SUZUME and the Tricky Task of Story Resets (Patreon)

People told me to see YOUR NAME for years.

Its reputation in the film community, even outside of anime circles, was nothing less than stellar. It seemed to have transcended the bounds of expectation to become an immediate classic. And when I started the Ani-Me project and finally delved into the film? I was blown away. For it is one of those perfect-seeming objects. Something that goes beyond the aesthetic value of its gorgeous animation and all-time soundtrack.  For it’s a movie full of youthful humor, quiet wants, and the little human angst that drives us, all cascading into the tragic, crippling realities of adulthood. I had never watched the work Makoto Shinkai before, but I was completely enamored. And since then, I have seen his follow-up Weathering With You, went back for his previous effort 5 Centimeters Per Second, and now I have seen Suzume, currently showing in theaters. And boy does he seem to like his motifs. All these films ended up dealing with familiar tropes of star-crossed lovers and the way they have to battle against time, the metaphysical, and the needs of adulthood, but while they’re all pretty good in their own ways… there’s something not quite as gut-punching and cathartic about them in comparison YOUR NAME, is there? And as movie-goers, it leaves us with a simple question…

What makes that film work so well in comparison to the others?

I understand that some things naturally hit harder than others. I understand that art is an organic and hard-to-characterize process. I understand that all storytellers are going to make mistakes and mis-calculations. But nothing is ever a matter of simple happenstance. There are (somewhat) diagnosable reasons within story mechanics that can help you understand a little bit more about what’s going on with a single story and how hard they hit us, especially when it comes to the realm of set-ups and pay-offs. Which all goes back to that age old question of “why?” Why does it work so well?

To be clear, though, there are no rules in screenwriting.

You can do whatever the hell you want. I mean this. Some of the best pieces of art, along with the most fascinatingly misguided, come out of throwing caution to the wind and following one’s gut. Plus it’s about understanding what the so-called “rules” really are in writing, and more importantly, what they’re born out of. Because a lot of conventional teaching will tell you rules are prescriptive, when really they’re often just vague descriptions of end similarities, like things have “beginning middle end” just because they happen to. Or they tell you to use a given trope cause that’s just what you do!” Nothing good comes out of copying. No, everything good comes out of listening to / understanding the reactions of an audience (the same can be said about cooking or pretty much any art form at all). And it’s not just about if you entertain them, but how you guide them around with a sense of purpose and understanding. If you are doing that job, then that’s what matters. And as it turns out, a lot of good advice in screenwriting is just about giving you the tools to do that more effectively (which has pretty much been at the root of everything I’ve ever tried to write). But even then, you can have all the rules or good advice in the world in front of you and sometimes it doesn’t help at all. Because, in the end, some part of you is always looking at a blank page and following your gut.

I say all this because after four films Mokoto Shinkai doesn’t exactly seem like a “rules” guy, but an artist who is always following his gut. That is perhaps a miscategorization. Maybe he’s the kind of storyteller who is like the meme of Charlie from Sunny with all the conspiracy strings on a bulletin board. I’m just saying what it feels like. And his work has the feeling of shaggy spontaneity, often focusing on an idea, an image, a sequence often seems like it comes from this deeply emotional and visceral place, often getting squished together in fatalism. But oftentimes there’s a kind of laissez faire approach to the therefore / but-ing / the timing of information and other mechanical things I talk quite a bit about. It was only the second film I had seen at the time, but I did a whole piece on how I couldn’t quite get the pieces of Weathering With You to fully add up. Specially, I wrote the following:

“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. 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…”

The column left me with all these burning questions and two years later here’s a fact… I can barely remember the film? Like YOUR NAME feels burned into my brain, but Weathering With You feels completely fleeting, much like vague feelings I describe above. Even as I read over that piece from two years ago, a few moments and images come together, but barely more. There’s a telling quality to this. It’s telling us “if ideas feel unconnected, we will fail to reconnect them with time, as well.” And the connective tissue is part of the whole of it. If I can remember how much that relationship really touched me, then I can make good. And even though I just saw it so it may hold some recency bias, the good news is that his new film Suzume is much more successful at said connection.

At least at first.

It all starts by creating some fun adoration for our plucky young heroes, Suzume and Souta. She with the girlish glee and he with his beautiful, long, flowing, hypnotic hair (*insert Shojo sparkle*). We can immediately grasp onto their sense of affection for one another. But also almost immediately, they are thrown into the fires of an immense metaphysical situation. I won’t bog us down in plot description. It’s all Magic Doorways, Fated Closings, and the entire duty on their shoulders of preventing real-life earthquakes. We get that crushing sense of responsibility, which is, of course, just a metaphor for the duty young people have in trying to save the world (climate change always seems to be on Shinkai’s brain). We see nursing instinct in Suzume. We see the draw between them. We’re totally buying in and just like that… Souta becomes Chair-Kun when the key cat thingy curses him.

