Mary and the Witch's Flower: A disappointing bloom

Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.15.20

Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli clearly has inspired the look and narrative approach of Japanese animated cinema.

When encouraged to look around an office laden with all manner of strange artifacts
and colorful treasures, Mary discovers a mirror with a concealed compartment
behind it, which contains a book of powerful magic spells.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower comes by this influence honestly, since director/co-scripter Hiromasa Yonebayashi helmed 2010’s The Secret World of Arrietty and 2014’s When Marnie Was There for Ghibli, earning an Academy Award nomination for the latter.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower marks Yonebayashi’s directorial debut for his own recently founded Studio Ponoc. Although it has the gorgeous, hand-drawn lushness of a Ghibli production, Yonebayashi didn’t pay sufficient attention to the story and its characters; too much of the action feels random and unfocused, as if we’re watching the abbreviation of a much richer miniseries.

This is also one of those aggravating fantasies that fails to remain consistent to its own rules, and where characters, good and bad, are only as strong — or weak — as a given moment demands.

Which is sad, given that the film is adapted from Mary Stewart’s popular 1971 children’s book, The Little Broomstick. Yonebayashi and co-scripter Riko Sakaguchi have done it no favors; they’ve overloaded Stewart’s gently rural fable with a slice of steampunk that feels quite out of place.

(Yonebayashi clearly has a fondness for British children’s novels; The Secret World of Arrietty was based on Mary Norton’s The Borrowers.)

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Netflix limits us to the dubbed British voice cast, robbing us of the more story-appropriate Japanese actors.

Mary opens with a cataclysmic prologue, as a young girl attempts to escape from a conflagration that destroys some sort of immense structure; she’s pursued by slithery, gelatinous creatures out of nightmare, their grasping tentacles attempting to absorb her. She seems to get away, but then a final blast of wind knocks her and the flying broom to ground in a forest, where tiny glowing blue spheres — which she has carefully sheltered — burst and have a most unusual effect on nearby trees and animals.

At which point, we cut abruptly to young Mary Smith (voiced by Ruby Barnhill), living in a northern England country estate owned by her Great-Aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron), while her parents are off elsewhere. Mary is an impetuous and careless klutz who hates her uncontrollable, bright-red hair; she repeatedly gets in the way of her aunt, the housekeeper Miss Banks (Morwenna Banks) and gardener Zebedee (Rasmus Hardiker).

One day she’s befriended by two cats — Tib and Gib — who belong to a local boy named Peter (Louis Ashbourne Serkis, son of famed motion-control actor Andy Serkis). The cats lead her to an unusual plant with glowing blue flowers that we recognize from the prologue; Zebedee identifies them as “fly-by-nights,” reputed to be coveted by witches, for their magical powers.

The following day, Gib has disappeared; a clearly agitated Tib leads Mary into the woods, despite an enveloping mist that Aunt Charlotte and all locals regard as “dangerous” (precisely why, is left unexplained). Mary finds a broom — the broom, from the prologue — and something quite unexpected occurs, when she mashes one of the blue flowers on its wooden shaft.

One exhilarating ride over the clouds later, Mary and Tib find themselves at a massive campus: Endor College, where young witches and warlocks come to study. The typically Japanese fantasy creatures and steampunk touches notwithstanding, the exterior and interior are a total steal from Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.

(Mind you, Mary Stewart clearly got there first, given that her book preceded J.K. Rowlings’ first novel by a quarter-century. But that doesn’t excuse Yonebayashi from visualizing Stewart’s Endor College in such a derivative manner, which positively screams Hogwarts.)

Anyway…

Head mistress Madam Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) and chemistry teacher Doctor Dee (Jim Broadbent) assume that Mary is a new student; to her surprise — and delight — the fly-by-night has indeed granted her some impressive magical skills. Everything seems fantabulous, giving the formerly woebegone Mary an exciting new sense of self.

Ah, but appearances can be deceiving. 

Endor College clearly is concealing something awful behind two massive doors kept locked by a magical spell, and Madam Mumblechook — despite her outward cheerfulness — seems to be rather too welcoming.

Indeed, Mary — and Peter, and the cats — quickly find themselves in quite a pickle. The film’s second and third acts involve chases, skirmishes, ill-advised decisions and many magical battles. 

All of this should be suspenseful, but it doesn’t work out that way. Although Mary has the stubborn determination and resourceful pluck we expect from an animé heroine, her successes and failures feel rushed, contrived and manipulative, rather than the organic ups and downs of a coherent narrative.

Her stalwart courage notwithstanding, we don’t know Mary well enough to care about her; frankly, I was more concerned — throughout — about the cats. We definitely need more back-story on Madam Mumblechook and Doctor Dee, and their eventual fate is left undisclosed (which is ridiculous).

Odd, as well, that the range of a key “totality spell” varies so much, and that Endor broomkeeper Flanagan (Ewen Bremner) never seems to be affected by any of these magical doings.

All told, the package is undeniably gorgeous, but Yonebayashi’s attention to narrative detail leaves much to be desired. He needs to remember what Miyazaki always has understood: Nothing is more important than story.