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My analysis begins with the tear-drawing part of the movie. I wiped when Arrietty and Sho exchanging a forever farewell. When Arrietty grabbed Sho's finger cried, I couldn't help but follow her. From the opening narration, we knew that Sho only stayed at house for a week. So whatever romance happened during this course, it would not last longer than a week. Of course, having watched so many romantic movies, we know that directors can always somehow carve the love story deep and unforgettable. In Arrietty and Sho's case, their love is extremely sweet and innocent, but moreover, they are destined not to be together-unrequited love. Arrietty grew up in an isolated social environment. She did not communicate to anyone but her parents. Even though "all humans are dangers" must have been ingrained into her mind; young and inexperienced as she was, she would still easily fall for a human's kindness, which could either be a disastrous trap or a precious encounter. We all were glad that this time it was the later one. She fell to Sho, so wholeheartedly. We can tell from her mindlessly thinking of him all the time, exposing herself over and over again in front of him. After each time, she grew more love and hence collected more courage to know more of him, despite the threat and serious consequences. If she had not possessed such a passionate, curious, simple and brave heart, she would never step further towards him. For Sho, we did not know a whole lot about him; he might have friends at school; he also might never attend much school or have the opportunity to become really close to anyone, especially when he expected the end of his life to arrive soon. His strong affection towards Arrietty originated from his curiosity, after connecting what his mom told him with what he witnessed in the yard. He didn't know if these borrowers had emotions just like humans, or if they talked, or if they named themselves. Being pushed by his curiosity, he decided to ask more and more from Arrietty-from her family, her name, to her appearance. Then he found out the great similarities between them, and immediately he fell in love, too. When people suffer from life-threatening disease, they want comfort but are afraid to confess so. Sometimes, they do not ask protection from others to avoid exerting more burdens. Sho is obviously one of them: he seldom bother Haru or his grandma and he did not complain about her parents' absence before such an important surgery. However, Arrietty's position is almost perfect for Sho to ask for some emotional catharsis. Since he had feelings for her, her kindness could easily cheer him up. Sho could not receive physical protection from Arrietty like he did from many others; instead, Arrietty needed protection from Sho, which made him see the worthiness of his existence. Arrietty is also constantly exposed to various life-threatening dangers, hence she and Sho commiserate. In addition, Arreitty is not really a human so I guess Sho would assume that his bad health condition did not upset her as to a human love interest. In addition, Xiang was a nice person, except that he was too pushy sometimes. He did not try to hide his eagerness of knowing more about her and she did show willingness to reveal more of her life to him, hence his being pushy was justified more or less. He was never aggressive (in human standard) or forced or lured Arrietty to do anything. He treated her with honesty; as much as he liked her, he never tried to persuade her to stay by promising to give her full protection. He gave full understanding to their moving and apologized for his behalves. (Even though Sho acted in very immature and inconsiderate way a lot of the time, such as breaking into their home and talking discouraging words to Arrietty in the garden. By comparison, Arrietty was more mature. Most of the silly things she did were meant to protect the family. ) Furthermore, Sho and Arriety indeed suited each other. Besides the previously mentioned balanced protection between them, they were different enough to arouse each other's interest and at the same time similar enough to constitute a philosophical conversation and to feel on the same intellectual level with each other, unlike Arrietty and Spiller, who obviously grew up in a less civilized environment and didn't share the same culture as Arrietty's family. From Arriety, Sho was offered the courage to continue his life; from Sho, Arrietty experienced the feeling of being loved, falling in love, being protected, and being cared by a human boy, which she probably would never go through again. They had to say goodbye. They knew it from the beginning, but still chose to love, which was the most sad as well as the best part of it. They liked each other for the sake of love itself, not for any material motivation. We probably all experienced unrequited love. More than often, we constrained our feelings because the moment of waving the forever goodbye is too painful. But Arrietty and Sho did not. Because their feelings developed naturally and they were too young, time was too limited to allow them to think it twice; as a result, they opened their heart to this unrequited love; the goodbye, the unavoidable moment, broke all of our hearts. How many times, in our life, we wished time could freeze, and we wouldn't care about not seeing any more of the world but being in that moment for the rest of our life? But time does not stop, it goes on. And there is the ending, a sad one because Arrietty and Sho parted forever, a happy one because they confessed their love to each other. There are times, when love itself means much more than being together.
At the very end, Arrietty accepted a berry from Spiller. It is very plausible that they would get married in the future, perhaps not for love, but for the continuation of their species. Being together with someone she doesn't truly adore in the romantic way could be very hard, worse than being alone. But Arrietty does not have a choice. Many of us face similar situation, marrying someone because we reach the age for marriage, because our family background matches, or because there does not seem to be anyone else. In fact, we don't have to do so, because we don't carry the same responsibility as Arrietty. At least for myself, I will listen to my heart rather than submit to the reality.
Now, I will turn to the main theme delivered by the movie. The borrower is compared with other endangered species by Sho. Obviously, the borrower is a unique existence from several aspects. They really do like human in so many ways, their intelligence, their appearance, their physical structure, their physiological made-ups, heir culture and their emotions. However, their physical size is too small and their existence must be kept a secret from human, which together put them in danger. Of course, their intelligence helps them survive. But on the other hand, their life is much more difficult to live than humans. We are not afraid of creatures around our houses, first of all. But even mice right outside their door can threaten the borrower's life. In other words, the borrower's body is as delicate as humans, but they have more natural enemies. In addition, we humans live our individual life with support from thousands other human beings. But the borrowers are all on their own. Furthermore, they have to hide their existence all the time from human. With more and more humans born to this world, it becomes harder and harder to hide themselves from humans. Therefore, this specie is indeed doomed, indeed destined to die out. However, their dying out can be a lose to the world. Even though they are not essential to the biotic pyramid, they are special in a way that we can't help feel sad about losing their genomes. In order to survive all this way, the borrower must possess great imagination, extremely sturdy soul and almost impeccable immune system. The existence of the borrower symbolizes those virtues, which humans, as well as many other animals, can learn a lot from. In real world, some species exist with not too much utilitarian value-or at least in human being's point of view. But how come they no longer have utilitarian value? many many times it is due to human behaviors. We change their living environment and destroy their food chain hence they no longer fit in their surroundings. Hence, before we conclude a species is useless thus should let them extinct, we may as well examine our own actions, ponder on the root of their extinction-very likely it is our fault, and then calculate what we will lose due to their extinction, which is sure not equal to zero.
There are also some unreasonable scenes in the movie. For example, how can Sho know where their home is and where to deliver the sugar to Arrietty? how can Arrietty hear her mom's screaming from that far away? Do the borrowers connect with each other in a certain way? Sho knew Haru hid Arrietty's mom in the kitchen, but how? Also Arrietty's voice was easily heard by her mom when she tried to find her; but she was not supposed to be that loud, considering her size. When Sho's grandma came back, Sho not only cleared out the relics of the old house, and reinstalled the kitchen back to the doll house, but also unlocked his door and changed into his pajama. I doubt there was enough time for those actions together.
In fact, we can expand our imagination to picture how the borrowers live: how they borrow gas and electricity, how they learn about linguistics math, engineering, natural science (presumably from humans), their average age…I even wonder wether Spiller belongs to the same race as Arriety and her family,
PS: A relatively irrelevant question: what is the crow doing there? At the beginning it seems to protect Arrietty from the cat; later on, though, it was attacking her.
PSS: I am really impressed by the portrait of all the details at the borrower's house as well as they way they live their life. I also really love the cat.
