Daisy Ridley on the Universal Appeal of Studio Ghibli’s Only Yesterday
Are you excited to hear Daisy Ridley as Taeko and Dev Patel as Toshio in Only Yesterday next week? Ridley spoke about how she felt about the film in a short video interview with GKIDS, and commented on the progressiveness of it, even today:
For a film to center on a woman in the ’60s and ’80s, and have been already released 25 years ago and with cinema still being where it is today with people not being represented right…is very exciting.
The Studio Ghibli movie first came out in 1991 (it’s older than Ridley!), and its themes about country life, coming-of-age, and female childhood made it the highest grossing domestic movie in Japan that year. The story resonated largely with the audience in the face of the financial crisis, conformist attitudes, and the state of Japanese agriculture. All these factors might make you think United States viewers may find Only Yesterday dated, or not relatable, but Ridley thinks there’s something in there for everyone:
It’s funny because I guess Ghibli films, a lot of the time, are fantastical and everything–but the human stories are so human. They are what so many people around the world can identify with. I think the reason this is such a loved film and will continue to be so is because it doesn’t feel foreign. It feels exactly right, like, you know, ‘how do you make you dreams come true’ and stuff like that and, I guess, you live. You go day-to-day, try new things, and you meet new people, and eventually you’ll kind of end up where you should be, so I think anyone around the world–girl, boy, young or old goes through transitional periods of self-discovery and because of that this film will speak to everybody.
Only Yesterday is opening nationwide February 26th, will you be checking it out?
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