73rd Berlin International Film Festival
Ringbud Tour
Sparrow door lock
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Screenwriter: Makoto Shinkai
Starring: Nano Hara / Hokuto Matsumura / Hikari Fukatsu / Shota Someya / Sari Ito
Genre: Animation
Country/region of production: Japan
Language: Japanese
Release date: 2023-03-24(Chinese mainland) / 2022-11-11(Japan)
Run time: 121 minutes
Written by Kinyuan
"I'll learn to look." in Rilke
"Suzuya Journey" is the final chapter of Japanese animation director Makoto Shinkai's "disaster trilogy", following the meteorite fall ("Your Name") and the climate anomaly ("Weather Child"), which turns his attention to the Japanese earthquake disaster marked by 311. Presumably because of the connection to the earth, the movie materializes the earthquake disaster as some kind of giant earthworm (ミミズ), waiting for the opportunity to pass through the "gates" scattered all over Japan from another world (Changsei) to this world to cause an earthquake. In order to close the door that caused the disaster, the girl Iwato Suzuya and the university student Sota Kusata from the "Closed Door Division" (閉じ師) family embark on a journey around Japan.
A still from "Journey to the Bell Bud"
"Journey to the Bell Buds" takes the genre framework of road films, a typical American film genre, and a film genre that opens up new Hollywood ("Easy Rider", "Bonnie and Clyde"). As a result, the film adopts a Hollywood disaster blockbuster-style soundtrack that is different from Makoto Shinkai's previous films, thanks to the music supervisor's absorption of composers who are active in Hollywood. I have to admit that the soundtrack is indeed a big improvement over the first two parts of the film, not in the quality of the music itself, but in the more mature time to use them. Remember the two abrupt MVs in "Weather Child", always clumsily stepping on the protagonists' shouts to skim through the repetitive daily process, which is no longer seen in "Journey to the Bell Buds". The vocal chorus added is as infectious as the famous "puppet ballads" in Ghost in the Shell.
For goal-oriented road films, a journey is often accompanied by the protagonist's self-discovery and improvement. The "closing doors" in the middle of "Journey to the Bell Buds" are slightly repetitive, just to trigger the ghosts of memories carried by different post-disaster ruined spaces (middle schools, amusement parks, etc.), without turning over anything more. It wasn't until the last door, the first door she stepped into as a child, that Suzuya figured out the vague scene in her dream, encouraged her young self, and rescued her crush. "行ってきます" (a Japanese idiom before going out, which originally means "go and go back"), Suzuya locks the door, but is ready to start a new journey. But there is always something to return, to a world where all time coexists.
A still from "Journey to the Bell Bud"
The sound painting of "Journey to the Bell Bud" undoubtedly has the power to move people's hearts: when the individual's memory is recalled on the ruins, the words that once echoed in this space pour out, briefly piercing the long-standing silence. The voice tries to convey to us that every life represented by the death number has ever actually been lived. The fly in the ointment is that the time when these sounds echo is overshadowed by the film's smile. The memories on the poor ruins are still abstract and blurry, flashing light.
Shinkai Makoto and Hara Naihua in Berlin, as well as a three-legged chair
Group visit at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival
Q: What does the earthquake mean for the Japanese?
Makoto Shinkai: For us Japanese, I feel like an earthquake is like a huge curse, and we happen to be born in a shaky country. The situation is different in every place, and Beijing, Berlin and Paris seem to have earthquakes frequently. When I came to these places, I was surprised that the old buildings still existed. In Japan, every time a major earthquake occurs, old movies disappear and the cityscape changes. This is a curse that we need to accept and live with. But it is precisely because we live in such a place that there are movies like "Journey to the Bell Buds". I believe that such an environment can create some things, not all negative things, such as there are many hot springs in Japan, which is a gift from earthquakes.
A still from "Journey to the Bell Bud"
Q: What was the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake on your work?
Makoto Shinkai: Before the earthquake, I was a writer who didn't write happy endings, like the sad ending in "5 Centimeters Per Second". But after the earthquake, I changed my mind and I felt compelled to portray a strong sense of hope in my story. "5 Centimeters Per Second" is still a movie that I love, but I think it is a movie that I can't make today. I consider myself one of the filmmakers who changed their work due to disasters.
Q: Why did you choose earthworms as an embodiment of earthquakes?
