Mary and the Witch’s Flower is not likely to convert anyone who has a kneejerk, instinctual dislike for the anime style of animation, as this is stylistically and tonally very much in the wheelhouse of Studio Ghibli efforts like Spirited Away or Ponyo.
(Sidenote: Mary’s director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, worked as a director at Ghibli on such films as The Secret World of Arrietty. With Ghibli now largely defunct, Yonebayashi struck out on his own with Mary.)
Mary and the Witch’s Flower is about Mary, and how she one day finds a witch’s flower. Fine, OK, there’s more. Mary is a young girl who finds herself spending a long boring summer at the home of her elderly great aunt. Desperate for something to do, Mary one day follows a black cat into the nearby forest and discovers the eponymous plant, the witch’s flower, and a broomstick. The flower gifts Mary with temporary magical powers, and the broom carries her off onto one of those magical quest things that the kids have these days.
Noticeably, the film follows a more traditional “Hero’s Journey” structure than some of your favorite Ghibli efforts. Where Hayao Miyazaki movies flow with a more episodic, naturalistic pacing, Mary and the Witch’s Flower feels somewhat more mechanical. You’ll know within a few minutes pretty much exactly where it is going on a narrative level, and there’s not a great deal of surprise on that front.
Where the film gets more innovative is with the gorgeous, hand-drawn animation. There’s nothing inherently wrong with computer animation, but there’s something about a really terrific bit of traditional animation to remind you of how lush and warm the format is, and how much you miss it from modern American animated features. Watching Mary feels akin to sinking into a beloved picture book, with frame after frame offering eye-popping visuals. The magical world of Mary and the Witch’s Flower feels huge and, most importantly, alive, as if the frame can barely contain all the ideas that Yonebayashi is cramming in.
In that way, Mary and the Witch’s Flower sure feels like the kind of classic children’s fantasy I used to read as a kid (it is inspired by Mary Stewart’s 1971 novel, The Little Broomstick. Having never read [or heard of] this book before, I cannot tell you how faithful it is or is not), books that were always gesturing just off-page and suggesting that these realms of magic expanded well beyond what you, the reader, were experiencing. At its best, Mary and the Witch’s Flower gave me that same sort of thrill, suggesting that Yonebayashi could have left Mary and floated down any one of a hundred hallways and found another story already in progress that would have been equally as fun.
That quality also highlights just how mechanical and by-the-numbers our main story often feels. Mary is an immediately loveable little hero, and it’s always fun to see one of these Hero’s Journey joints where the hero chancing danger and tackling evil is a girl rather than a boy, so there’s nothing especially wrong with this aspect of the movie. I fully expect for a young segment of the audience, this movie in general and Mary in particular is going to become an instant classic. But the level of visual invention and the density of the world suggested by the film’s best moments left me hoping for something with a little more thematic or emotional meat on its bones, and that is not in the cards here.
Still, Mary and the Witch’s Flower is a delight, and a welcome respite from the all-out assaults of gore and mayhem that so many (wonderful) Fantastic Fest films bring to bear. If you’re an animation fan, a fantasy fan, or someone with youngsters eager for a new bit of magic in their lives, Mary and the Witch’s Flower is the film for you.