Mary and the Witch's Flower
Mary and the Witch's Flower is a 2017 Japanese animated fantasy film directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, produced by Studio Ponoc founder Yoshiaki Nishimura, animated by Studio Ponoc, and distributed by Toho in Japan. Based on the 1971 book The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart, this is Studio Ponoc's first feature film.
The film tells a story of a girl named Mary Smith who finds "fly-by-night", a mysterious flower that can give her the power to become a witch for only one night. The film was released in Japan on 8 July 2017. In the English-language version of the film, which was concurrently released with a subtitled version in the United States on 19 January 2018, the film features the voices of Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent.
Production
On 15 December 2016 Yonebayashi and Nishimura held a press conference. Here Yonebayashi, who had previously worked with Ghibli on When Marnie Was There and Arrietty, said "This is the first movie since leaving Studio Ghibli. At Studio Ponoc, we are working diligently with Yoshiaki Nishimura, a producer, and excellent staff."When Nishimura was asked about the establishment of the new studio he said, "When the Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki notified me about the dissolution of the Ghibli Production Department, I was stimulated by the oversea creators when I went to the Academy Awards venue with The Tale of Princess Kaguya Remember that you received it." After announcing it was based on The Little Broomstick, Nisimura said "Marnie of Memories is a work that proved that Yonebayashi, who excels at dynamic painting, sealed his specialty and can draw trivial emotions. But as a producer, I want to see dynamic animation, so I decided to do a fantasy with a cheerful girl moving around." When asked if he consulted with Takahata or Miyazaki, he said he did not show Miyazaki any storyboards but he did talk to him. They both said the same thing, "be prepared". Yonebayashi announced the voice actors on 13 April 2017.
Music
Composer Muramatsu Takatsugu, who also scored Yonebayashi's last film When Marnie Was There, is in charge of the soundtrack for Mary and the Witch's Flower. Joshua Messick, one of the world's leading performers of the hammered dulcimer, participated in the score recording.The theme song is "Rain", performed by Sekai no Owari.
Plot
The story opens with an explosion inside a stone tower that bursts open a wall and leaves the place in flames. A young red-haired girl races away, a small pouch in her hand. Climbing to the end of a large tree branch, she's cornered there, but escapes when a broom flies by and she leaps on it. The people left behind send magical creatures after her, but she escapes.Sometime later, Mary Smith moves into the northern English country estate of her Great-Aunt Charlotte ahead of her parents. The bored, friendless girl tries to make herself useful through chores, but she repeatedly messes up. A local boy named Peter teases her for both her clumsiness and her wild red hair, which she hates.
Tib-cat and Gib-cat, Peter's cats, lead Mary to some mysterious glowing flowers, one of which she picks. Zebedee, the estate gardener, identifies the flowers as "fly-by-night"; legend has it that witches covet the flower for its magical power. The next day, Gib-cat disappears and Mary follows Tib-cat to go look for her. Tib-cat leads her to a broomstick ensnared in a tree's roots. Mary frees the broomstick, but accidentally bursts a fly-by-night bulb on it. The bulb releases magical power in the form of a blue gelatinous substance, making the broomstick come to life and enabling Mary to ride it like a witch. The Little Broomstick whisks Mary and Tib-cat away to a complex of buildings hidden in the clouds, known as Endor College for witches. It soon becomes clear that this is the place and the people from the opening scene.
Head mistress Madam Mumblechook assumes Mary is a new pupil with Tib-cat as her familiar, and takes her on a tour of the college. The tour reveals a campus with modern technology and conveniences, where witches take courses in the magic arts alongside fields of science such as chemistry. During the tour Madam introduces Mary to Doctor Dee, the college's renowned chemistry teacher. Mary finds herself able to perform advanced spells such as invisibility. Madam and Doctor Dee become convinced that Mary is a prodigy, because of her performance as well as her red hair, which turns out be a distinguishing feature among the best witches.
At Madam's office, Mary finds a spell book hidden behind a picture of a fly-by-night. Mary admits that her magical ability comes from fly-by-night, and that Tib-cat actually belongs to Peter. Madam's attitude to Mary suddenly changes, but she still lets Mary return home once Mary turns over a piece of paper with Peter's address on it. She'd used it to deliver a package for her great-aunt. That night, Madam sends a message to Mary informing her that she's kidnapped Peter, and demands that Mary bring the fly-by-night bulbs to her. She and Tib-cat quickly fly back to Endor with the bulbs, but Madam and Doctor Dee imprison her in Doctor Dee's transformation spell lab. Mary finds Peter locked in the lab with her, and discovers that Doctor Dee has been experimenting on animals, including Gib-cat, transforming them into fantastic creatures. In the spell book, Mary finds a spell that can undo all magic, and she uses it to undo all the transformations and to unlock the lab. They try to escape on the Little Broomstick, but Madam and Doctor Dee recapture Peter. Before she is carried off, she vows to come back for him.
