Film review: Summer Wars

   

Recently, I’ve re-watched Summer Wars, and my reaction was: director Mamoru Hosoda really knows how to make it BIG. It’s action-packed, it has explosive visuals, and a really modern story (at least for the moment it was released— in the year 2008). It explores what would happen if Japan depended on a single social network for EVERYTHING—from shopping and telephone calls to business and government. This social network is Oz, where everyone interacts through personalized avatars. In this setting, Kenji, a high school student who’s a mathematical whiz but a social klutz, is invited by Natsuki, a popular girl in his school, to spend a week with her extended family to celebrate her grandmother’s 90^th birthday. During his stay, he accidentally lets loose an unknown entity into the Oz world that hacks the network and halts not only all virtual but also external activity, as the entire nation depends on Oz in order to run. As the world falls into disorder, Kenji joins forces with Natsuki’s family to put an end to the hacker’s chaotic endeavors.

This is the best Summer Wars trailer out there, neither the official Japanese nor English trailers do it any justice:

 What really surprises me about this movie is that it’s the kind that I dislike the most: the blockbuster, guided by action, the kind that is made to entertain the masses, that is really commercial—here and there you see famous brands like Adidas, Apple, and Dell—and mainstream, in this case by Japanese standards (regarding the super anime styles found in the virtual world). However, strangely enough, this time I actually love all of its fast-pacedness. And why would that be? It’s because it’s done with CLASS. It all feels just right. Part of the things that makes up this CLASS is the story telling and the mastery of cinematic techniques. Sure, the film’s fast-paced on the whole, but it knows when to pause or slow down in certain moments, whether it’s to introduce you to the virtual world and the extended Jinouchi family, or to portray the characters’ reactions to bizarre situations. And by slowing down, I don’t necessarily mean only that the action in a scene moves slowly, but also that a scene may be energetic, yet it lasts enough to be believable or to let sink in what’s going on. The use of cinematic techniques—such as camera movement and positions, editing, shot composition and the use of music—play an important role in these aspects. I’ve recently watched a really interesting video on You Tube that deals with Hosoda’s use of camera movement, by the way, and one of the things it mentions is how this technique helps illustrate the characters’ emotions. I really like how in this film, as well as in other Hosoda works, the use of these techniques are at the same level as those in live action films; he treats his animated movies as though they were live action in this sense. 

Another element that makes up the “class” in this movie is its sense of humor. Summer Wars is basically a comedy, there’s no drama about it; its main purpose is fun, the more dramatic elements aren’t principal to the plot and can be taken lightly. Really, when it comes to comedy, you can barely criticize a movie because it’s all just a goof off, there’s nothing to be taken seriously. The humor in Summer Wars is really wacky, and it’s found mainly in the realistic portrayal of a family reunion, which is one of the chief themes of the movie, in all of its informality: the kids running about, the aunts and uncles joking around, 

and Kenji having a headache trying to remember how they’re all related. Much of the humor is also found in the characters’ interactions, faces and movements. One part I really liked was when Kenji learns through television that he has been accused of hacking the Oz network, and he chases some kids in circles trying to take the remote control from them to change the channel, until he finally unplugs the TV. As the kids stand puzzled trying to turn the TV back on, you see behind them Kenji scrambling out of the room on all fours. The composition of that shot is really funny—the kids staring at the “fourth wall”—which would be the TV for them—and a clumsy Kenji in the far back. One other part was when the family finds out that Natsuki had made up a big lie; the camera is placed from Natsuki’s point of view and it pans speedily from one hysterical relative to another, each time getting closer. Again, here we see the clever use of camera movement that I had mentioned earlier. 

Finally, everything's so bold and visually stunning in the scenes inside the virtual world. The virtual avatars are depicted in highly colorful, cartoony anime styles. Here, you can really feel that the filmmakers are having a blast designing these avatars and imagining the internet world—and it’s mostly here is where the film feels BIG. It’s all so technological, so edgy, so avant-garde. Add King Kazma’s theme song, and it bursts with LIFE.

There’s one scene that serves as an example that sums up all of these elements, and it’s the opening credits scene. It shows you snippets of the setting and characters that you will be exploring for the next two hours: the Oz world, how people use it, a few members of Natsuki’s family, some talk about Natsuki’s grandmother in anticipation of her birthday, all the while with a humorous—yet not corny—orchestral track playing in the back. Just like an overture at the beginning of operas and ballets, which tends to be a medley of all of the main themes—well, basically, opening credits scenes are the same concept as an overture. It was at the end of this scene, where the blackened screen finally reads: “Directed by Mamoru Hosoda”, that I found myself saying: now THAT’S how a movie is done!