Oops! And suddenly a young girl and tiny anthropomorphic chair have to save the world. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a character choice / dynamic this fun? Seriously, every animation choice, every characterization, and every beat between them is amazing. Even on their journey, every little stop shows a new facet of the approaching adult life she’s running toward. The new friend at the tangerine farm. The care-taking of the kids. The bartending at the overwhelmed club. It may seem “tangential,” but it all feels of a piece and totally in rhythm with the story being told. And as they go on their little odyssey, I instinctively *know* it’s going to be heading to a more serious and heartbreaking place, but even that dread had me asking myself, “is this my favorite movie ever?” Which tells us that all the AFFECTION for the set-up is there and then… it starts falling flat.

Again, the question is why?

Let’s start with rhythm and expectation [SPOILERS I guess from here?]. It’s not about neatly fitting this film (or any film) into this abstract idea of 3 acts. It’s that as the battle for Tokyo starts, we feel like we’re in that big conclusion space, specifically because so many of the final cathartic moments feel close at hand. In any film, it’s about the fact that whatever we felt like we were close to, we WERE close to. And as our Chair-Kun is turned into the key, locked away forever. It’s heartbreaking. But Suzume doesn’t want to give up. And whatever is going to bring him back, to us at least, should feel like it’s close at hand. But instead of finding a way to that within this big conclusion-feeling sequence itself, it decides to do a big reset. Again, it is not that they CAN’T do this. If that’s how it HAS to be, or simply what they want, then it’s the question of how are you going to make the audience get on board with this change? How are you going to make it entertaining and not deflating? Even if it’s a big sad second act, it’s the question of how are you going to give that sadness purpose? (a film like RRR is a perfect example of this) And more importantly, why are you making the choice of doing so? What will be the meaning of all of it?

It’s important to remember that YOUR NAME essentially does the same generalized two-half format. It’s all fun and games in the first half, then comes that hammer blow of a realization that they’re separated and he’s magically communicating with someone in the past, now dead, and it’s up to them to fix things. The key difference is this whole switch is something that accelerates the tension and gives them active cause. Moreover, it’s a two-hander and we’re essentially watching two people trying to come together in their ups and downs and racing against time, all building to that ending coda and blissful realization. Suzume may have the same exact general “two-half shape,” but this is exactly why I argue top-down models for structure are completely useless. Because they’re doing two completely different things. For in the first half of this film they’re *already on* their big active mission. We already have our internal sense of not only danger, but a sense of “oh this is the movie.” And even though we know it’s going to be more serious, maybe even a sad or tragic ending, there is no part of you thinking “oh, a reset is coming.” Because again, if you are resetting, it’s all about re-grounding the audience in a way that helps them settle in.

A lot of ways artists do this with little tricks. Sometimes it’s title cards, or chapters, or part 1s and two, or other plotty objective-based ways of letting them know “oh this is where I am, so I should settle in.” For instance, in the first half, we get a good sense of the pace between earthquakes for our own rhythm, right? And yet the last 45 minutes doesn’t so much feel like a reset as it does one more extra one of those, just with a much longer pace. To its credit, you can see THE IDEA of what it’s going for with the long sequence, for it’s about making us miss Chair-kun, along with the reconnecting her with her Aunt, and the idea that she has to go back to her younger self and the first door she went in to confront that issue at her core. It all has a general idea of connecting back, but it all feels a little wonky and uneven? It’s like it doesn’t quite REFINE the time we’re spending here, especially in terms of set-up and pay-off.

Starting with Souta / Chair-Kun, that’s a lonnnnnng time to have a character in two-hander out of the picture. It doesn’t so much make us feel the longing or that absence. It’s not trying to portray what her life is like without him. Honestly, she’s so busy dealing with her other stuff in the final sequences that we kind of lose emotional tracking on Souta all together. You sense the film instinctively knows that because it has to replay the montage right before the connection, like “oh hey, remember this?” When really it should be the only thing already on our mind. This is basic set-up and pay-off stuff and it’s why the biggest uniting should mean something, but instead, the catharsis is not as strong.

