it's still quite silent and I think it's just trying to tell you hey it's okay, this is okay. There doesn't have to be a load of talking but it's kind of clever because you don't get bored with it because it looks so beautiful and I said to someone the other day that films and tv are just kind of one of a kind in art because yeah okay in writing there is just the writing and you have to make sure everything in the writing is really good. In music it's just the music and you have to make sure the music is really good and the same goes for art. When you're drawing something you have to make it look really good but with films and a visual medium you have to combine all of those things. You have to make sure the art is really good, the cinematography is really good, you have to make sure the music works, you have to make sure the writing works and if all these things don't come together then you're a bit fucked and I think Only Yesterday manages to pull this off incredibly well. You don't get bored of it because it's so beautiful to look at and the music and the background, the soundtrack just kind of plays off how it all looks and the writing is just so so wonderful. You really care about Taiko as a kid and you care about her as an adult and I don't know what it is, I can't fully put into words what it is. As I said I struggle to kind of explain it but there is something about the silence in these films that draws you in. A lot of the times in films when something is silent you might get bored or you might kind of think come on let's just get to the next bit of dialogue, come on let's get to the next bit of action, you know whatever, there's no action in this film, it's not an action, it's not Marvel, yeah it's not the bored identity. Yeah there is something about the silence which when they do eventually start talking you're kind of a bit more, you're a bit more intrigued by it or you're a bit more interested because you've had time to kind of just sit and let it marinate. Marinate? Is that? Is that? Marinate. So then when they do talk it's so much more fascinating and it's so much more intriguing and I think it kind of just it does speak to the fact that all these elements of music and art and writing all kind of has come together and you really do care about Taiko as I've already said, like she is, especially her as a kid, you kind of just want to give her a hug. At the last, there's a couple of scenes near the end where she's, when she's a kid she's in a school play and she has, she only has one line, it's in the beginning of the play. At the end of the play someone comes to the family home and is like we really want to put Taiko in the university, the university play, she's really good and the mum's like holy f**k, cool, all right. All the family are just really like oh my god this is amazing but the dad, the dad is like a stoic post-world war two, yeah post-world war two guy, he's not saying anything and then there's a moment and they sit in silence and it's kind of amazing how they do this because it's, it's all silent and they're all looking at each other and it's, even though it's all just 2D animation art you can tell what they're all thinking which is dad hasn't said anything, what's he thinking, is he gonna let me do this? So they all look at the dad, he doesn't say anything and they carry on talking and then all of a sudden the dad says no, there's no performing, there's not gonna be any performing, you're not doing any of this. So you just see Taiko's face just drop, she's just really sad, they have to tell the university that she can't do it. A couple minutes later she's walking down the street with her mum and she's saying that somebody else in the school got the role and the mum is like you can't say to anyone that they asked you first, imagine how that kid is gonna feel. She's pretty sad about it and as she's walking she starts to sing a song about kind of look I don't know what's gonna happen in life and there's gonna be hard times and there's gonna be bad times but it'll be fine you know it'll be okay and I don't know there is just something really beautiful about it and that's that's the moment that made me cry because I was just like oh fab you should have been in that play you know but again that scene when they're all having dinner it utilizes silence so well because it just somehow manages to get the message across that that's what the dad's thinking we know what they're thinking but also the way the music is used as I was saying about trying to get all the components together the music in that scene is so just beautiful it just tugs on your heartstrings and it's just it's probably just the way it sounds the way the chord sounds seeing Taiko sing like sing it I don't know something about it in the flashbacks when she's a kid there's a scene where there's a boy quite likes her they kind of just they bump into each other on the middle of the alley in an alleyway on the street I don't know but they kind of they kind of stare at each other she sees him at the bottom of the street and they just stand there and they look at each other and you can feel the anxiety coming from Taiko because she doesn't she's a young kid she doesn't want to have to talk to him it's really awkward when you're a kid it's really awkward when you don't when you like someone and you don't know how to handle it it's just silent it's really quiet and he just says do you like cloudy days or sunny days and they stare at each other and there's a silence she just says cloudy days but the way all the cinematography is done and then he's really happy that she answers she walks off she starts to like kind of fly up in the air in this abstraction music plays she's flying through the air she lands on her bed but I feel like without the silence in that in that scene that scene with the flying and the music it wouldn't have worked because the silence lets it marinate and it prepares you for the beauty of everything else and also it just looks stunning I mean look at that f***ing hell it's just a one it's a wonderful film it's a really wonderful film and I feel like it's a bit of a hidden gem within the Studio Ghibli arena because I never really see many people talk about it even the scenes when she's older and she goes to the farm it's just so many scenes with her that just work like even one of the last scenes when she's in the car with I can't remember his name the guy the love interest the annoying guy you know without again without the silence in that scene you wouldn't be hanging on to every word that she's saying and you wouldn't be appreciating the art I don't know what to say I'm trying to figure out how to word this and it's you wouldn't be as appreciative of the story and the character moments is what I'm trying to say so I don't know I think I think that you have to in order to watch this film you have to enjoy the silence of it I feel like a lot of people say about films now that are quite slow or quite or quiet they say oh it's just boring it was boring and it's you know I mean I can a boring film is a boring film I get that like Tenet was awful I hated that film but you know I feel like some films use silence to its advantage and Only Yesterday is a perfect example of that at the beginning of this video I said I couldn't fully explain briefly why I love Only Yesterday but the truth is because if I did it wouldn't be a very academic answer the reason Only Yesterday means so much to me is because I discovered it at a bit of a weird time in my mental health only a few months back it was during the third lockdown and I was completely alone in the flat because my housemate and my best friend was stuck in Ireland with his partner and my girlfriend at the time was also at home just not here she was a while away and it just being alone for that long really fucks with your mental health especially when you're in a tiny flat and you can't see anyone because some of your friends feel a bit weird about having to meet each other during a pandemic and you know it's it was weird yeah I was alone in the flat and it was a late night and I was just scrolling through Netflix with my housemates starry little thing on the ceiling and I was feeling a bit rubbish I was a bit stoned and I saw that film and I thought that looks pretty pleasant to look at I'll watch that and I feel like the reason the silence meant so much to me is because throughout that month I had been living in silence I had been I hadn't been living with anyone and there was something about that which said hey the silence is okay and don't like come on come on come on in it's fine don't worry about it we're gonna let you enjoy this and I think maybe that's why it touched me so much and why I cried because I kind of I felt how the characters felt because of the silence and I was more in touch with it because I was alone now I don't know if that's a healthy way to think to think you know but I was you know and now I'm an antidepressant so it's all good let me know what your favorite Studio Ghibli film is recommend me some films if anyone watches this because I need some I need some new Studio Ghibli films to watch some really beautiful ones like that I haven't found I haven't found one that's hit me the same way as that yet and I would like to find some