'Suzume': Shinkai stands out with another 'anime' of exacerbated lyricism and unparalleled inventiveness

2023-04-14T10:37:56.216Z

The Japanese man maintains his quality and his title of heir to Hayao Miyazaki with a drawing line, movements and colors very similar to those of the master

The story is known and has already been written about it.

Year 2002, Berlin festival.

In the last days of the contest, with the accumulated fatigue among the special envoys, a Japanese animated film competes almost by surprise in the official section, the one that awards the great prizes, something unusual in those years, so a part of the critics decide to skip the pass for the press, despite the fact that the director is well known and valued enough in the field of animation.

A couple of days later, even more extraordinary, the jury awarded him the Golden Bear,

jointly

with

Bloody Sunday,

with which the final chronicles of those who have played balls are superficially based on the comments and tips of the few who had attended the screening.

That film was

Spirited
Away,

by the master Hayao Miyazaki, and it changed the vision of a certain somewhat sectarian cinephilia regarding

anime

and its artistic relevance.

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'Suzume' returns the anime to the Berlinale two decades after the triumph of 'Spirited Away'

Despite everything, the organization of the Berlinale took 21 years to select another Japanese animated feature for its official section.

And that has occurred this same month of February 2023, with the beautiful, magical and profound

Suzume
,

directed by one of the inheritors of Miyazaki's stimulating creativity: Makoto Shinkai, who was not just any stranger either, since he had been at least a decade and a half offering animation fans his stories of youthful debauchery and fantasy, and two of his works had had commercial releases in Spanish cinemas: the excellent

Your Name

(2016) and

El tiempo contigo

(2019).

With

Suzume,

some of his hallmarks return, also practiced in two previous works, fundamental for the development of his career:

The place we promised ourselves

(2004) and

5 centimeters per second.

(2007).

The weight of the climate and the phenomena of nature, from the brightest to the most terrible, in the future of human beings;

winds, rains, snow storms and hail, sunsets and, as in his last film, earthquakes and tsunamis.

The influence in his stories of space and time, exposed in the same way as obstacles and as safe-conduct for passion;

in this case, the relationship between a 16-year-old girl and a handsome young man who travels the country looking for magical doors that will help prevent earthquakes.

And a line of drawing, some movements and some colors very similar to those of Hayao Miyazaki, with a taste for detail in the backgrounds and unusually realistic objects.

With the memory of the terrible earthquake and subsequent deadly wave of 2011 in Japan, an event that is not mentioned in the story but that hovers over each of the corners of the frame and, even more, over the head of the leading girl, who lost her mother in those days,

Suzume

fuses a recognizable everyday life (the high school environment and the problems at home with her aunt, who has been in charge of taking care of her since the tragedy) with an exacerbated lyricism and an almost unparalleled inventiveness, presided over by one of the main characters of the story: a preschool chair with one leg missing, capable of speaking, feeling and running, which as the story unfolds acquires an exciting testimonial value of what loss means, the mysteries of the subconscious and life between two worlds.

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With a resounding visual, psychological and creative intensity, and covered by seismic portals, Japanese legends and whirlwinds of love, fear and forgiveness, Shinkai's film seems more intended for adolescence than for childhood (the little ones are going to get lost among the mixture of lyricism, youthful anguish and abstract and even surreal outburst, which is not serious if there is someone clueless or brave).

And, of course, it seems perfect for any adult viewer who, far from any prejudice, like those at the Berlinale in 2002, decides to widen the range of their film buff tastes and feel unleashed by color and enchantment.