Having watching Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) and Weathering with you (Tenki no Ko) I was looking forward to this film, I’ll admit I didn’t know of it until I saw the trailer by chance on YouTube. But as soon as I did I really wanted to see it. I thankfully got lucky and it was showing for 1 week in the UK from the following Friday (April 14th 2023), so I booked a trip to see it on the weekend when I had a moment. It also had the option to watch it with subtitles and Japanese audio or a dubbed version. I went for the subtitled one as I’ve been learning Japanese for the last 80ish days before the film and had watched the last two films from the same director this way, so I was used to it.
Summary
The story overall is pretty good. The movie has a focus on loss and disaster. Each door is located at a forgotten place. At first this is a ruined shopping mall, then a school, followed by an amusement park. Each time the door in these locations is closed, we get an audio and sometimes a visual feel for how the location looked in its prime. It’s a nice reminder that every ruin was once something.
The rest of the story is essentially a road trip following a cat who isn’t been subtle with where it is with it being posted on social media a lot. Like its leading Suzume somewhere. The cat is one of the keystones that keep the doors sealed and became alive at Suzume’s touch early in the story. Suzume travels with the walking chair Souta. Which the cat turned him into, he’s not normally a chair, but spends the majority of the movie as one. Some interesting interactions occur trying to hide the fact that he is a sentient chair.
In her travels following the cat around, Suzume makes new friends from the strangers she meets and along the way and closes more doors that appear to have opening. We learn a bit more about Souta and him being a “closer”, an appropriate name for someone closing doors, and how the whole doors/gates work and how to close them. There’s this whole speech to closing a door which looks pretty cool:
“Oh devine gods who dwell beneath this land. You have protected us, sheltered us for generations. Your mountains and rivers we have long called our own. They are not ours by right, we claim them no longer. I return them to you.”
It does sound better in Japanese. The speech changes near the end and if anything is far more emotional. I totally don’t tear up at that scene. The ending shows the inspiration for the movie clearly. Given Japan suffers a lot from earthquakes and tsunamis. Suzume herself suffered the loss of her mother and home to one.
Soundtrack
Verdict
Overall, well worth a watch. The pacing is pretty good and I’d save out of all the Makoto Shinkai I’ve watched this is my second favourite. Your Name taking 1st place still.
