Cast: (voiced by) Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura, Eri Fukatsu, Shota Sometani, Sairi Ito, Kotone Hanase, Kana Hanazawa, Matsumoto Hakuō II, Ryunosuke Kamiki
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Writer: Makoto Shinkai
Every culture has a history of creating artistic parables as a way of processing collective tragedies and traumas, but perhaps none more fantastically than Japan. Godzilla, the 50-ft., fire-breathing monster enacting a terrible vengeance upon the country, was born from the devastation wrought by the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Japan then advanced into the technological revolution of the 60s and 70s, the tumultuous relationship between machinery and nature that emerged became manifest in the twisted body horror of films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man. One can only wonder what wonders and horrors await us when Japanese art well and truly enters its post-COVID age. March 2011 saw another great disaster that left its mark on Japan’s collective psyche, the earthquake in the Tōhoku region that brought about a powerful tsunami, which in its turn resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that saw widespread meltdowns and the leakage of radioactive water. Casualties numbered in the tens of thousands and the resulting damage made the so-called triple disaster the costliest in the country’s history. The emotional fallout has already been felt in such films as 2016’s Shin Godzilla and Makato Shinkai’s masterpiece Your Name. In Suzume, Shinkai chooses to engage with the legacy of Fukushima in more direct, overt terms and does so in the spectacularly outlandish fashion that only anime is capable of delivering.
Suzume is a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl who lost her mother in that very disaster over a decade ago. The movie opens with an image of Suzume as a little girl wondering about a ruined city crying for her mother, an image shrouded in enough uncertainty that we’re not sure if it is a dream or a memory. As Suzume, now living with her caring but distracted aunt, is walking to school one morning, she happens upon Souta, the poster child for the anime boyfriend with his long emo hair, chiselled features, and sombre demeanour. Souta asks Suzume for directions to some local ruins and the besotted girl can’t help but follow after him. There she finds a lone door to nowhere standing in the middle of a long derelict complex. She opens the door and finds a starlit realm on the other side that she cannot enter. In the process she inadvertently dislodges an idol that had been the passageway’s guardian and thereby unleashes a gigantic, worm-like monster of smoke and fire into the world that shall wreak unspoken havoc. Suzume and Souta are able to seal the door and lock the monster within, but the guardian, now a mischievous cat, refuses to resume its post. It transforms Souta into an anthropomorphic three-legged chair (yep) and goes on the run. Suzume and Souta must chase the cat so that it may be restored as the keystone and in the meantime locate the other hidden doors scattered around Japan and seal them before the smoke monster can make its escape.
So there’s a lot going on in this movie, to say the least. Those who have seen Your Name will know just how wild, sweeping, and romantic Shinkai is capable of being and Suzume is shaped by those same tendencies. This is a story of magical dimensions, star-crossed lovers, and apocalyptic catastrophes made tangible by the authentic humanity behind it all. In the few scenes they share before Souta is rendered into a chair (anime, am I right?), the affection that forms between him and Suzume is immediately apparent. A lot is thrown at the viewer in terms of lore and exposition, but what comes through firstly and foremost are the feelings and motivations compelling these characters. We see in Suzume a caring soul, one who is compassionate and nurturing in her very nature and cannot stand by in this time of crisis. We feel the ineffable attraction that draws her to Souta and in both we see a mutual sense of responsibility, one that feels so crushing for two as young as they are but that neither feel they can brush aside so long as the fate of the world hangs in the balance (the shadow of climate change looms heavily on this picture). Whatever craziness the movie wishes to throw at the viewer, it has done the groundwork and therefore we are prepared to follow it to the ends of the earth.
And the journey is really quite spectacular. The choice to turn the love interest into a chair is as inspired as it is weird, making way for an unconventional dynamic that is played and animated wonderfully. Together the couple has to travel across Japan and along the way we see more of the impending adult life that awaits Suzume in her coming of age; at one stop she makes a new friend, helps care for some little children, and assists as a waitress in a bar, and these tangents feel less like diversions than they do set-ups for the arc that the movie wants to draw for the character’s maturity. And it’s all so very sublime right until it starts to feel a little… dimensionless. It’s not easy to pinpoint where exactly the movie goes wrong. It’s not that the third-act is bad, but it doesn’t feel like the right climax for the movie that preceded it. Threads are set up that don’t off and instead it feels like the movie is paying off on other threads that it hasn’t taken the time to establish prior. For example, Suzume’s aunt goes after her niece upon learning that she’s left town and, when the two are reunited, there is a confrontation that leads to harsh words being exchanged, setting up the need for a reconciliation. This is good stuff, but it happens so late in the game that it feels more tacked on and rushed than it would have had this exchange occurred in the first act, before Suzume set off on her quest.
It’s a shame because as superb as the individual scenes are and how absurdly beautiful the animation is, it doesn’t quite cohere. Shinkai set the bar high with Your Name, a truly incredible picture where every element clicked together just right and reaped such great rewards, and so perhaps for that reason Suzume can’t help but feel just every so slightly underwhelming. The feeling and passion is all there and you can see the shape of what Shinkai is trying to do clearly enough. At the heart of it all is a young woman mourning her mother and trying to find some way to heal, but the physical and emotional journey she embarks upon with her boy-chair-friend just doesn’t feel like the culmination of that story. There are emotions flying all over the place and for most of the runtime you cannot help but get swept away, but there comes a point where you’re waiting for the throughline to snap into focus, only that moment never really comes. The feelings are there and so is the beauty, but the viewer never gets their catharsis. Suzume is far from a bad movie, it is an often breathtaking picture filled to the brim with affection and stunning images, but it still feels like this movie could have been great in the same way that Your Name is great.
★★★★
Aled Warren Films 