I know people are really excited for Hayao Miyazaki’s new movie to come out later this year. But the big Japanese animated feature I am most anticipating this year was Suzume. Makoto Shinkai (along with Mamoru Hosoda) is part of the generation inspired by the great Miyazaki, and in turn, use that inspiration to make great films themselves. Suzume isn’t the revelation that Your Name was, but it proves Shinkai’s artistic sensibilities remain exceptional. Keep star crossing those lovers my guy.
Suzume (Nanoka Hara) runs out of her aunt Tamaki’s (Eri Fukatsu) house and starts biking to school in her cute tiny coastal Japanese town, Miyazaki (classy touch, Makoto). As she flies down a hill, she passes a mysterious stranger, college kid Souta (Hokuto Matsumura), going towards Miyazaki’s abandoned hot springs ruins. Spurred by curiosity/fate, Suzume follows the stranger, and finds a door in the middle of nowhere. Suzume looks inside, and sees this beautiful place that reminds her of dreams she’s had…but also something dark and foreboding that brings Suzume into Souta’s strange world of both wonder and terror. A world that involved a talking cat (Ann Yamane), earthworms, spirits, and 3 legged chairs.
Please go see Suzume on as big a screen as possible. Shinkai’s best trait is his lush ability to craft amazing visuals. He’s playing a lot of his greatest hits here: the area inside of the doorways is this lavish purple skyscape, opening the viewer’s heart to the cosmos. Everytime Suzume or Souta is walking, there’s a glimmer of the sun’s reflection somewhere, casting the viewer’s eye onto the stupendous scenery the man carefully and beautifully crafts to swoon the audience with. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a bluer sea than when Suzume is biking down the hill towards the water. When things have to get scary, the dude brings out his red and black swirls, a potent color combination. Shinkai’s story takes us on a journey from the sticks to the city, as we get to see all of Japan’s natural and manmade beauty, even the beautiful melancholy of a lonely door in the middle of an abandoned hot spring. Shinkai makes sure we see and revel in all of it, from all sorts of angles, especially leaping and falling through the air, with a simple piano or a capella accompaniment doing their best to make you fall in love with what you’re watching.
Even though Suzume is animated, it’s story is more for adults than it is for kids. The first hour is rich with ambitious and complicated ideas, as Suzume learns about these doors, Japan’s history, and how the past, present, and future are always in constant conversation with one another. Sneakily as well, the lonely Suzume and Souta not only find solace in each other, but in people they meet along the way, enriching each other’s lives for the better. The most powerful lesson Shinkai gets across is how humans and nature are always connected to one another, and cruelty of humanity towards the natural world will result in some sort of reaction by nature. And the only way to fix everything: is by finding empathy and peace with your surrounding, a wonderful sentiment that made me tear up a couple times. During the downtime from big events, we get that wonderful Shinkai character building complete with awkward humor, like Suzume convincing kids that a 3 legged chair has AI chips installed or Suzume and a new friend Chika (Kotone Hanase) talk about stupid boys with Souta finding a way to listen into the conversation. The movie gets too overstuffed and loses its way after a big event about 90 minutes in, but it finds it just in time to stick the landing with a simple powerful lesson that ties the story in a nice bow. But an overstuffed mistake is better than no ideas at all, a mistake I’m confident Makoto Shinkai will never make.
A bit of advice for Makoto Shinkai. Your Name, Weathering With You, and Suzume are a great trilogy package you should be very proud of. But I hope you grow up a little: make some movies about adults learning some things. You have an amazing mind of all sorts of ideas, and I would like to see what time and age has taught you, than you can teach the audience. Also, can you come to the US and teach animators how to make movies beautiful? I’m certain everytime I watch one of your films I’m watching art in motion, and I want that feeling to expand everywhere to everyone.