When Marnie Was There: Personal Anxiety, Western Queerbaiting, and Transformative Love

This movie was selected by our Patreon Supporters over at the Cinematic Doctrine Patreon. Support as little as $3 a month and have your voice heard!

Shirleon joins Melvin to discuss this month’s Patreon-Picked flick: When Marnie Was There! Boy do they cover a lot of ground! From discussing its strong melancholy vibes to its extremely profound yet simple characters, no stone is left unturned!

Topics:

• (FREE PATREON EXCLUSIVE) 44-minutes discussing a trailer for an AI produced short film called “Next Stop Paris” that will debut on TCLtv+ Summer 2024, as well as other AI related discussions and surprises. (FREE PATREON EXCLUSIVE)
• When Marnie Was There’s opening is dour, and the whole film has a patient melancholy to it as well as strong depictions of the hijacking nature of anxiety on the body.
• Taking time to discuss how haunting the film feels, and the lyrics to Priscilla Ahn’s “Fine on the Outside” theme song.
• The film drew a lot of personal experiences out of both Shirleon and Melvin, and the two discuss it further.
• Melvin explains the end of the film, as well as how that caught a lot of people off guard. Or, specifically, how they felt “queerbaited”, and how Melvin thinks that’s a wildly uneducated and inappropriate read of the film.
• When Marnie Was There is so overtly about the transforming benefits of practiced, personal, platonic love that Melvin has difficulty observing the film in any other way.
• Getting into various biblical stories that showcase practiced, personal, platonic love that produced hope.
• How the image of the Yukata being cleaned is a fitting icon of hope.
  

Recommendations:

• Vinland Saga (2019) (Anime)
• Texhnolyze (2003) (Anime)

When Marnie Was There is Rated PG for thematic elements and smoking. It features Sara Takatsuki, Kasumi Arimura, Nanako Matsushima, Susumu Terajima, Toshie Negishi, Ryôko Moriyama, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Hitomi Kuroki, Yûko Kaida, Hana Sugisaki, Shigeyuki Totsugi, and Ken Yasuda. Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. When Marnie Was There is available here.

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Melvin Benson is the Founder, Editor-In-Chief, and Lead Host of Cinematic Doctrine. Whether it’s a movie, show, game, comic, or novel, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s rich, he’s ready and willing to give it a try! His hope is to see King Jesus glorified as far as the east is from the west!

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