Review of The Secret World of Arrietty

Tiny people have long been a favorite fictional fascination of many a storyteller. The idea that there could be an entire other world right under our noses lends itself to so many imaginative possibilities. It strikes a uniquely resonant chord to imagine that the impossible could exist barely a whisper away from our understanding. And The Secret World of Arrietty may legitimately be the most definitive Little People story of them all. It doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but it takes the concept and runs with it about as far as it can possibly go, seeking to milk as much wonder and creativity out of itsminiscule universe as it can. Watching this movie was almost like revisiting an old friend, stepping back into a world I once knew like the palm of my hand and seeing how all the old brickwork and masonry still held up. It’s a remarkably relaxing film, an experience that doesn’t so much demand your attention as it does your patience, your ability to undo the cricks in your neck and embrace what’s already inside of you. And on that front, I consider it a rousing success.

Now, Arrietty’s one twist on the Little People formula is that instead of following a normal person as he dives headfirst into the miniscule world beside him as the point of view character for the audience to get acquainted with all its workings, it’s the little people themselves who serve as our guide. Our focus is on a family of little people who live in the walls and basement of an old countryside mansion. They call themselves Borrowers, because their kind lives by borrowing from humans (who they call Beans, amusingly enough), picking up lost items and trinkets that won’t be missed, all while staying out of sight from the humans they fear. We come to know them from the inside out, spending just a few minutes meeting our eventual main human character before jumping straight to the POV of Arrietty herself, the plucky 13-year-old Borrower daughter of a high-strung Amy Poehler and a stoic-but-loving Will Arnett, both of whom do a stupendous job as her parents. It makes or an interesting diversion from the norm right off the bat; instead of being a story about exploring a little world, it’s the story of someone from a little world exploring our world, and what happens when those two worlds collide. It throws us right into the deep end of the Borrower culture and allows us to piece it together as the story moves along.

And it’s in the moments where we’re exploring that culture that Arrietty truly shines. This is non-verbal storytelling at its absolute best, communicating so much detail and nuance and context without the need for a single expository paragraph. You’re just allowed to sink into this world, to get a real, tactile feel of how the Borrowers operate, how they live side-by-side with humanity while still apart from it, how they repurpose lost things to their own design and build their entire world out of borrowed treasure. The background art in particular is truly spectacular, jam-packed with so many exciting and creative touches that you could freeze-frame pretty much any shot in this film involving the Borrower world and find a million different things to talk about. This mansion feels less like a typical Ghibli location and more like something out of the Spiderwick Chronicles series, something fey and alien yet also an outgrowth of the basest elements of the earth. And for most of the movie, I was entirely sucked into it. I wish I could’ve spent an eternity in Arrietty’s first act, exploring how this world works and watching how the Borrowers move around the human world, the ingenuity of their repurposed aesthetic, the absolutely gorgeous rustic soundtrack that grounds the entire affair in a mystique of enchanted wanderlust. At its best, this film is the literal definition of “magic”.

That’s not to say the story itself is bad, just that it’s kind of incidental to the point. It’s the atmosphere, tone and aesthetic that make Arrietty such a worthwhile investment; everything else is just so much gravy. The eventual plot that develops follows Arrietty’s tentative steps towards friendship with the main human character, a sensitive sick boy named Shaun out for a country vacation in preparation for an upcoming surgery, and the tension that brings to her much more skeptical family. It’s a tenuous relationship these two worlds share, one that could be easily shattered should the Borrowers’ discovery incite greed and ill fortune upon them. And while Shaun is a little bland, the way he interacts with Arrietty, slowly pulling her out of her shell, makes for an incredibly tender portrait of two young people at uncertain, yet critical crossroads in their lives. It’s a story that lives on implication above all else, on unsaid mystique and ethereal connections that exist not in what’s said or not said, but in what’s felt, in the breath between the space of every touching moment. Sadly, it’s not as effective when it eventually gets so some semblance of a larger plot in the third act, leading to a climax that feels sorely lacking in comparison to what’s come before. Arrietty works best in the space between necessity, when it’s allowed to relax, kick its feet back, and just be.

Thankfully, it’s allowed to just be for the vast majority of its run, and the result is a winningly enchanting experience that captures the best of what this kind of fey imagination is capable of. The Secret World of Arrietty is a film that works best when it’s not trying to work at all, when it allows the atmosphere and sensation of its being to take the stage and seep into your heart. It exists in meaning and moments, piecing something much greater together from the sum of all those sensations without any need for exertion on your part. And it’s a wonderfully bewitching film as a result, the perfect companion to a cup of afternoon tea as your mind wanders to what mysteries might be hiding just under the briar patch by the fence.