Two words for Summer Wars: fun and slick.

NOTE: This movie can be enjoyed ONLY if you are familiar enough with anime or at least with the Japanese’s tendency for crazy things. If you aren’t, it’s going to be a reeeeeeal pain. Also, it MUST be watched in Japanese with subtitles. It loses all of its charm in the English dubbed version.

2^ND NOTE: Another movie that’s also real commercial but worked out well is The Lego Movie, and it’s all for basically the same reasons as in Summer Wars.

Review: The Wind Rises

"All I wanted was to make something beautiful."

I LOVED THIS FILM . Some time had to pass before I could gather my thoughts on it and write down my reaction, for first I had to let the beauty sink in, it had left me dazed. Finally, the time has come to WRITE MY REVIEW!

I first want to talk about how some of the typical elements that are “trademarks” of Miyazaki’s style are present:

It’s ENGAGING: Like all of his other movies (I especially noticed it in his most recent films), The Wind Rises has a great atmosphere/mood/ “ambientación”  that pulls you into the world and story…you actually want to understand what’s going on, almost like if there were a dialogue between the screen and the spectator. A factor that greatly contributes to this is the pacing of events…gives kind of a convincing, realistic feel to the storytelling (of which Miyazaki-san is a great master). These aspects also cause you to have a GREAT time with friends and family while watching, since there’s space for commenting on what’s going on without getting lost or ruining the mood of the film. One particular example of this in The Wind Rises is how the extras tend to be very peculiar in character design, like, some are fat, others have teeth sticking out from their mouths, etc. and I was all, “omg, what’s with the people in the background?” Finally, Miyazaki’s humor, a quiet and human one, quite heartwarming, gives a final contribution to the “aura” of the movie: this can be found in characters, especially in those of frank and sarcastic Honjo, bossy and energetic Mr. Kurokawa, and Jiro’s responsible, scolding, down-to-Earth younger sister, Kayo. The humor also lies in unexpected funny sequences or events that lighten the somberness of the movie.

            BEAUTIFUL ANIMATION: Miya-san’s characters tend to have very human-like movements, like, they interact with their surroundings just like one would in real life. A famous example for this is when Chihiro puts on her shoes in Spirited Away. Instead of just animating her feet getting on the sneakers and walking off, he recreates how a real child might do it: wiggling his feet and tapping them to make sure they are snug inside.  In The Wind Rises, there was this one sequence where Jiro was at his desk, I think he was straightening the paper he was working on and then rummaging around his stuff looking for a ruler or something. 

 

I found it so smooth and delightful to watch….it’s interesting how such a small ordinary sequence could make any impact.  However, I found some scenes kind of lacking, sometimes the characters looked a little awkward and there wasn’t as much visual richness as  in The Secret World of Arrietty and From Up On Poppy Hill, its predecessors. But I really didn’t mind this, having read that the director had been too exhausted to make sure all of the scenes were turning out exactly as he wanted, which is one of the reasons why he had decided this would be his last film. Anyway, I think anything lacking in image was perfectly balanced with the heart and powerful content of the movie.

The guys at Studio Ghibli are also great magicians with their breathtaking backgrounds. They’ve only improved more and more in visual quality, surely thanks to technical advances. One detail that I found very impressive was a close up on a small cascade of water…this is 2D animation, guys, and yet you can almost feel the texture of the water (of course, they’ve integrated CG effects for that, but it still awed me).

FEMINISM: I find funny how Miyazaki managed to squeeze in his feminist ideals even in this movie, whose focus is a guy's pursuit of his professional dreams, set in 1920s Japan, where men dominated in professional fields. He did it mainly in the figure of Kayo Horikoshi, Jiro’s sister: she is very responsible, has great attitude, kinda pesky as she’s always finding something to criticize in her big brother. Her dream is to study medicine, and she voices her frustration that she can’t achieve it as easily as men due to society's standards for women.

FLIGHT: Miyazaki’s obsessed with aircraft, and thus anything else that has to do with flight. Just like feminism, this theme can never be left out of his creations. It’s pretty moving that he chose to focus on it in his last film: he wants to talk about what he loves most. He wants to share with the world why he believes planes are so beautiful. He had already dedicated his film Porco Rosso directly to this concept, but in this one, it is almost the protagonist. I found this interesting in which instead of developing a concept that would be more convenient economically, he decides to focus on what he’s always wanted to talk about, what he loves most…he created something more personal. It’s kinda similar to the figure of Beethoven, in which his greatness lay on how powerfully and beautifully he expressed his emotions and views through his works, instead of creating for a specific audience…revolutionary (I know that it’s logic to produce for a majority since it’s what you live on, but I don’t think artists have to enslave themselves to just that method).

