Quartz 4

Suzume

5 min read

1:

Every day, we open doors and close them without anything special happening. But that’s different for Suzume in the film, Suzume no Tojimari, released in Japanese cinemas on Nov 11.

One day, the 17-year-old girl met a boy and followed him to find a door in some ruins. After she opened the door, she found a secret! The door connects to a world full of those who have died in earthquakes, and opening the door brings disasters. As doors begin to open one after another in Japan, Suzume starts her journey of ‘door-locking’.

As a typical work of Japanese director Makoto Shinkai, the film continues the topic of ‘love’ and ‘missing’. Suzume tries to see her mother who died in an earthquake from the other side of the door.

But what makes the latest movie stand out is that instead of personal stories, it shows humans’ common memory of disaster and hope. As Suzume sets off on her journey of door-locking, she travels to many places destroyed by the earthquakes but rebuilt into a paradise.

This helps Shinkai slowly learn: Even if we are sad, life moves on and all will be fine in the end. Just as Suzume told her younger self, ‘I never lost anything and the future is never fearful.‘

2:

Following1 his wildly successful films Your Name and Weathering with you, Japanese filmmaker Makoto Shikai shot to fame worldwide. It was only2 natural that expectation for his newest anime feature3, Suzume, were sky high. Fortunately, Shinkai has presented us with yet another impressive story that perfectly blends supernatural elements with a deep appreciation of everyday human relationships.

Suzume follows the titular character, a typical Japanese high schooler whose life is uprooted once she crosses paths with the handsome and mysterious Souta. The young man comes from a long line of ‘Closers,’ a mysterious group responsible for finding and closing mystical doors to another dimension from which an evil force known as the Worm is trying to escape. The story focuses on Suzume and Souta as they travel throughout Japan on their door-closing journey.

Shinkai made the new film because he was worried that the country’s memories of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami would become hazy over time. “My 12-year-old daughter’ doesn’t even know that the comet in Your Name is a metaphor for the 2011 earthquake, but the earthquake is not an event in the past,” Shinkai said. “The 2011 earthquake and tsunami still linger in many people’s hearts. If I depict it in my films or novels, I can share the memories with teens who don’t know about it - something that I don’t think is too late to do.”

given this, it’s no wonder that in Suzume, the main weapons used to fight the Worm are the happy memories of the people long past4. It is while tapping into these powers in the fight against the Worm that Suzume slowly comes to5 realize that humankind can only survive6 these calamitous events by seizing the day and helping one another. Fantasy only has meaning when it7 helps us to understand the world around us, and Suzume perfectly ties up both elements in an exciting story.

“I think young people can depict meant-for-each-other8 love stories better than I can. That’s what aging is all about, and I will also keep changing,” the 50-year-old director said. “Making films on the themes I can portray best at this appropriate time in my life… That’s what I feel happy about.”

Despite its flaws9, Suzume is a great addition to Shinkai’s growing list of cinematic successes. Over the course of two hours, the movie successfully balances its human encounters with its thrilling scenes of combat, being fought as they are on behalf of the fate of all Japan. All the while, Shinkai uses magnificent landscapes as the background of a story about love, trauma, and the discovery about who we are.10 There’s much to love11 about Suzume, and more than enough for us to be excited about whatever the filmmaker has a mind to come up with next.

more than modifies 'enough'.

I’ve given you more than enough money to pay for everything.
There were more than enough people to set up the stage.
The software provides more than enough tools to make just about any object you might imagine.

Footnotes

  1. here, following is used as a preposition, means ‘after or as a result of a particular event’ ↩

  2. used for emphasis: It’s only natural [=it’s normal/reasonable] (that) you would feel that way. 你有那种感觉再自然不过了。I only hope that the mistake will be corrected soon. I only wish [=I wish very much] you’d told me sooner. ↩

  3. a film being shown at a cinema 影片，故事片，正片: ↩

  4. past: finished or having come to an end, 这里和 long 构成 long past形容词短语,作后置定语, for example: a tradition rooted in times long past 起源于很久以前的传统 ↩

  5. come to do something is a phrase ↩

  6. to continue to live or exist despite a dangerous event or time 幸存；幸免于难；艰难度过 ↩

  7. refer to fantasy mentioned ↩

  8. be meant for each other is an idiom. 这里变成了形容词作定语 ↩

  9. noun: /flɑː/ a small fault or weakness ↩

  10. 整个为介词短语 ↩

  11. There be 句型的补语 ↩

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