When one door closes...
Shinkai Makoto makes one kind of film, and he makes it better than anybody else in the history of the medium: teen love story; major scenes take place against dramatic sunsets; sunlight glimmers off of pools of water; there's rain; there are trains; in its last fifth, the story transforms from a smooth execution of genre tropes to the absolute goddamn dumbest thing you have ever seen. That was 2013's The Garden of Words, it was 2016's Your Name., it was 2019's Weathering with You, and right on schedule, it's 2022's Suzume. The last of these feels to me a bit like Shinkai's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou moment: a director with an incredibly clear and consistent aesthetic makes the film that leans with fiery-eyed "fuck you" aggression all the way into that aesthetic, doubling-down on all of the things that any critic has ever declared to be a problem with his work. To be sure, there are elements in the film that feel very new. It is much more interested in character animation than anything he's ever directed before; it goes well beyond the magical realism of his last two films into full-on Shinto fantasy, presenting a purely magical, folkloric adventure about Japan's history of earthquakes and natural disasters (it is, explicitly, a film about the emotional and psychic repercussions of the Fukushima disaster in 2011 - one that ultimately decides to abandon the very coherent and difficult themes about that disaster it has been developing for most of its running time when it will become impossible to have those themes and also be a big weepy teen melodrama. Frankly, I would have been very disappointed in Shinkai if wisdom and taste had prevailed in this matter). Rather than the last fifth turning into a catastrophic "Makoto, buddy, what in fuck's name are you doing?" collection of misjudgments, convoluted plot twists, and unforced errors, it's something much closer to the entire second half. Somehow, I have come to find Shinkai's all-consuming inability or unwillingness to end his stories well so very charming that the fact that I'd consider nearly half of this 122-minute long film to be "very bad" at storytelling feels more like a strength than a flaw.
The beginning of the story, at any rate, is superb, maybe the most interesting mix of daily life and broad fantasy of any Shinkai film to date. Iwato Suzume (Hara Nanoka) is a 17-year-old orphan living with her aunt Tamaki (Fukatsu Eri), who has of late been haunted by dreams of herself as a child, hunting for her missing mother. On the morning that the story properly gets started, she encounters a young man named Sōta (Matsumura Hokuto), who in a charismatically moody, pensively handsome way, asks if she knows of any ruins nearby. As it so happens, she does, and she sends him towards an abandoned spa on the outskirts of town. Not quite getting all the way to school, she gives in to her curiosity - and hormones, though she's remaining steadfastly disinterested in admitting that at this juncture - and heads off to the ruins herself, not finding Sōta anywhere. But she does find two other things: a freestanding door that, when opened, reveals a fantastic dusk landscape with an incredible starfield in the sky above, but which dissolves every time she tries to enter into it; and a small totem that, when she picks it up, transforms into a white cat that bolts away. Later that day, Suzume has visions of a strange creature, sort of a giant worm made out of smoke and dust, reaching into the sky; upon tracing it to its origins, she finds it's emerging from that same door, and Sōta is trying with all his might to slam it shut. She helps him, but before they succeed, the creature crashes to the ground, causing a pretty substantial earthquake. And now Sōta explains himself: he's a "closer", part of a dynasty that finds these magic doors and locks them in order to prevent the worm creature, which runs under the whole length of the Japanese archipelago, from destroying the islands with earthquakes. Bad things happen when he or his predecessors fail: bad things like one terrible day in 1923 on the Kanto Plain outside Tokyo, or in 2011 in the sea east of the Tōhoku region.
To be fair, the former incident isn't described until much later, and the latter incident is largely left to implication and innuendo (until it absolutely isn't), but the implication is clear: a magic worm caused the incredible devastation of the Great Kanto Earthquake and the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima disaster, the two worst natural disasters to befall Japan in a century. I find this to be in thrillingly dubious taste, as well as being the natural extension of Shinkai's preoccupation with civilization-level disasters as a backdrop for what really matters, sensitive teenagers falling in love. It has been a steady escalation: Your Name. suggests that the worst thing about a fictional comet crashing into Earth would be that it causes trouble for a pair of young lovers. Weathering with You grapples with the unpredictable destructive effects of global climate change, worrying that if left unchecked, it make make things tough for a pair of young lovers. Suzume now spends most of its running time arguing that we must hold onto the memories of a devastating event like the 2011 earthquake, but not let the trauma of that even define us in the present. We must acknowledge the suffering of the past, while finding the strength to find ourselves now. If we do not, it sagely concludes, however will I be able to engineer an emotional crescendo between these young lovers?
