Review of Suzume
Makoto Shinkai has a formula and he stuck to it. Star-crossed lovers encountering a supernatural phenomenon — but gone wrong. Although his works are amazing visual and music wise, and perhaps even the idea of his movies are good, they don’t outweigh the cons. You can tell Shinkai tried to make the movie a heart-felt tear jerker by jamming so many threads. The loss of a mother, the romance sub-plot, the mythical creatures and lore behind the door. None of it was elaborated, leaving the story incoherent and muddling the meaning of anything he tried to convey. The more the film advanced, the more questionsflooded my brain. The execution was very awkward and unpredictable in a way that didn’t surprise me, but left me confused.
For what was supposed to be a movie with a romance sub-plot, it felt as though that was what the movie was about. I had expected more elaboration about the doors, her mother and her grief from the loss, but none of it was explained thoroughly — at the very least no coherent connection between them. All I could remember from the movie was the constant desperation to save Souta and to see him once more. There’s nothing wrong with romance — if it’s done right, of course.
Kimi no na wa is a romance where two people are brought together through a supernatural phenomenon, and throughout the film they help each other develop together as the plot advances. But with Suzume no Tojimari there was little to no development. For a man Suzume just met, she was ready to risk her life for him. In the beginning it already felt forced just from how Suzume acted on her impulses to help him, but no development happened for the romance between Souta and Suzume to make sense. They barely knew each other, and they had barely interacted enough for us to understand their romantic relationship. We don’t know much about Souta as a person either, he left midway film, so we cannot understand just why she felt so strongly for him nor can we reciprocate her desperation to save him. All of this just to shove the romance sub-plot in our faces. In the span of 2-3 days: “I need to hear your voice” “I can’t imagine a world without Souta” It was all very awkward and I’m disappointed just how low Shinkai thinks our standards are by the constant shower of romance.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate this movie. I enjoyed the movie, just not how it was executed. I loved the message it was trying to convey, accepting the loss of loved one’s through natural disasters. But the premise of the movie wasn’t fleshed out, nor was it executed well enough to tell the story correctly. I wouldn’t be surprised if people focused on the romance than her trying to reach closure of her dead mother. The film barely focuses on the idea of loss in general, the people she meets aren’t even impactful to the story. Perhaps if they had also lost others due to the same natural disasters, then there would’ve been a connection, a ways for them to matter because of how they relate to the main character and help her overcome loss together. Instead, they act as checkpoints, without doing much to Suzume’s development. The movie focused on the wrong things and you can tell where it put its focus on.
What Suzume no Tojimari tries to tell is a story about a girl who lost her mother through a natural disaster. Suzume encounters a supernatural phenomena, a door that unleashes destruction if left unattended. She must stop these doors from opening in order to prevent further disasters from happening — the same disasters that took her mother away. Through her journey, she learns to reach closure to her mother’s death, overcoming the grief of loss by finding the beauty of life and the people she meets in it. In the absence of her voice, she listens to those that live. And if the world is so meaningful, perhaps Suzume saves it so she can save herself. The movie explores self-discovery, acceptance of loss and gaining newfound hope for the future through those she meets. In the end, her revisiting that door she desperately searched her mother in and sealing it to prevent chaos - was symbolism for acceptance.
Unfortunately, despite such a heartfelt message, the film fails to encapsulate that emotion. With the constant shower of romance, the films acts as though her closure came from following and saving a man she’s in love with. If it had focused on her grief and the closure of her mother’s absence than her weird attachment toward Souta, perhaps then it would’ve been something great — instead of saving some guy when she should’ve saved herself.