SLOW, QUIET MOMENTS: This is the slowest and most quiet of all of Miyazaki’s movies. He tends to insert at least a couple of serene sequences on each one, but The Wind Rises is loaded with them—in fact, the entire film is like a pause in itself.  Makes perfect sense if this is his last film, and this trait makes it perfect farewell work. Miyazaki's acting like a grandpa who has reached the end of the road and he wants to share his experience with his son, grandson, or the world. I felt that Miyazaki was reflecting about life as he did the film, as if he wrote a journal entry or something about the lessons he's learned from life and then turned it into a movie.

                JOE HISAISHI’S BEAUTIFUL MUSIC: You can’t separate Joe Hisaishi’s music from Miyazaki’s films.  This wonderful composer’s works are nostalgic and sweet. Here, the soundtrack sounds European, specifically kinda Italian, I guess because of the World War setting and above all because the film also is a tribute to the great Italian aircraft designer, Giovanni Battista Caproni. I found it so sweet, like an old man remembering the days of his youth, when he met his wife and dreamed of a beautiful future…the good times of his life. 

*Here's the main theme of the film, which you can listen to if you want while reading the rest of the review.

The Wind Rises Soundtrack link - "A Journey (A Dream Takes Flight)" ♪ ♪ ♪

            *I wanted to make a small comment on how it is quite easy to tell that some sound effects were human made because of their peculiarity, and I absolutely loved the result…it gave a more artsy, cool and mysterious feel to its scenes: like the earthquake part and the metaphorical sequences were Jiro and Caproni would meet.

            NOW, what I loved most of the film was its CONTENT, which is what gives weight, delivered through the dialogue and all the artsy, imaginative visual sequences (this last is another of the traits that makes Miyazaki cool, a trademark of his genius). The voice acting thus is important...

VOICE ACTING: I watched the movie in English because it was the only version available at the moment. I’m always told that it’s better to watch films in their original language, but the English dubs for Ghibli films always turn out super great. I REALLY loved the voice acting in this one, I found it super fun, giving much weight to the characters themselves. It IS quite akward overall, since the sound did not match exactly with the mouth movements that are really speaking Japanese, plus I found Joseph Gordon Levitt’s performance as Jiro too sleepy and somber at times, while Nahoko’s was a little too high-pitched for my taste. But I really didn’t mind any of that, I still think it was pretty good and also know that it’s not that easy to make a perfect coordination between foreign mouth movements and translated lines. I especially loved the voice acting for Mr. Kurokawa, Honjo, Kayo, and the “foreign” characters like Caproni and the random German people (I loved how they had accents according to their languages). I got to practice both my German and French listening, since there were no subtitles for those lines, and I REALLY liked that.

            As for the CONTENT in itself, these were the aspects that got to me the most:

            The main theme, embodied in the quote that makes the foundation of the film:

« Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre! » (« The wind is rising ! …we must try to live ! »)

It speaks about how we must make the most of our present circumstances, be them tough or not. In this film’s case, the characters ‘s circumstances are pretty challenging, and it’s admirable to see them surviving such hard times. It’s exactly what is expressed in The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf counsels Frodo in the mines of Moria:

Frodo: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” 
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

            The film also deals directly with the creative process, exploring and romanticizing how professionals get inspired with an idea and make it come to life, work with a team, exchange ideas to see which decisions are best, fail and learn from their mistakes to start over and over again.

            Despite its focus on creative fields, I love how it is all very relatable in which through narrating the life of an historical celebrity in the world of engineering, the movie reflects on life and dreams…also, how the goal of the movie is not entertainment, but more reflection, the communication of a certain message. Everyone has dreams and struggles to achieve them...when watching the movie, one might ask himself: “what is MY dream?” Or: “who is MY professional hero, role model?” 

The relationship between Caproni and Jiro can be applied to anyone who admires a certain professional. I thought that one can replace Caproni with the historical Jiro Horikoshi, and Jiro with Miyazaki himself, or any other aeronautical engineer freak :P, and so on: to me, Miyazaki is Caproni and I’m Jiro (or any other person who looks up to Miyazaki is Jiro); finally, it can even be perfectly applied to any other aspiring professional who has a role model to look up to. I also felt that Miyazaki was speaking directly through Caproni’s advice, which consisted in general of applying human values to your professional growth in order to really be an authentic professional, and perhaps leave a footprint on other people’s lives, if not on history.