Similarly, I can’t believe it doesn’t have the DEVASTATING scene with the Aunt early on that makes Suzume want to run off and escape on top of things, along with making me WANT the pay-off of them making peace (instead she says the meanest motivated thing with the cat possessing her? we’ll come back to that). I mean how is that not a part of what happens early and part of her guilt in chasing after her? I’m seriously bewildered. I talk so much about set-ups and pay-offs because they’re part of what makes emotional-coming-together moments feel transcendent. You have to create that deep want and longing, which means you have to dig into the problem (YOUR NAME is arguably the best at this). It’s the foundation of all emotions that come on screen. But so much of this ending sequence feels… rambling? And at odds with what’s come before? Take the set-up of the co-worker guy who is pining after the aunt. It’s not that I want them together, it’s that nothing happens with that? And instead she ends up meeting her adopted daughter’s potential boyfriend’s classmate and the two vaguely have some interactions and it seems like SOMETHING, but I have NO idea what it’s trying to do or say here? Like it “feels organic” I guess, but it just speaks to the lack of set-up and pay-off. And as much as that feels like some critical emotional loose end, there's a bigger problem with the last half…

Namely, the two cats / keystones.

Thought at first, it seems like the cat fucking rules. Yes, yes, it’s a bad cat causing potential murder everywhere sure, sure, sure. But this “Daijin” is operating on perfect mischievous cat logic. It hisses. It throws things. It cozies up and can be cute and silly. It’s a cat. But - for reasons that will soon be clear - there also has to be that human nugget at the core we really can track. And the moment it gets to that point after it’s trapped Souta and made him into the new key and it is again saying it wants to be with Suzume? She lashes out, but even then I was like “this was not set up right at all.” Like I *get* that it’s a chaos demon with cat logic, but the audience has to have its clear understanding of what it secretly wants in this situation, and we have to be playing closer to the emotion of the cat. Why? Because THE CATHARSIS OF THE MOVIE will later depend on its sacrifice for the two of them. And yet, because it’s been working on indiscriminate cat-logic, the sacrifice feels equally indiscriminate. Suzume’s journey with the cat needs that growth, that connection, that little human nugget that powers some deeper understanding. What is it about humanity that will be part of their clear understanding of one another, all to set each other free? But by the time the other bigger cat shows up and the Aunt is fainting I’m sitting there like “what the fuck is going on?” It’s not that I can’t handle a moment of confusion. It’s just part of the muddy nature of the back of the film’s emotional intentions. We can’t grasp what it’s really after, even in terms of feeling. For every moment feels like unintentional accumulation, with very little that further endears or builds to the purpose of catharsis. Moreover, for all the plotting explanation it feels like it’s such a weird mixing of various metaphors at this point that I don’t exactly know what to do with any of it, thematically-speaking. But even then, all of this would feel forgivable if the ending really nailed it.

All the sentiment is there. And you can see the poeticism of what it’s going for. Suzume is still holding onto the pain of her mother and she’s giving a gift to herself, which is the kind of stuff that usually sends us blubbering home in a pile of tears. Yet it doesn’t… quite wholly feel in line with her journey? Like how much was this part of her problem - in the sense of how much was this inability to let go already impacting her behavior? And was this catharsis part of what allowed her to fix anything? Isn’t the relationship with the Aunt already addressed? How is SAVING the boyfriend’s life helping her make peace with death exactly? Again, this is the problem of mixing your metaphors so much. The people in the past, the doorways, the loving her mom, the wanting the chair, equating the new boyfriend with the chair, you feel it all racing with a kind of emotional logic - but there’s nothing about her ending speech to herself that snaps it into focus. Instead, it keeps hitting different targets like it’s playing thematic whack-a-mole, which in truth, I know is the effect of a film trying to unify a lot of ideas by having her say all this, but they don’t quite unify dramatically on their own. That’s why she’s saying all of them (something I say with empathy, I’ve been there with scenes). So as beautiful as it all SEEMS, it is not the kind of cinematic catharsis that simply IS.

That’s the whole thing about talking about movies in terms of what works. It’s so tempting to be like “wow, the first half is great!” But it’s also not right. Because they are two sides of the same coin. And there’s a lot of things both halves need to do to make all the various resolutions come together in a way that feels cathartic, along with underlining one of the things as the central idea behind their union. You have to balance the grand equation of the film itself. Because as ephemeral as it all seems, there are tangible, mechanical things in the art of storytelling that make for that high. And without them? All you have left is the gut feelings

I don’t say this in any way that’s meant to belittle Shinkai’s modus operandi. He’s an amazing artist. He always plays for these big emotions and feelings in a way that feels genuine. And there’s no part of me that doesn’t enjoy hearing more awesome Radwimps songs. It’s just that I often argue that as great as your gut can be, writing from that place alone is never a complete solution. It takes endless drafts and tinkering to figure out the exact articulation of the story you are telling - with balanced set-ups and payoffs in all to find the catharsis that works beyond measure. That could only be true for THIS story, every time. And where YOUR NAME transcended into the greater world because it was a perfect articulation of all that it was putting forth, a film like Suzume feels like it only gets halfway there.

But dagnambit is Chair Boyfriendo cute.

Of this, there can be no denial.

<3HULK