Last week ‘Suzume’ was finally released outside of Asia and in style. In his new movie, makoto shinkai presents us with a journey through Japan at the hands of Suzume, a teenager who opens a mysterious door and a series of natural disasters begin to unleash throughout the country.
One of the great inspirations for ‘Suzume‘ surely it is the Japan earthquake and tsunami that occurred in 2011 and took nearly twenty thousand lives with it. The tragedy is still very present in the memory of the Japanese, and given how connected it is with his new film, Shinkai has admitted that ‘Suzume’ caused very mixed reactions in Japan and some viewers even refused to watch it.
A chapter that has not yet closed
The 2011 earthquake it also had a great influence on his previous films, Your Name’ and ‘Time With You’, which placed even more emphasis on the effects of climate change. But if the theme was already very present in its predecessors, in ‘Suzume’ it becomes one of the central axes together with how its protagonist deals with his own duel.
“I didn’t realize at the time how important it was going to be to me and I thought, like a lot of Japanese citizens back then, that there would be a lot of confusion and anxiety and nervousness about what was going to happen to the future of the country. What was it going to be like?” Shinkai explained in an interview with Newsweek.
“I was still doing animation, but there was a change in how I approached it, or how my feelings were. How I dealt with natural disasters in the context of entertainment,” the director continued. “These disasters caused a lot of fear, not only for me but for everyone who had to experience them.”
The way to deal with this tragedy for Shinkai ended up shaping to this spiritual trilogy formed by ‘Your Name’, ‘Time with you’ and ‘Suzume’, where somehow natural disasters end up being very present throughout the story. However, in ‘Suzume’ the theme of the loss and pain of the victims is further explored, which caused all kinds of reactions.
“There are those who saw it as a simple adventure, a travel film. And others of course remembered the events of 2011 and felt that it was very painful,” said Shinkai, who also explained that “there were those who disowned the film and said… .’I’m not going to see it because you’re using the disaster as a central theme.’ But there were also victims among them who told me they had almost found the words they had been searching for so long.”
As ‘Suzume’ is heavily inspired by the 2011 disaster and its effects, Shinkai admitted that he was a bit nervous about its international release in case audiences outside of Japan didn’t pick up on certain nuances. And yet, the director is pleased that his portrayal of grief and grief has reached so many viewers abroad.
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