The point being, Shinkai really loves his young lovers, and also I'm being kind of snide (though I do think the film definitely cares more about its romantic melodrama than pondering the psychological scars left by the devastation of 11 March 2011). There is much that is nuanced and insightful in the way that Suzume considers the effects on the Japanese national character of dwelling in one of the most tectonically active regions of the planet, and on the way that Japan's population decline in the past several years has left it a country full of ghosts, old places that have been abandoned for no reason other than because there weren't enough people to go there any more. It has a dreamy melancholy, captured beautifully in striking animated lighting, with wind and clouds creating a powerful sense of loneliess as beautiful as it is haunting. It's also a movie about how an adorable demon cat named Daijin (Ann Yamane) transforms Sōta into a three-legged wooden chair, causing him to be very grumpy as he and Suzume zoom across the islands of Japan trying to close the doors together and prevent what promises to be the most devastating earthquake in the archipelago's history from destroying Tokyo. The script mixes a tremendous amount of stuff all together, from cosmic myth and fantasy to ridiculous animated slapstick in the form of Sōta's chair form - pretty easily the best piece of character animation in any of the director's films thus far, moving with a cartoon exaggeration that's very telling of the pent-up energy and frustration of being confined into a chair state, while also being funny and lively to watch. It's sad, it's fun, it's exciting, you name it - oftentimes, it just steps back to catch its breath at the sheer impossible beauty of all the world, both the natural elements and the man-made elements, the happy moments and the sad moments and the triumphant moments. Every time Suzume and Sōta succeed in closing a door, the dust and smoke of the worm creature explodes into a storm of rain that glows from inside and reflects the light around it, and if there's anything more deeply Shinkai than "your reward for victory over the forces of evil is shiny rain", I can't imagine of what it might be.
All of the above - all of the above - gets us about halfway through Suzume. And that's when the film basically restarts, chucking out virtually everything form the humor to the rain to the narrative structure, setting up a brand new arrangement of characters, and providing a brand new narrative oriented a goal which previously had not existed. None of which is bad, exactly; it's another loopy flourish for a film made out of nothing else. It's a little weird and disappointing that the new goal is so incredibly pedestrian, compared to "prevent the earthquake demon from destroying Japan", but on the other hand, it's so freaking sincere. That has always been Shinkai's greatest feature: his films are profoundly committed to the straightforward, painfully earnest emotions they depict, and elevating formulaic romance to the level of cosmic grandeur is basically what fuels all of his recent features. Suzume is doing the same thing, more furiously and with greater grandiosity in the imagery; it's as silly as ever, but also I'm pretty sure the film knows it's silly. It just doesn't care, because in addition to being silly, it is overwhelming and gorgeous and heartfelt. It's a lumpy, weird thing, flawed as hell, annoying and even boring in some very critical ways, and frankly, I think if you fixed any of its problems, you'd break the whole thing into pieces. It's unmistakably the movie Shinkai wants it to be, and, well, I dig his whole thing, even when it's dumb.
Tim Brayton is the editor-in-chief and primary critic at Alternate Ending. He has been known to show up on Letterboxd, writing about even more movies than he does here.
If you enjoyed this article, why not support Alternate Ending as a recurring donor through Patreon, or with a one-time donation via Paypal? For just a dollar a month you can contribute to the ongoing health of the site, while also enjoying several fun perks!
The beginning of the story, at any rate, is superb, maybe the most interesting mix of daily life and broad fantasy of any Shinkai film to date. Iwato Suzume (Hara Nanoka) is a 17-year-old orphan living with her aunt Tamaki (Fukatsu Eri), who has of late been haunted by dreams of herself as a child, hunting for her missing mother. On the morning that the story properly gets started, she encounters a young man named Sōta (Matsumura Hokuto), who in a charismatically moody, pensively handsome way, asks if she knows of any ruins nearby. As it so happens, she does, and she sends him towards an abandoned spa on the outskirts of town. Not quite getting all the way to school, she gives in to her curiosity - and hormones, though she's remaining steadfastly disinterested in admitting that at this juncture - and heads off to the ruins herself, not finding Sōta anywhere. But she does find two other things: a freestanding door that, when opened, reveals a fantastic dusk landscape with an incredible starfield in the sky above, but which dissolves every time she tries to enter into it; and a small totem that, when she picks it up, transforms into a white cat that bolts away. Later that day, Suzume has visions of a strange creature, sort of a giant worm made out of smoke and dust, reaching into the sky; upon tracing it to its origins, she finds it's emerging from that same door, and Sōta is trying with all his might to slam it shut. She helps him, but before they succeed, the creature crashes to the ground, causing a pretty substantial earthquake. And now Sōta explains himself: he's a "closer", part of a dynasty that finds these magic doors and locks them in order to prevent the worm creature, which runs under the whole length of the Japanese archipelago, from destroying the islands with earthquakes. Bad things happen when he or his predecessors fail: bad things like one terrible day in 1923 on the Kanto Plain outside Tokyo, or in 2011 in the sea east of the Tōhoku region.