            Caproni has an important line in which he declares that artists have ten years in the sun (referring to glory or good years). THIS IS SO TRUE (and the “ten years” part means a limited amount of time, usually small). I mean, we’re human, we’re not deities, so it’s natural that one would produce one success to another…we won’t have enough constant inspiration for that. And there’ll be a point in which we run out of ideas. Inspiration doesn’t come when we ask it to. Some examples to which this line can be applied are the Beatles, who lasted 10 years together, and Bill Waterson, the genius behind the comic strips Calvin and Hobbes (practically the most glorious of all comics), who also worked for around ten years and disappeared from the public face of the world, stating he’d said everything he had to say. I believe Miyazaki’s own “ten years” lies in the 2000s, between Spirited Away and this final film, in which he achieved more recognition than ever for his work and a boom of fans took place, plus I find his artistic peak in his latest works, but this is just my opinion, it is very debatable.

Thank you for reading my long rant; I've been wanting to write this for a long time :).

Time Travel

Okay, it’s not that I’m absolutely obsessed, but I just wanted to mention this for fun. I’ve always said to myself that if I could go back in time, I’d visit Studio Ghibli during the production period of Spirited Away around the year 1999 and help out in some way. It’s just that when I first saw the film, I automatically thought: I wanna do something as glorious and beautiful as that. And if the chance to be part of the glory of that movie ever comes to me, I’d take it! I’d be satisfied with contributing in drawing on one of the animation frames, or being among the lowest ranks of the staff…and seeing my name somewhere in the end credits XD.

          Now, what I really want to do is talk about a few films/animations where I think the use of time travel is truly admirable, at least for me. Let’s start with:

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time : I first found out about this anime movie when I stumbled across it on the internet. I immediately read its summary in Wikipedia, and was SUPER impressed from the start, as the story begins with the death of the main character. WHAT? You never see that happen in your average films directed to high school audiences, especially if it’s animated. THAT hooked me into the story. Then, I liked the idea of applying time travel to a suburban high school setting. What if a high school student could leap through time? What would she do? It’s a simple yet very fun idea, especially if one has enough imagination to come up with clever, interesting and creative answers. When I finally watched the film, I saw that, at least in my eyes, the time-leaping element was nicely fitted into its setting: she uses her power for trivial, ordinary stuff, like coming early to class, getting perfect grades, repeating her favorite activities, and even avoiding awkward situations. The result is a very good “slice of life” teen comedy/drama, light-hearted, really delightful and enjoyable. However, it doesn’t limit itself to comedy, for she later finds out that her leaps are affecting the outcomes of other people’s lives. I liked this detail very much. For example, there’s a scene where she time-leaps to avoid being hit by an object that was hurled towards her, and the object hits the student behind her instead, injuring her badly. This sequence gives much food for thought. Everything happens for a reason, even if it’s a harsh event or situation. That’s why it’s best not to mess with time (if the opportunity is given), or things might get worse. What has passed took place for us to mature and improve the future, by focusing on the present.

          *Note: One might say that the film has some flaws, regarding coherence in the way the whole time-leaping thing works, but it’s actually one of many typical flaws in anime and Japanese films that can be excused for cultural reasons. I would have tweaked that if I had done the film, but it’s not that it’s BAD or a defect. In a nutshell: you must be open minded when watching Eastern stuff, or you’ll never get them.

Samurai Jack : I barely watched this show, but enjoyed the little that I saw. It was not until a few months ago  that I realized what it was actually about. In a mythological-like ancient Japan setting, an evil supernatural being called Aku opens a portal in time and thrusts his enemy, the brave Samurai Jack, into  a very distant future, where Aku’s power is law. Jack must now try to return to the past to annihilate Aku when he first rose, but meanwhile tries to survive the hostile future. I was blown away by this remote synopsis. Wow. Awesome. It explained the visual strangeness of the world displayed in the show, with alien-like futuristic places and a few ancient Asian elements scattered about, including a Samurai that’s not supposed to be there. Really creative in terms of the plot and the visuals, the art style. The whole concept opens lots of doors to good, interesting options and possibilities; you can go crazy with your imagination and have fun.

And finally,

Back To The Future saga : I saw only the first movie a long time ago, and know vaguely what happens in the sequels. Recently, though, I’ve been told how awesome and clever each of them is plotwise. First film: boy visits his parents’ teen years and gets tangled in their love story; second: he travels to the future, meets his son, must confront his enemy (hehe the year is 2015, wasn’t it? XD); third: boy and scientist friend go farther back to the “cowboy” era. Very humorous AND interesting. Wow! I REALLY have to see them. And they’re from the 80’s. Take that, present-day films who’re obsessed with exaggerated 3D special FX.