Continuing my Studio Ghibli (and related) watch and sharing brief thoughts, and this is my follow-up to watching My Neighbor Totoro and pondering the joy of the mundanity of childhood running to now Kiki’s Delivery Service and the majesty of flight.
Miyazaki has plainly always been been obsessed with both aviation and movement within his films and with Kiki what came to mind was Superman, and the common saying and slogan you see attached to that original Christopher Reeve film of “you will believe a man can fly”.
This is better than that.
Kiki is not great at flying yet but being not great at flying is still goals af and it’s like when you first learn to drive, you’re not great at it but yo you still got to have your music blasting, and Kiki is off with just her cat and radio gliding and jamming, always beautifully yet not smoothly going fighting air currents and even pulling up to another bitch…err witch who you can tell just has it put together, has a newer model broom, and lives in a swank part of the country.
Even someone who isn’t an expert at flying looks majestic to those who can’t and it does so for those in Kiki’s adopted new city and to us the watcher. Even as she may struggle with the currents and climate there is just something primal about flying, one of the original superhero powers, and Miyazaki films always seem to capture that grandeur, joy, and dream realized.
This movie is impossible not to love.