Rapid Response: Kiki's Delivery Service

For all the praise given to Hayao Miyazaki for his fantastical imagination, the man is also a master at portraying the beauty of the real world. He shows us the simple themes that teach our children to grow and the thrill of an adventure. “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is Miyazaki’s most modest production, free of most fantasy and anime trappings, and yet it is no less magical.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” was the follow-up to Miyazaki’s masterpiece “My Neighbor Totoro,” a simple but delightful film about a child who discovers a hidden realm of the forest and a magical creature with loveable qualities. What it shares with “Kiki’s,” as well as several of his other films, is that it is a kids movie free of any bad guys. It populates the world with characters who are only polite, caring, heartwarming, plucky and fun, and yet it creates a story with emotional poignancy and drama.

Its title heroine is a 13-year-old witch in training. Her responsibility at this age is to find a city free of other witches to call home for one year and make it on her own. It’s a simple story of a girl growing up and leaving home, with the only magical difference being that she can fly. It takes a lot of growth for Kiki to find the thing she does best and make a living out of it, and her problem is not finding business for her delivery service but sticking to it, putting up with the hardships of the job and learning to bounce back when she’s unable to fly the way she used to. Miyazaki finds a way to illustrate the excitement, struggle and tedium of Kiki’s job, and he does so without manic action or mean-spirited characters.

There’s a scene in the movie that sums up just how adorable this film is. Kiki goes to a little old grandmother’s house to make a delivery. It’s a pie that she wants delivered to her granddaughter’s birthday party, but it isn’t prepared, so Kiki is about to be sent on her way with her agreed upon pay when Kiki decides to stick around and help fix the granny’s oven so she can still make the delivery. She does all of this work with pluck, not magic, and it pays off in spades when she visits the granny again later. The harsh twist is that after frantically delivering the pie through the pouring rain, the recipient is ungrateful and announces to the party, “Grandma sent us one of her disgusting pies again.” It exposes the hardships of life without making a classical villain.

Miyazaki has a wonderful visual imagination, but there’s nothing fantastical to see in “Kiki’s.” Rather, the real world beauty and pastoral landscapes are the most impressive and truly emphasize Miyazaki’s gift for sharp cinematography. Take a look at the striking low angles during the opening shots that paint Kiki as someone deep and in thought, not a spoiled, excitable brat but someone with room for growth. Notice how he creates the illusion of motion within his films and generates suspense. When Tombo’s bike is careening down the highway, there are lines approaching the bottom of the frame that quickly vanish and reappear whereas another director wouldn’t be so diligent. Even when Kiki prepares to fly on her broom, she doesn’t just take off in a whoosh. We see her hair and dress billow in front of her intense focus. In fact “Kiki’s” flight sequences are not nearly as graceful as those seen in “Nausicaa,” “Castle in the Sky” or otherwise, but they have invigorating and joyous moments of action, especially in the film’s climactic rescue.

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” may not be the best place to start in exploring Miyazaki’s catalog, but it’s a cute, funny and exciting film that is one of his best.