To be fair, the former incident isn't described until much later, and the latter incident is largely left to implication and innuendo (until it absolutely isn't), but the implication is clear: a magic worm caused the incredible devastation of the Great Kanto Earthquake and the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima disaster, the two worst natural disasters to befall Japan in a century. I find this to be in thrillingly dubious taste, as well as being the natural extension of Shinkai's preoccupation with civilization-level disasters as a backdrop for what really matters, sensitive teenagers falling in love. It has been a steady escalation: Your Name. suggests that the worst thing about a fictional comet crashing into Earth would be that it causes trouble for a pair of young lovers. Weathering with You grapples with the unpredictable destructive effects of global climate change, worrying that if left unchecked, it make make things tough for a pair of young lovers. Suzume now spends most of its running time arguing that we must hold onto the memories of a devastating event like the 2011 earthquake, but not let the trauma of that even define us in the present. We must acknowledge the suffering of the past, while finding the strength to find ourselves now. If we do not, it sagely concludes, however will I be able to engineer an emotional crescendo between these young lovers?
The point being, Shinkai really loves his young lovers, and also I'm being kind of snide (though I do think the film definitely cares more about its romantic melodrama than pondering the psychological scars left by the devastation of 11 March 2011). There is much that is nuanced and insightful in the way that Suzume considers the effects on the Japanese national character of dwelling in one of the most tectonically active regions of the planet, and on the way that Japan's population decline in the past several years has left it a country full of ghosts, old places that have been abandoned for no reason other than because there weren't enough people to go there any more. It has a dreamy melancholy, captured beautifully in striking animated lighting, with wind and clouds creating a powerful sense of loneliess as beautiful as it is haunting. It's also a movie about how an adorable demon cat named Daijin (Ann Yamane) transforms Sōta into a three-legged wooden chair, causing him to be very grumpy as he and Suzume zoom across the islands of Japan trying to close the doors together and prevent what promises to be the most devastating earthquake in the archipelago's history from destroying Tokyo. The script mixes a tremendous amount of stuff all together, from cosmic myth and fantasy to ridiculous animated slapstick in the form of Sōta's chair form - pretty easily the best piece of character animation in any of the director's films thus far, moving with a cartoon exaggeration that's very telling of the pent-up energy and frustration of being confined into a chair state, while also being funny and lively to watch. It's sad, it's fun, it's exciting, you name it - oftentimes, it just steps back to catch its breath at the sheer impossible beauty of all the world, both the natural elements and the man-made elements, the happy moments and the sad moments and the triumphant moments. Every time Suzume and Sōta succeed in closing a door, the dust and smoke of the worm creature explodes into a storm of rain that glows from inside and reflects the light around it, and if there's anything more deeply Shinkai than "your reward for victory over the forces of evil is shiny rain", I can't imagine of what it might be.
All of the above - all of the above - gets us about halfway through Suzume. And that's when the film basically restarts, chucking out virtually everything form the humor to the rain to the narrative structure, setting up a brand new arrangement of characters, and providing a brand new narrative oriented a goal which previously had not existed. None of which is bad, exactly; it's another loopy flourish for a film made out of nothing else. It's a little weird and disappointing that the new goal is so incredibly pedestrian, compared to "prevent the earthquake demon from destroying Japan", but on the other hand, it's so freaking sincere. That has always been Shinkai's greatest feature: his films are profoundly committed to the straightforward, painfully earnest emotions they depict, and elevating formulaic romance to the level of cosmic grandeur is basically what fuels all of his recent features. Suzume is doing the same thing, more furiously and with greater grandiosity in the imagery; it's as silly as ever, but also I'm pretty sure the film knows it's silly. It just doesn't care, because in addition to being silly, it is overwhelming and gorgeous and heartfelt. It's a lumpy, weird thing, flawed as hell, annoying and even boring in some very critical ways, and frankly, I think if you fixed any of its problems, you'd break the whole thing into pieces. It's unmistakably the movie Shinkai wants it to be, and, well, I dig his whole thing, even when it's dumb.
Tim Brayton is the editor-in-chief and primary critic at Alternate Ending. He has been known to show up on Letterboxd, writing about even more movies than he does here.
If you enjoyed this article, why not support Alternate Ending as a recurring donor through Patreon, or with a one-time donation via Paypal? For just a dollar a month you can contribute to the ongoing health of the site, while also enjoying several fun perks!
