"The Secret World of Arrietty"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

Imagine dancing on leaves. Imagine running between mountainous rocks while dodging grasshoppers twice your size. Imagine tiptoeing through a cupboard and then climbing atop a blender so that you can dash across a countertop and snatch a sugar cube that is as big as your head. Imagine all of that. That is “The Secret World of Arrietty”. This animated film is rich and complex. It is a movie about action and adventure, but it also has a mysterious subtlety.

Arrietty Clock (Bridgit Mendler) is a 14-year-old girl. Like many girls her age, Arrietty is bright, energetic and curious. She likes the things that most kids like, such as toys, plants and animals; but, like most kids, she is also dying to grow up. Arrietty may be a bit bold and adventurous for her own good, but otherwise she is pretty normal.

Well, except for the fact that she is roughly four inches tall. Arrietty is smaller than a mouse—no bigger than a worn-down pencil. You get the picture: Arrietty could fit in your front pocket. Indeed, the whole Clock family—Arrietty plus her mom and dad—could fit in your pocket.

The Clocks are borrowers, which means they are tiny people who borrow things from big people. Borrowers actually just take things, to be honest—things such as food, sugar, tissue paper, or whatever else they need—but they take just enough to live on, and never so much that the big people notice. After all, no borrower wants to be greedy, and no borrower wants to be noticed by the big people.

Arrietty and her family are a particularly happy bunch of borrowers. They live in a comfortable house, complete with miniature rooms, furniture and appliances, underneath the home of a family that seems to be wonderfully oblivious to the borrowers’ presence.

That is, until Arrietty is spotted by Shawn (David Henrie). Shawn is a sick boy who ends up in Arrietty’s neck of the woods because he needs rest before undergoing a dangerous operation. He catches sight of Arrietty on a couple of occasions, but somehow Shawn is neither surprised nor dismayed to see a four-inch teenage girl running around the house.

This is odd. Arrietty is a miniature person! But Shawn acts as if he always in such stuff of childish fairytales. Shawn is not the only one, either. Despite their lack of evidence, all of the big people seem to be open to the idea that borrowers exist. Odd indeed.

Some of the big people—Shawn, for instance—want to befriend the borrowers. Others want it to be true that borrowers exist, but are not interested in finding out about them. And others only want to hunt down, dominate, and maybe even kill Arrietty and her family.

Arrietty is caught in the middle. On the one hand, she wants to talk to and interact with Shawn; she wants to learn more about other people, big or small. On the other hand, Arrietty does not want to expose, and thereby endanger, her family. If Arrietty wants to learn more about the world around her, she has to take some risks. But if she wants to protect those she loves, she must sacrifice other, potentially meaningful relationships.

“The Secret World of Arrietty” is an eerily beautiful story. Each of the characters is puzzling yet intoxicating. Arrietty is drawn to danger in some strange and disquieting way, but at the same time, her spirit is unbreakable and inspirational. Shawn is sensitive and compassionate—he really cares for other people—yet he is remarkably stony when it comes to his own livelihood. Arrietty’s dad, Pod (Will Arnett), is quiet and unresponsive, yet dripping with careful adoration of his family.

These characters are subtle and interesting. Their story is captivating in surprising ways. This is a paradoxical movie—it is both simple and complex. There is a lot to say about it and for it, I think. There is also a lot that cannot be said about it. Sometimes you just have to see it.