Watch On Your Mark For Free

one of my absolute favorites!

Awesome Movie

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

It must have been a small but extreme labor of love to make On Your Mark, a short film directed by the great Hayao Miyazaki with his Studio Ghibli crew working at full throttle. It gets right to the heart of the idea in seven minutes through an immediate array of strange but deliriously exciting images, and its story gains momentum by the end. The end, also, is one of the happiest I've seen in Miyazaki's work (if a little fuzzy with an angel flying high into the sky). On Your Mark tells of such a winged being who becomes prey to the horrors of civilization, plague, technology, when she only got there through a tremendous blunder. But when two men finally decide they've seen enough, they go through the security, through the swarms of bio-chemical suited soldiers, and through a desperate escape they make it through the explosions and action. All through this Miyzaki and his team create small wonders frame by frame, with small details like falling rocks just as fascinating as the large-scale amazements like the 'city' at night in neon, or the shots of the getaway vehicle running along the highway, with the helicopters chasing afterwords. How or why this has happened to the angel is never made clear, but in such an amount of time Miyazaki can only show so much. What comes through best, in the end, is the immense talents of his team, his collaborators who transform such a near fairy tale into a one-of-a-kind show. The music, too, is a curious addition, as I don't think I would've cared for it much taken apart from the animation. With it, the song works on a romantically charged, epic scale (if it were in English, I might've mistaken it for an 80s power ballad). It won't remain as a true landmark achievement for Miyazaki like Princess Mononoke, but if you're already a fan of his &/or Studio Ghibli's works and you can find it (online is the best bet), it's more than worth it, it's a must-see.

The song was ok, nothing more. But the animation is great, Its interesting to see a storyline produced without a word said... the story even manages to have some twists to it, some humor and beautifull images (and angels, love angels...), dispite the meager song, I feel happy whenever I see this small piece. See it, its definatley worth 6 minutes of your time! Average 8.7(10)

The music's forgettable but will have become part of you, once you've replayed "On Your Mark" enough times to decipher it. Bypassing as much as possible of what's already on this page, what struck me, last viewing, was except for very beginning which is really a flash forward to the very end, nothing takes place at ground level. Everything seems to happen in or between towers. Falling's a big deal. Witness the oh no!/yes go! collapse that ends the rescue sequence. Finally the two rescuers are grounded, though speeding forward, and the `angel' appears to fall, though naturally, with as little trauma as imaginable, upward. The hands' release modifies the Sistine Chapel detail, but also echoes many of Robert Bresson's shots of hands.

...and produces a wonderful piece of animation, the visuals are really something to behold even by Ghibli standards. A non linear story is told without dialogue in this 7 minute music video, allied to a catchy song and with an uplifting conclusion this is a brilliant appetiser. If you enjoyed watching this I urge you to seek out other Ghibli works, however I do believe I'm preaching to the converted...*lucky aren't we*