Movie Review—Suzume

Suzume is a high schooler in Kyushu who was orphaned when she was a little girl. She has been living with her aunt for ten years. One day a young man asks her if there are any ruins nearby. Intrigued, she goes there herself. She sees a lone door standing amidst wreckage. When she opens it she sees an otherworldly realm, but cannot reach it. She also sees a carving of a cat, which see pulls out of the ground. It comes to life and runs away.

After that, a monstrous creature comes out of the doorway, causing an earthquake. She and the young man—Souta—are barely able to close the door and avoid disaster. It turns out the cat was a guardian meant to keep the door closed. Suzume and Souta chase the cat across Japan, trying to shut other doors and prevent ever-increasing disasters.

Suzume has flashbacks of herself as young child, wandering around, looking for her mother. But are these memories? Or is she seeing herself in that other realm?

Suzume ranges from scenes of delicate beauty to looming horrific disaster. This is high quality animation, with good detail and realistic motion, no matter how odd the chase scenes are. What stuck in my mind was the kindness Suzume experiences on her journey: From a young woman her age hauling fruit, to a mother who sees her at a bus stop where the next bus will not come for hours, they all want to help her. Suzume does chores for room and board, which is heartening so see.

The director, Makoto Shinkai, has openly said he was influenced by Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, which also involves preventing an earthquake. That in turn must have been influenced by the Japanese myth of Namazu, the giant catfish beneath Japan that causes earthquakes.

The movie has a couple of weaknesses. I suppose this is where I put SPOILERS. Suzume and Souta spend the movie as travel buddies. Then towards the end she tells her aunt that she loves him. This is very sudden. Also, her aunt becomes unaccountably cruel in one scene and tells Suzume she wasted the best years of her life caring for her. It is unclear if another door guardian is making her say these things, but it is unsettling.

So Suzume is well worth watching. Definitely do not walk out the minute the credits start rolling. For those of you who are Makoto Shinkai fans and love his movie Your Name, have your friends watch Suzume first. It is hard for Shinkai to live up to his masterpiece, Your Name.