ANI-ME #12: Riding the Tides of WEATHERING WITH YOU (Patreon)

Welcome to Ani-Me! The Series Where You Make Me Watch Anime! To be clear, you aren’t making me do anything because I have enjoyed every bit of this so far. Apologies for the second lack of a poll this time, but I woke up in a certain mood where I had a hankering to revisit the work of Makoto Shinkai, so that that means it was time for…

Today’s Entry: WEATHERING WITH YOU (2019)

Filmmaking is about the ability to capture a feeling.

For all the shop talk, that’s really pretty much it. The right music cue. The right image. And the right memory within you to associate it with. Sometimes it doesn’t take much more than that you and you can instantly whisk off someone to a deeply personal space, as an act of both transportation and transcendence. I mean, there’s a reason sometimes even a commercial can make you cry. So for all my talk of story foundations, character motivations, and coherent themes - which DO matter a great deal in that grand emotional pursuit - it still comes back to that simple ability to capture a feeling, however you achieve it. For the mere connections can be enough to move another. And in the end, it is that uncanny ability which helps raise WEATHERING WITH YOU into the similar rarefied air of his previous work.

To be fair, this is only the second film I’ve seen of Makoto Shinkai (needless to say I will be watching more) and I cannot imagine how hard it was to follow-up a film like YOUR NAME. One that was not only so moving in its connection, but also had laser-focused thematic resonance. A year later I *still* think about that film regularly.. But rather head toward other genres, Shinkai dives into the same arenas of interest he’s had in his career (or at least from what short descriptions of his other work tell me). Star-crossed young love. The feelings of budding growth while entering an adult world. And most of all, the feeling of desperate feeling of not wanting good things to disappear from your life. Yes, WEATHERING WITH YOU also evokes those sentiments with outstanding verve.

Because of all the filmmakers I’ve come across so far in this series, Shinkai’s style might be the one that grabs me the most on the pure surface level. WEATHERING WITH YOU is a gorgeous film, which might seem difficult for a film constantly (and purposefully) awash in the drudgery of overcast gray. But we, like its characters, live for the punctuating moments of sunshine that imbue the world with crisp, righteous blues and the purple / yellow glow of twilight magic hour. As we dance between the two, Shinkai plays with depth of field, often racking his focus, making us feel like we experience both a Tokyo that stretches beyond the horizon and a world that only extends but a few inches in front of our face. And, of course, there is the film’s depiction of water. Bulbous, shimmering, otherworldly - as if god-like tadpoles were bringing us cycles that are familiar in the vernal oscillation of the world itself. It’s as beautiful a world as any to document the metaphorical journey young love and the overflowing emotions that come with it.

But this time the journey is… wonkier?

This comment sort of cuts in all directions. There’s not one singular element of the story, nor themes that rankles, there’s just this kind of wandering un-even-ness. But perhaps the most harmful of which rests within the central dynamic between the two main characters. I’m not sure how fair it is to make a direct comparison to YOUR NAME, but that film is a clear “two-hander,” which so delivered on Mitsuha’s odd, rebellious spirit and disdain for her small town life. She so clashed with Taki’s comical frustrations, creating a real sense of humor in their dynamic, which served as an incredible foundation for the audience’s affinity. But here’s, there’s something inherently more reductive about Hodaka’s all-too youthful view of Hina. I mean, it’s at least draped with that intention. Hina is a literal “sunshine girl” - the incarnation of the sweet magic girl who only really exists to bring sunshine into your life. Which is a popular trope because it so accurately captures the uncomplicated, overwhelming FEELING a young boy has when falling in love. But this sort of gets to my essential question…

How much is Hina an independent, organic character on her own?

Or perhaps better put, what is really going on with Hina, internally-speaking?

For so much of the film, we only really experience her characterization through Hodaka’s somewhat limited understanding. Sure, we see so much of her desire to make people happy, but the question is, why? Does she exist in the narrative this purely because the main character / author wants it to be so? Thankfully, she’s not a cypher. And the most telling detail actually comes in her lying about here age and Hodaka realizing she’s younger than him. Which leads to the obvious technical reason for this: Hina’s mother died and she is stepping up in order to take care of her younger brother, Nagi and not have them separated. Yes, she’s the girl who plays grown up, fixing at a older image- if only to hold onto a sense of family through traumaaaaaOH FUCK DOES THAT HIT HARD. But the film is so good at characterizing the way that kind of responsibility hits before you’re even ready to process. And the ultimate point becomes that she has an incredible, but unfair weight on her shoulders. For all the complicated distractions along the way, Hodaka’s wanting to rescue her from the “sacrifice” (of her heaven cloud?) is the desire for her to come back and have a life where she doesn’t have sacrifice herself. She doesn’t have to be “sunshine girl” for anyone, and its clearly a moving statement about wanting a partner to be a whole person - one who doesn’t have to put up that bright shiny exterior for everyone and sacrifice themselves for anyone. Now, there’s probably a way this film could have drawn the parallel in more seamless fashion, but instead muddles it with a lot of competing interpretations along the way, which brings us to even more essential question…

What the hell is this film really about?

