I Just Saw

I just saw Suzume, an anime sub, and it might be my favourite film of the year. It’s funny, moving, suspenseful, visually splendid, and an almost perfect film experience. It was kind of shocking to see a fantasy film, set in the present day, with such genuine warmth and innocence about it. The fantasy films that come out in the West these days tend to steep themselves in layers of irony, pausing on occasion for a safe sentimentality to give the impression of depth.

Suzume is a breath of fresh air from the East in this respect, propelled by strong characters on a journey that’s marked by real emotional insights, expressed via folkloric storytelling and courage in how it addresses themes like grief, love, and loneliness without simplifying them for its audience.

The plot is that a schoolgirl who lives with her aunt, Suzume, meets a mysterious young man, Sota, whose task is to close magic doors lest a nightmare being from another world cause earthquakes. Their adventures are prolonged when a trickster god in the form of a kitten, Daijin, transfers Sota’s being to a three-legged chair from Suzume’s childhood. The two of them are thrown together in their desperate pursuit to restore Daijin to his place as a Keystone, guard of the nightmare being.

The story, though it might seem complex and esoteric based on my summation of it, is told with a refreshing economy. It doesn’t bog itself down in convoluted and contradictory rules but assumes that you’re smart enough to follow the metaphorical intent of its magical devices.

The film is stunningly animated, evoking a fully three-dimensional world that you feel that you could walk around in, listening to the crickets and feeling the air on your skin. Settings include an abandoned school and fairground, each one realised to the degree that you sense their histories within this imagined landscape.

The attention to supporting characters is also wonderful. On her journey, Suzume meets and is helped by a fellow teenager and a couple of karaoke hostesses, and their lives are given a richness that adds texture to the story. These minor characters have more depth and reality than many main characters in other films, and there’s an unforced gentleness to how they interact with Suzume that has the loveliness of classic screen fairy tales. That they still feel drawn from real life is an added achievement.

Physical comedy is mined from Suzume’s relationship with Sota while he inhabits her chair; the logistics of manoeuvring such a body are very fun to watch. At heart Suzume is a love story, about both the love that develops between Suzume and Sota, and the familial ties that bind her to her memory of her late mother as well as the living mother figure that she has in her aunt. The story is such a rich one that it’s hard to totally sum up, nor would I want to.

Though I’d have preferred Suzume to be aged up from 16 given her budding relationship with Sota (whom we can surmise is about 22), the issue isn’t as problematic as it is in some anime, and I liked that their love was about friendship as much as a romantic attraction. They never kiss (as humans, if you see what I mean), and their bond is made deeper by its progress from the time they spend together as partners on a quest.

The story pivots between tones with balletic grace, never sacrificing drama for a joke but equally not taking itself too seriously. There were moments when it drew tears from me. Even Daijin is given complexity, serving not just as comic relief or even as an antagonist. He has his own motivations, but like all the characters, he’s driven by a need for compassion and kindness. If there’s a line more devastating than “I couldn’t become your cat” this year, remind me to bring hankies.

I wanted to hug this film. It’s probably equal to Tar as an artistic experience, for me, and may even surpass it. It’s not always common for an animated film to have a heart this pure, a lesson so steeped in humanist values, and an artistic sensibility developed to its fullest potential. It may be the best film of the year.