The Little Broomstick takes Mary to an isolated cottage on a tiny island that seems to be alive. Voices welcome here home, lighting lanterns and opening the door, and acting as if she's coming back. Within the cottage, Mary finds notes on transformation spells and a mirror that Great-Aunt Charlotte uses to contact her. Charlotte uses a sort of flashback image - Mary and her younger self walk through visions of the past - and she reveals that the cottage was her previous home, and she used to be a red-haired pupil who excelled at Endor. But one day Charlotte found fly-by-night on the campus, leading Madam and Doctor Dee to obsessively pursue a project to use the flower to transform all humans into witches. When one of their experiments disastrously failed, Charlotte decided to escape Endor, taking the flower with her. Charlotte begs Mary to use her last bulbs to return home, but Mary vows to rescue Peter instead. Madam shows up and tries to catch Mary, but she manages to slip away, and races back to the school.
Mary returns to Endor and finds Madam and Doctor Dee trying to use the flower to transform Peter into a witch. But the experiment fails again, leaving Peter trapped within a gelatinous monster that rampages across the campus. Mary gets the spell book to Peter, and he uses it to undo the failed experiment as well as all of Madam and Doctor Dee's research. Mary and Peter fly home, with Mary throwing away her last bulb and saying she does not need magic.
Characters
- Mary Smith, an 11 year old who is the main character of this story. She is innocent and often curious. She has red hair tied in twin bunches to the side, blue eyes, and freckles. She moves to the red house where her Great-Aunt Charlotte lives, but she does nothing well and spends her days in frustration and anxiety. One day, she finds a fly-by-night flower in the forest which eventually leads her to Endor College.
- Peter, a 12 year old boy who delivers newspapers in the village. Kidnapped by Madam Mumblechook, he escapes from Endor College with Mary.
- Madam Mumblechook, principal of Endor College, she wants Mary's fly-by-night to use in magic transformation experiments.
- Doctor Dee, a faculty member and mad scientist at Endor. He is studying transformation experiments and searches for the fly-by-night with Mumblechook.
- Charlotte, the great aunt of Mary and a mistress of the house. She helps Mary when she's in danger.
- Miss Banks, housekeeper of the red house.
- Zebeedee, the estate gardener, tells Mary the secrets of the fly-by-night.
- Redhead witch: Charlotte's younger self, a witch who stole the fly-by-night seeds. Like Mary, she was a red-haired girl, an earlier Endor school student. She discovered the fly-by-night that Madame and Doctor Dee used to performed dangerous experiments. After a runaway experiment in which a classmate from Endor College became a subject, she took all the seeds and ran away, losing the seeds and her broom. She then led an ordinary life.
Release
The English dub of Mary and the Witch's Flower was directed by Giles New and produced by Geoffrey Wexler. The English dub was recorded in July and August 2017 in London, and had its premiere in Los Angeles on 23 October 2017 at the GKIDS "Animation is Film" festival.
On 31 August 2018, the first broadcast was performed on NTV's "Friday Road Show!".
Home video
The movie was released on DVD, Blu-ray, Digital HD and 4K Ultra HD by Walt Disney Japan on 20 March 2018. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America by GKIDS' main home media distributor Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on 1 May 2018. Madman Entertainment released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in Australia and New Zealand on 4 July 2018. Altitude Film Distribution released the film on DVD, Blu-ray and a Blu-ray Steelbook in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2018.Reception
Box office
Mary and the Witch's Flower grossed $2.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $38.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $41 million.In Japan, the film opened at second place, grossing ¥428 million during its opening weekend; this was an increase compared to Yonebayashi's previous film, When Marnie Was There, which had grossed ¥378.86 million in its first weekend.
In the United States, the film held a special Thursday night preview on 18 January 2018 where it grossed $1.2 million from 573 theaters. It then stayed at 161 theaters over the weekend and grossed $329,097, bringing its four-day gross to $1.5 million.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 88 reviews, and an average rating of 6.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Mary and the Witch's Flower honors its creator's Studio Ghibli roots with a gentle, beautifully animated story whose simplicity is rounded out by its entrancing visuals." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com gave the film a rating of three stars out of four and stated that "the total lack of inner conflict in Mary might be why Mary and the Witch's Flower—as transportive and entertaining as it is—feels a little slight". However, Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times noted that although the film "isn't quite a masterpiece" and "the screenplay needs a polish", she concluded that the film is "a joy to look at: a visual adventure, and a continuation of a remarkable legacy".