Makoto Shinkai: In Japan, it was once thought that earthquakes were caused by the movement of a huge creature beneath the Japanese archipelago. Until the Edo period, two or three hundred years ago, people thought it was a catfish. Even earlier, the Japanese believed that there were long, huge creatures underground, like dragons. Therefore, the image of a dragon-shaped creature, or rather a long giant creature under the Japanese archipelago, inspired me to come up with the idea of earthworms. Earthworms are a creature that eats the soil and enriches it. Earthquakes are also a reduction in soil, and if I make it into an earthworm, it will have more meaning related to the earth.
A still from "Journey to the Bell Bud"
Q: In your films, "door" appears many times as an intermediary between "present life" and "permanent world" (note: in Japanese mythology, it refers to the eternal world after death, it was also written "tokoya" in the old days). Why did you choose a door instead of a window or something else?
Makoto Shinkai: At first, I intuitively thought that doors were a good idea, but I was a little worried that it would be too much like Monster Corporation and Doraemon. But during the creative process, I came to become convinced that doors were necessary. Because the door is a symbol of our daily life. We go to school and work every morning, and we go home in the evening through the door, and the cycle makes up our lives. The Japanese say "行ってきます" when they go out is a promise to "go out now and come back later". "Journey to the Bell Bud" is a movie about disasters. Disasters interrupt your routine and force you to give up your daily things: many people can't go home after they go out, and they can't keep their promises. On the morning of the Great East Japan Earthquake, countless people left the door with the phrase "I'll go back," but about 20,000 people couldn't go home or fulfill their promises.
Q: Is it a coincidence or an intentional move that tokoyo and one of the main stages of your work, "Tokyo"? Where did you get inspired to choose the concept of "permanence"?
Makoto Shinkai: It's a coincidence. "Tsunesi/Yoru" and "Tokyo" are indeed pronounced similarly, and I didn't notice them until you mentioned them. In terms of Chinese Chinese characters, "Changye" means "consistent night", which means that time has not passed. In Japanese, it also means the world after death. I thought it was interesting that a person dies in a world where time stops passing, so I made it the main visual of this work. It's just that in "Journey to the Bell Buds", it is not so much a place where there is no time as a place where all time coexists. There were young bell buds, now sparrows. The starry sky, sunset, sun and stars exist at the same time, as if all the time existed.
A still from "Journey to the Bell Bud"
Q: I wonder how the relationship between Suzuya and Kusata developed, because the movie didn't focus too much on the feelings between them?
Makoto Shinkai: The secret is in the structure of the film: When Suzuya and Kusata meet for the first time, Suzuya feels as if she has seen this person before, so Sparrow follows this person. In fact, Suzuya had seen grass too much when I was a child. As a child, Suzuya saw Kusata and (when she grew up) Suzuya's figure, and that memory stayed in Suzuya's mind for a long time, for Suzuya, in fact, they were not meeting for the first time, but a person she liked as a child, so the relationship began a little suddenly.
Q: Why did you choose to turn Kusanagi into a chair?
Makoto Shinkai: If I used sad strokes to depict a sad story, the audience would not come to see it, so I wanted to make this movie an interesting movie. For this reason, I hope to have some interesting characters next to the sparrow. I thought about it and decided to use a chair with three legs, and the way it walks is a little difficult to say, cute and funny. The chair lost a leg in the tsunami and is also a metaphor for the lost heart of the bell bud. Although the loss of her mother has made Suzuya's heart lose a corner, she can still live; Although this chair has only three legs and no heart, it can still bounce alive, and I painted this chair with this mood in mind.
A still from "Journey to the Bell Bud"
Q: You emphasize the entertaining nature of movies because you want to be close to the younger generation. But balancing the demands of entertainment with serious issues must be difficult, how did you manage to do it?
Makoto Shinkai: As you said, this is a very difficult topic because the disaster happened 12 years ago, and even now there are still people who have not recovered from the trauma, and some areas have not recovered from the disaster. But at the same time, 12 years is a long time for people to forget, especially the younger generation, and more and more young people lack the memory of the Great East Japan Earthquake. So I think a movie like "Journey to the Bell Buds" should be made at this time. And I think it should be entertaining, so that it will attract people who are not interested in the earthquake to the cinema. How to strike the balance? It must first be an interesting movie, and it must also be sincere. I want to make sure that my feelings about the character Suzuya are sincere. Of course there are lies as elements of fantasy, such as earthworms are fiction, but I try not to lie about the feelings of the characters. I thought about this very seriously. I can't judge the outcome of the actual balance of "Journey to the Bell Buds", and I have to leave it to those who have seen it. There were earthquake victims who said they liked the movie very much and said that the words they wanted were in the movie; However, some people have told me that it is unacceptable to depict a true tragedy in such an entertainment film. So I think the success of this film really depends on the audience.