When Marnie Was There

Wow this has some really nice art...

It starts off with a very sad and emotional tone already...

This girl's mom is very worried about her... and she sends the girl away to live with her aunt/uncle in the countryside for a while to help her relieve her asthma... these relatives have a much lighter mood.

The intrigue picks up really fast... Something about this has a really interesting vibe to it.

The girl is exploring this rural town for the first time... She gets nervous when she comes across some girls around her age, and runs away and falls down some stairs... Sees a very familiar looking mansion across the pond... Walks through the pond to the mansion... The atmosphere here is very mysterious... After she finds that nobody is at the mansion, she suddenly wakes up, laying in the back yard of this place... She runs out the gate, and sees that the small pond she walked across before is now a huge lake... Like the one she looked out at from her balcony...

The tide came in and now she's stranded. But why did she fall asleep there? After she wakes up, she gets a boat ride back across the lake by some strange bearded man, and looks back and sees someone in the window of the mansion...

The relatives explain to her about the tide and the the mute guy who rides his boat a lot...
That night she has a dream about trying to go back to that mansion, when the tide was coming up... and she sees a ghost of a blonde girl and an older lady through the window...

Later she goes out to draw... sees someone else painting near that same hill, so she sits far away from that person... Then she passes out again and wakes up on the wet ground.. The tide is at its lowest, and she's now right near the mansion... She looks through the window at the blonde girl and the old woman brushing her hair...

It's really weird... You get the sense that this mansion has some supernatural properties that have to do with the tide...

She wakes up again from the dream... Now she's being forced to go to the festival with some other people... btw this girl's name is Anna...
The girls her age start acting friendly toward her, and she feels a little more comfortable, but still reserved... she doesn't want to say why she's here...
The girl reads the wish Anna wrote down on a charm.. "I wish for a normal life every day"... She's embarrassed about it... Finally she gets rid of them by calling the fat one "a fat pig"
then she runs away and starts insulting herself...

Ahe then sees a lit candle on a boat that someone left there... She takes it over to the mansion... As she gets close to it, a bunch of the lights turn on. The blonde girl from her dreams comes out and helps her dock the boat. Anna asks her if she's real... She says this is not a dream... Anna promises her friend she won't tell anyone about their friendship...

I guess this blonde girl knows Anna from the time she passed out at their place... and stayed there till the tide came up... and again all the other times she tried to come over...

She came to visit Marnie again the next night.. and they told each other more about themselves.. Marnie has lived in this mansion since she was two... Anna's aunt brought her to this village to live with her relatives because of her asthma..

When Marnie asks her what it's like living with the Oiwa family... Anna's vision blurs... She realizes she can't remember what living with them is like... Suddenly she wakes up on the boat, docked back at her side...

It's like whenever she is with Marnie, she has to think only of her... as soon as she starts thinking about her real life again, she "wakes up" and ends the dream...

Also, that abandoned food silo from the beginning, that the Oiwa guy was talking about was haunted... Is that the same place and it transformed into this mansion through supernatural shit, or am I overthinking it?

Hmm... after she wakes up on that boat, she calls out Marnie's name, and then Marnie shows up and hugs her...

This next bit gets really spooky... Marnie invites Anna inside during their house party... They get caught by Marnie's nana, the hair brushing woman, and Marnie gets scolded, they run away as this old woman approaches.. Marnie grabs the woman's keys that fall out and locks her in her bedroom...

Then they go downstairs and Marnie introduces Anna as the flower girl guest...

Marnie's mom: "Hello, dear little witch."
Because Marnie dressed Anna like a witch as part of her plan to make her a flower salesman... Every adult at the party starts offering money to buy flowers from Anna... Anna is completely confused and gives the flower basket to someone to get away...

She sees Marnie being asked to a dance.. and someone who I think might be Marnie's dad, gives Anna a drink of some kind... She finds out it's wine... Then Anna and Marnie are outside, and start dancing...

Someone finds Anna fainted out near the road.. and they bring her to the Oiwas...

It's being very ambiguous about its story... I like it... like you are never really sure if these encounters with Marnie are a dream that Anna is having while in reality she is sleeping somewhere, or a supernatural occurrence, or if it really is happening and there's some other reason she can't tell anyone... and every time she visits this place, she can't remember the time from before she fell asleep...

The next day she tries visiting Marnie when the tide is low, but the house is abandoned again...

Then she just spends the day with the Oiwas... They talk to Anna about her aunt...

