Makoto Shinkai's new anime Suzume is one of the year's best movies
Those familiar with Makoto Shinkai's work will not be surprised to learn the primary preoccupation of Suzume is natural disasters, more specifically, the fallout in our communities in the aftermath of them. Suzume itself centres around the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that decimated parts of western Japan, and while the film has one foot in the supernatural realm, the other is firmly planted in our world — the real world.
From its trailer, you might baulk at the idea that a film about a teenaged girl whose sidekick is an anthropomorphic chair is in any way grounded in reality. Suzume is, however, clearly rooted in the contemporary world, a world shackled to capitalism and consumerism, where environmentalism is the collateral damage caused by our unending greed.
That being said, the focus of Suzume — the film and the girl — is less about the big picture themes that swirl in the wake of a natural disaster and more about the immediate, personal, and intimate ones. Fifteen-year-old Suzume earns her place amongst the pantheon of well-rounded female characters in anime, in particular through her grief.
Anyone who has experienced sudden loss like Suzume has — in the opening sequence, she dreams of stumbling through a nuclear-winter snow covered field searching for her mother, clearly a dreamlike exposition of her past — recognises the way in which grief operates within us, how it haunts us and contorts itself into all parts of our lives, our interactions with others and ourselves.
Shinkai may not have set out to make a movie about grief, but he did. Suzume's decision making stems from that gap within her that she seeks to fill, a yearning for something that will fit precisely into that hole in the centre of her being. Enter Souta.
First handsome, then a chair, Souta reveals that his job is to travel around Japan, closing doors that open into another realm from which disasters emerge to destroy the country. What follows is a straightforward macguffin-led plot, but really it is a pilgrimage, the homecoming that Suzume needs to address her trauma head on, as she and chair-Souta head West.
Their journey is interspersed with interesting women Suzume meets along the way, each unlocking a piece of her that needs healing. The movie isn't maudlin about it. One of Shinkai's goals was to make a film that is first and foremost entertaining, and he succeeds.
Suzume is very funny, and while the writing is often simplistic (sometimes clichéd) it is delivered with such earnestness by its talented voice cast that you can't help but be charmed. The chair-related gags aren't done to death, helped by the astounding anthropomorphic animation that takes the Pixar-lamp inspiration to heights Disney can only dream of.
Luckily, Suzume doesn't spend too much time building towards its conclusion. There are a few doors that Suzume must close, but each one brings her closer to her eventual confrontation with her past. Each is a metaphor (not unsubtle) — a bankrupt and derelict amusement park, a middle school that succumbed to an earthquake, an abandoned resort in a past-its-prime seaside town.
Still, as Suzume is forced to engage with the memories that existed in these places, the energy that still lingers there from the people who visited, she is brought closer and closer to the memory that she has locked away. In this way, Suzume is more about the totality of grief than it is about a singular tsunami or an earthquake event.
That being said, the imagery, so beautifully animated by Shinkai, is pulled straight from reality, boats lifted by the waves to land on top of buildings. They feel uncanny, but they aren't un-relatable — those of us who were on Staten Island in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy can recall cars perched on roofs, as if set there by a giant hand.
Suzume's one failing is, perhaps, in the absence of engaging in the real-world causes of these climate disasters. The movie gives an otherworldly explanation, rather than interrogate in the ways in which corporate greed and governmental corruption have paved the way for the destruction of our planet.
While this might have made a more powerful film, not having it hasn't made it less so, because we as an audience are more engaged with Suzume's individual journey than we are with the Capital T Themes of the movie. And so, when you get to the end, you'll find yourself emotionally spent and sated in the way only a truly great movie can achieve.
Suzume is out in cinemas on April 14
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