Because it honestly throws a lot of bonkers stuff at you. Not just the light, casual flirtation with the conspiracy theory mongering for profit. Or the fact that Hina’s sunshine dancing can’t help but flirt with allegory about climate change, but it complicated fashion. Like, it’s sort of hard to ignore throwaway lines about how nature is just taking its course again and Tokyo’s just going back to how it was? It sort of ends up in this space between where it’s trying to invoke the idea that this is man-made recompense, but also that it’s just part of the ebb and flow. A competing idea that is also further confused by the idea she sacrifices herself society can coast on in blissful normalcy? Look, I don’t think the is film directly trying to say these things, but it can’t help but not NOT say these things, either. They more just speak to the film’s habit where it suddenly drifts into the “larger than life” epic-ness in a way that is more meant to provide emotional touchstones instead of embodiments of logically flowing cerebral ideas.

Take the moments that the film flirts with genre-ism, whether it be the gangsters appearing or the chases with police. They are the kind of things that could feel playful in a Miyazaki movie, or give a dangerous edge to a Kon film. But here it feels more like “wait, this is happening in THIS movie?’ And perhaps it’s just seeing a depiction through another culture’s radically different treatment of guns, but from an American perspective in 2021? Seeing a kid point a gun at cops in an emotionally-grounded film is downright fucking surreal. But perhaps it makes sense because we’re in the teen language of emotional maximalism. But honestly, that’s part of the complication. Because the moments of Hodaka waving the gun around at everyone give me EXTREME pause, considering how this all might thematically tie back to “young boy projecting love onto sweet innocent girl” and well… there’s a certain kind of guy who will pull guns on the law in order to “go after” the “girl he loves” who has “moved on from his life.” We know this ugly narrative too well. And before we think that’s too big a leap to make in association, remember it’s no accident that the same kind of megalomaniac purity of possessive thought goes right along with so much problematic romantic storytelling (half the romantic gestures of moviedom are creepy as hell). But just when my klaxons were going off, luckily, it’s ultimately territory that the film veers directly away from in the most opposite of ideas imaginable.

That’s the whole thing. WEATHERING WITH YOU seems to know where it’s ultimately going, there’s just a lot of these kinds of bumps and worries along the way. Which only feel all the more odd in a film that often feels so inspired. Where one sequence feels vague, another feels perfectly poetic. For instance, I loved un-specificity of why Hodaka leaves home. We simply understand the suffocating nature of it and left to imagine where those bruises come from. It tells us so much. And I understand the innate desire to get away from “a bruised life” as much as possible. You ride these kinds of inspired moments like ebbs and flows, even right through the craziness of the last half our and all those false start endings, all before it finally settles on the strongest and simplest thematic declaration possible.

It practically grabs you and: “hey, this is all just a metaphor is the feeling of falling in love!”. It’s about choosing life, and the difficulties that come with committing to that life / love over all the “sunny, cloudless days” that normalcy has to offer (which also flirts with the depression metaphor, though in familiar fashion with this film, this slides into some troubling implications about living life off medication???). Essentially, you are choosing the basic turbulence that comes with being connected to another human life over the lifeless skies that always seem to accompany loss itself. And yes, as much as this is a story about romantic love, what I am about to say is equally true of the grandest of friendships. I think all it’s really saying is that sometimes real sunshine can only really come from another person, not the big hot star in the sky above. Which is we often weather the dire nature of world with loved ones in tow.

In the end, it’s fruitless to do a comparison between WEATHERING WITH YOU and YOUR NAME and it reminds me of a funny sequence from years ago. I hate that I’m getting this from THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE of all movies (don’t bother seeing it), but it accurately highlights the miraculous thing about playing a game of golf. One player can have good, perfectly planned shots and make par on a hole. Another can have three mediocre shots and then one AMAZING one and also make par. Which is sort of how I feel about this movie. It ends up making emotional par. And for all the moments where I raised a skeptical eyebrow, it also captured moments that so evoked a feeling that I knew innately from my youth - whether it be the microwaved feasts, the job hunts while on my last penny, or those first stays in hotel rooms where you’re “playing” as fancy adults. Heck, some of the film’s delights were even more delightfully absurd (Nagi’s escape plan with his two girlfriends is maybe the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen in my entire life). You’re essentially riding the tides of the film, and emotionally cresting to elation of a beautiful moment. You just have to allow you if not one, nor two but three different endings, because at least then….

It still knows the right one to end on.

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Re: The Ani-Me series - I feel like i’m getting my footing with all this?

He said cautiously? There’s a bunch of movies I’m still gonna watch, but I think I’m gonna start making that transition to TV series (especially as I don’t have a weekly recap on the horizon? Unless I’ve forgotten about something - feel free to sound off in comments if there’s a good). Also these last two weeks I’ve been so busy doing my other job / writing the massive next video essay, which we’ll announce soon / working on a weird piece on NOMADLAND / and also working on that big “interiority” essay you all requested so I’ll have a lot soon. In fact, knowing me, it’ll probably be working on them all together and then end up barfing them out all at once.

Also, I totally missed them the first time, but my friend mentioned he YOUR NAME cameos in this movie and I went back and totally started grinning like an idiot.

<3HULK