Routines and dreams. Poetry, pain and love.
I watch this and I want to be fifteen years old again.
Do you remember being young enough to have unencumbered dreams?
And have you had enough experiences in your 20s or 30s to be jaded and depressed?
Have you ever been deeply involved in a taboo situation - one that you felt embarrassed to tell anyone about because the truth would expose you to justifiable judgement?
SPOILERS…
This little movie has it all, if you care enough about anime art (not the sci-fi action, colors and fight-style kind, but the heart-twinge, philosophically probing kind) to really look and listen and if you are mushy and empathetic like I am. Also, you have to have some sense of feeling like a twenty-eight year old can feel like they know no more than a fifteen year old.
There is an openness that you want to have about the fullness of this story that you are not allowed to in this, our modern day. Social justice laws don’t allow a boy to slap a girl and the story to move along as if it shouldn’t be addressed.
The art though. The art of this film is undeniable. It says so much, and with poetry, no less.
It makes a strong statement about human feeling and the statement is made against a backdrop of social construct that makes it wrong, but if you look deep enough…right.
Sometimes in life, you connect to other human beings in the wrong way and it does all the right things to your psyche if it happens at just the right time.
The wind and rain. The garden. Her home and their meal together being the best and happiest time of their lives. The acknowledgement of a pure love based on a secular humanity we all can identify with on some level…the thing that binds us all to each other.
And that last scene on the stairs. The screaming cry of love and the truest and purest connection available to humankind that can pull your deepest wounds to the surface and scrape you raw and clean.
The gratitude. The pain and anguish of feeling and connecting to someone no one would rightfully let you connect to in such an intimate way. I cry every time I watch it. And I’ve watched it, as a screenwriter, dozens of times in a day, just to notate the emotion.
If you are an anime lover - one that prefers play and action - and you avoid emotional film, this is not for you.
If you enjoy feeling any film, short or long, taboo or no, this is something you can enjoy if you allow yourself to do so.
I did. And I do.