From Up on Poppy Hill

Sarah Bolger Director: Goro Miyazaki Goro Miyazaki

Overview

Set in Tokyo a few months before the 1964 Olympic Games, From Up on Poppy Hill tells the story of Umi, a teenager whose father died during wartime, and who shoulders much of the responsibility for her family's business in addition to maintaining good grades at school. Her orphaned friend Shun lives in a mansion on the school grounds with dozens of other kids, and when their home is threatened with demolition, Umi and the others do their best to stop the dwelling from being destroyed. From Up on Poppy Hill is the second feature by Goro Miyazaki, the son of acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki. The film played at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/21/2021
UPC:	0826663219517
Original Release:	2011
Rating:	PG
Source:	Shout Factory
Time:	1:31:00
Sales rank:	3,300

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Sarah Bolger	Umi (English language version)
Masami Nagasawa	Umi (Japanese language version)
Isabelle Fuhrman	Sora (English language version)
Haruza Shiraishi	Sora (Japanese language version)
Anton Yelchin	Shun (English language version)
Junichi Okada	Shun (Japanese language version)
Christina Hendricks	Saori (English language version)
Gillian Anderson	Miki (English language version)
Yuriko Ishida	Miki (Japanese language version)
Alex Wolff	Riku (English language version)
Raymond Ochoa	Riku (English language version)
Tsubasa Kobayashi	Riku (Japanese language version)
Aubrey Plaza	Sachiko (English language version)
Rumi Hiiragi	Sachiko (Japanese language version)
Chris Noth	Akio (English language version)
Nao Omori	Akio (Japanese language version)
Jeff Dunham	Gen (English language version)
Emily Osment	Nobuko (English language version)
Jamie Lee Curtis	Ryoko (English language version)
Jun Fubuki	Ryoko (Japanese language version)
Keiko Takeshita	Hana (Japanese language version)
Bruce Dern	Yoshio (English language version)
Takashi Naito	Yoshio (Japanese language version)
Beau Bridges	Mr. Tokumaru (English language version)
Teruyuki Kagawa	Mr. Tokumaru (Japanese language version)
Charlie Saxton	Mizunuma (English language version)
Shunsuke Kazama	Mizunuma (Japanese language version)
Ron Howard	Philosophy Club President (English language version)
Jake Steinfeld	Fish Seller (English language version)
Emily Bridges	Mr. Tokumaru's Assistant (English language version)

Technical Credits

Hayao Miyazaki

Keiko Niwa

Goro Miyazaki	Director
Koji Kasamatsu	Sound/Sound Designer
Kathleen Kennedy	Executive Producer
Robyn Klein	Co-producer
Frank Marshall	Executive Producer
Hayao Miyazaki	Screenwriter
Keiko Niwa	Screenwriter
Kamon Oba	Art Director
Atsushi Okui	Cinematographer
Takashi Omori	Art Director
Toshio Suzuki	Producer
Yohei Takamatsu	Art Director
Satoshi Takebe	Score Composer
Geoffrey Wexler	Producer
Noboru Yoshida	Art Director

Editorial Reviews

The latest effort from Japan's Studio Ghibli (the team that brought us Spirited Away and Ponyo) is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama called From Up on Poppy Hill. A tender and often playful story with no fantasy elements at all, Poppy Hill isn't a movie for small kids, who wouldn't be able to follow the characters' complex emotions or the story's numerous ins and outs. But the film is perfect for the age group it depicts: older kids and teens -- and, of course, any adult who appreciates the kind of magic and beauty that Studio Ghibli is capable of producing. The story concerns a 16-year-old girl named Umi, who lives in the port city of Yokohama in 1964 Japan. Umi works hard before and after school to help her grandmother run the boarding house she and her younger sister Sora share with her while their mother finishes her medical degree in America, and though they lost their father during the Korean War, the strong women who board at their modest house provide warmth and support as the girls navigate their teen years. However, still grieving in her own quiet way, Umi continues to raise the signal flags outside of their house every day, wishing her father "safe voyages" even though the message is, at this point, something of a spiritual gesture. One day, Umi reads an anonymous poem in the school newspaper describing the writer's tremendous love and affection for a girl who raises signal flags every day. Could it be from a secret admirer? She soon finds herself drawn to a classmate named Shun, one of the many boys who run a wide variety of academic activities at the huge, run-down clubhouse next door to the school. Their connection is so strong that Umi suspects he wrote the poem. But just as their magical spark promises to heal the wound still left from the loss of her father, Shun sees a photo of Umi's dad and is shocked to recognize him. He has seen this man in photographs before - it's the man his adoptive parents identified as his birth father. Could he and Umi be brother and sister? Does this puzzling development explain their connection or negate it? This plot twist sounds a little tawdry, but it's not. It's made abundantly clear in the story that while Japan has fostered a culture of fierce integrity and accountability among its young people, it has at this time only recently recovered from nearly ten years of constant war. These conflicts devastated many families as children were orphaned and deprivation increased the rates of infant mortality. This historical dimension lends the film a heartening undercurrent about the importance of honoring the good things from our past even when we wish to leave the bad things behind, and allows the story to play out without any threat of it feeling like a soap opera. The movie was co-written by Ghibli genius Hayao Miyazaki, but it was directed by his son Goro -- who cut his teeth directing an animated adaptation of the Earthsea fantasy novels as his first assignment for Ghibli. And rest assured, the younger Miyazaki has clearly earned his stars, as Poppy Hill offers just the same intimate, ultimately life-affirming kind of storytelling we've come to expect from the family name. The movie is also absolutely beautiful, depicting every scene with a gorgeous attention to light and texture that reminds you just how transportive old-fashioned cell drawings can be -- particularly when they come from one of the most indisputably talented families in animation.

All Movie Guide - Cammila Collar