Anna just about forgets Marnie completely, until she wakes up from a nap, looks in her sketchbook and sees the sketch of Marnie... she goes out to look for her, but still can't find her... The next day she's sketching Marnie at the marsh again. She meets Hinako, who is painting the mansion... She recognizes the girl Anna is painting... she mentions that some new people are moving into that mansion...

Anna goes to check it out... Some little girl calls out from Marnie's window, and asks Anna if she is the "Marnie" that this house is known for... This girl keeps assuming Anna is Marnie... "I see you always looking at this window..."

Anna asks her how she knows Marnie... This girl found a diary behind the shelf. It describes when Marnie went out for a boat ride at night, and the party where she danced with a flower girl... and after that Nana locked Marnie in her room, and it shows when Marnie was getting her hair brushed by the window...
... and the diary ends abruptly...
Anna says she must've made up Marnie in her mind... but this diary... Marnie must really have lived here in the past...

This is really intriguing... it drew me in from the first like 10 minutes or so... 1 hour in and it's still very interesting...

This new girl says she'll investigate the mystery of Marnie and her diary... Later at night, Anna is sketching... and Marnie shows up behind her... Anna says she's missed her...

She invites Marnie to her room this time.. but Marnie says she can't go far from the mansion.
As they're going for a walk, Anna tells Marnie that her parents and grandparents died when she was little...
Marnie says her foster parents must really care about her, but Anna tells her about the time she saw that her aunt was getting checks from the government, and suspects that to be the reason she's doing it...

She always looks worried that I might find out.. and I hate myself for thinking like this.

Marnie tells more about herself... her parents are often away at work... and she likes it when they return and have parties, because she gets to escape from nana for a while... She feels very happy when she's with her parents and all the people at the parties, or outside where she can be free... She hates it when nana grabs her arm and pulls her upstairs, and brushes her hair painfully hard...

She says the maids always tried to scare her.. "Naughty kids get shut in the silo where ghosts suck out their souls"... one time the maids even dragged Marnie to the silo... When they got there, the sky was dark and thunderous...

Anna says those people are horrible... Marnie says she is jealous of Anna... Anna cheers her up, and then suggests they go to the silo together so she can conquer her fears...
Marnie: "I'm sure I'll be okay if I'm with you... Kazuhiko"

Anna pauses... Marnie continues going... Then the little girl with glasses calls out to Anna...
Whoa... I think I know where this is going... it's kinda spooky...

Anna looks back, and decides to ditch the glasses girl and try to find Marnie instead...

Anna enters the silo, it's filled with gross water and rats... She hears Marnie up above on the unsafe looking stairwells...

It's like the story changed just now.. Marnie went to the silo on her own, and Kazuhiko came in after her... Anna corrects Marnie and says her real name is Anna... and Marnie accepts that and acts normal toward her... she is still very frightened.

When they try to leave, Marnie chickens out... They fall asleep sitting on the stairwell I think? and then it shows a scene of what really happened... Kazuhiko comes to the silo with Marnie...

Anna wakes up alone on the stairwell... looks around for Marnie but can't find her... runs through the rain, crying, thinking that another person has abandoned her...

The glasses girl is reading through the new pages of the diary she found... "Kazuhiko is trying to take me to the silo"... She gets her brother to go with her to the silo to look for Anna... They find her passed out on the ground.. she has a fever... while this girl's family is taking care of Anna, in Anna's dream, she's crossing the low tide marsh to Marnie's house... Marnie opens her window... "Marnie! How could you leave me behind?"

Marnie: "I'm sorry, Anna. I didn't mean to leave you all alone. But... But at that time, you weren't there."

Anna asks what she means by this... "I can't stay here much longer. I have to say goodbye to you."
She can't explain... and asks Anna for her forgiveness...
"I'll never forget you." Anna stands in the marsh as she says goodbye to Marnie, and the tide begins to rise...

Later, Sayaka (the glasses girl who now lives in Marnie's room) comes to visit Anna... Sayaka shows Anna the new Marnie-related items she's found... One of them was the painting of the mansion from Hisoko... They go to meet that painting woman, and she tells them the whole life story of Marnie... it's a very sad and complex, but normal life story...

Then when Anna's aunt comes to pick her up... She shows Anna the old photo of the mansion that Anna liked so much the when Anna visited this place as a little girl.. She says this mansion used to be owned by Anna's grandma... Anna remembers her grandma telling her the about when she went to the silo...

... This ending is absolutely beautiful.... it has me in tears...
This might be one of my fav ghibli movies...
I wasn't expecting it to be this good, from the title and description I thought it'd be decent at best... So glad I saw this while high...