Whatever else it may be, a Makoto Shinkai movie is always beautiful. The
quality of his stories may vary, but his animation style, frequently making use
of more pronounced shadow and texture than the average anime film, employing
interesting CGI techniques and evocative “camera” positioning and movement, is
almost always breathtaking. And it seems to grow richer with each passing
project, bold and vivid and captivating and innovative in new ways.
Such is the case with Weathering With You, his follow-up to the
wildly successful Your Name. Like that film, it’s a teen romance with
heavy supernatural elements, the story of a runaway boy in Tokyo who falls in
love with an orphan girl possessed with an ability to control the weather. And
like that film, there’s more going on, larger contexts and metaphors beneath
the surface that naturally invite comparison and contrast to the prior work,
which remains better. But it’s not saying much that the film is unoriginal in
structure and direction, few of Shinkai’s movies truly are. It’s the skill with
which its’ executed, the strength of the character and individual story beats,
and the meaning therein that makes the difference. In these areas, Weathering
With You has little in common with Your Name, not to say it’s
necessarily good or bad for that.
In truth, Weathering With You is much more an interesting film
than it is a good one, though it certainly is very good in a number of
respects. Its’ realization of the metropolitan jungle of contemporary Tokyo is
superbly visceral and transporting, its’ endearing sympathy towards its two
outcast protagonists (and one younger sibling) and their struggles to
comprehend and get by in an adult world extremely engaging, and its loose roots
in Japanese folkloric tradition lends authentic gravitas and stakes while
blending the modern and the mythic. The mystery of Hina’s power, the
significance of her siphoning it through prayer, and the ultimate extent of her
relationship to nature is so fascinating it has the air of a fairy tale, so
innately spiritual there’s the essence of a modern myth. Yet mirrored in this
are the realities of a distinctly twenty-first century world, an exploitation
of her supernaturalism for profit, even a personal brand (“The Sunshine Girl”)
in which capacity she appropriates the manner of traditionalism, wearing a
kimono to client appointments and requiring a near-religious level of
discretion and decorum. It’s a much more honest and clever idea of how a
society would respond to someone with godlike powers than the tired drudgeries
of Batman v. Superman.
Though told from the point of view of the children, the film is grounded
by a couple strong adult characters, a small-time investigative journalist and
his niece who offer a reasonable counter and important influence to the
emotional immaturity and reckless passions of the aimless Hodaka, providing a
lot of the movies’ better humour in the process. A responsible couple of
characters in spite of their low livelihood and uncouth manner, they’re a
refreshing bit of adult rationality in a film dominated by teen angst and
irrationality, which can be tiresome. And they have an adorable kitten called
Rain.
Rain also happens to be something the movie conveys gloriously. In spite
of Hina often being called upon to clear it, few movies have made it look more
graceful and soothing, as much so as Hina herself, who’s fairly evenly
mystically otherworldly and conveniently relative. This isn’t an uncommon trope
in anime characterization, and Hina’s personality isn’t all that different from
many a pedestalized, magical, but not too active girl heroine. If the movie
itself is a fascinating metaphor for our relationship to the environment, she
is its strongest avatar, and yet in that role she doesn’t convey much of a
deeper meaning.
Hodaka’s dedication and desperation for her is symbolic of how concerned
we should be for environmental issues, and yet the last act confuses things
immensely. We see how that passion from Hodaka isn’t enough …until it is. For
the allegory to work there needs to be some change in his character towards her
and there never is. It’s one of the blander aspects of the film, as even
without this reading, Hodaka is a pretty selfish and stubborn protagonist not
all that easy to like. He’s bereft of the ability to learn anything or grow,
and its here where the films’ subliminal intentions work against itself,
preventing us from connecting with him as we’re meant to. Because there’s never
any change in his feelings for Hina, the metaphor is weakened, and without that
metaphor the ending comes across as unbelievably self-serving -as in Hodaka
making a choice based in an unavoidably personal desire that has an adverse
effect for all of Tokyo.
Still, that animation goes a long ways. Shimmering realism and a moody
atmosphere pervades the entire film like a pristine varnish over an orthodox
art style, and there are intricate details through every frame to capture your
interest if the storytelling itself isn’t. Shinkai distinctly understands the
advantages of animation to expressing cinematic visual language -even his
montages are a showcase of that (though he relies too much on inorganic pop
songs to score them). And as is typical in this art form, special attention
seems to be paid to the food, Weathering With You showcasing among other
cuisine the best looking Big Mac I’ve ever seen.
For a throughline and a romance that’s not anything special, Weathering
With You has a lot going on and some curious thoughts on youth independence
and relationships, albeit in a naive Romeo and Juliet sort of way. Being
cut from the same cloth as Your Name does limit the film I feel, similar
creative choices don’t quite have the same impact (such as a feeble parallel to
the earlier movies’ brilliant twist), and its attempts at emotional resonance
mostly fall flat. Yet it is unabashedly intriguing, beautiful, and thoughtful
beneath its clumsier notions, touching on spirited themes and insightful
commentary with a healthy dash of fantasy to fill out its parable -a movie I
expect would play well with a teenage audience, better qualified than I to feel
its’ heat.
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