Suzume

The specter of the 3.11 earth­quake and tsuna­mi hangs over Japan­ese cin­e­ma, with many of the biggest hits and cre­ators influ­enced by the dis­as­ter. Just as Nobuhiko Obayashi cre­at­ed a tril­o­gy of films shaped by the twin dis­as­ters of that and World War II and cre­ators like Hidea­ki Anno used it as basis for Shin Godzil­la, each of the recent mega-hit movies from beloved ani­mé direc­tor Mako­to Shinkai are impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate from the impact the dis­as­ter had on the direc­tor. He cit­ed 3.11 as an inspi­ra­tion for Your Name, and the top­ic is sim­i­lar­ly broached in the weath­er-based dis­as­ter imagery of Weath­er­ing With You.

Suzume is per­haps the most explic­it film broach­ing the top­ic that clear­ly fas­ci­nates them deeply, with a retort on the human spir­it break­ing through to help anoth­er in tragedy, even if it doesn’t entire­ly pay off.

Despite being two hours in length the film wastes no time get­ting into its road-trip across Japan. Before the titles even roll, high-school stu­dent Suzume meets the mys­te­ri­ous Sota on his way to seal a mag­i­cal door in an aban­doned city in order to pre­vent mias­ma seep­ing out to cause dis­as­ter-lev­el earth­quakes, fol­lows him to assist in the task, before acci­den­tal­ly releas­ing a key­stone sup­posed to pre­vent larg­er disasters.

It’s here, short­ly after the title screen, when a talk­ing cat turns Sota into a walk­ing, talk­ing chair, and a cross-coun­try adven­ture to seal these doors and track down this frisky feline gets under­way. The jour­ney to pre­vent nation­al cat­a­stro­phe takes us from south­ern Kyushu to Tokyo and even fur­ther north as the link to Suzume specif­i­cal­ly is revealed, but with­out time being spent to make us care for the bud­ding romance that’s sup­posed to form between our two pri­ma­ry char­ac­ters to the detri­ment of the emo­tion­al core nec­es­sary for the film to con­nect (even ignor­ing that one is a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent and the oth­er is a minor).

How this brisk pac­ing and con­vey­er belt of new char­ac­ters and set­tings makes you feel will like­ly deter­mine your over­all enjoy­ment. Suzume is haunt­ed by the death of her moth­er that inex­tri­ca­bly ties her to the alter­nate uni­verse beyond the doors, but we bare­ly get time to under­stand just how this loss has and con­tin­ues to impact her. Sim­i­lar­ly, Sota as a chair is unde­ni­ably fun­ny, but we learn so lit­tle about his moti­va­tions for his jour­ney for so long that it’s hard to engage with the grave nature of his plight as a three-legged stool.

Which is a prob­lem when at its core is a sto­ry about the human spir­it per­se­ver­ing and com­ing togeth­er in times of dis­as­ter. Just as the 3.11 quake took Suzume’s moth­er, the direct recre­ation of the Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter scenes fre­quent­ly act as a reminder of the door’s sym­bol­ic role as the tur­bu­lent event bring­ing strangers togeth­er. Yet if char­ac­ters sup­pos­ed­ly emblem­at­ic of this spir­it are unre­lat­able as we spend more time pro­mot­ing local del­i­ca­cies and singing karaōke in Kobe (admit­ted­ly the film’s best sequence), is a final act crescen­do­ing this rous­ing spir­it real­ly going to pay off?

Suzume offers the flu­id and detailed ani­ma­tion fans like myself have come to expect from the most beloved name work­ing in ani­mé today, and its seam­less inte­gra­tion of CG and tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion for Sota’s chair form is a gen­uine tri­umph. Yet for a direc­tor whose career has cen­tered human con­nec­tion at every turn to cre­ate some of the most vul­ner­a­ble and emo­tion­al sto­ries on romance and human con­nec­tion with­in the field of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, it feels like a rare mis­fire. After a third strike at work­ing through his emo­tions towards the nation­al grief of 3.11, maybe it’s time to rebuild for some­thing greater.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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