As an American moviegoer,
I often forget how privileged I am. Since my country is basically the movie
capital of the world, it’s easy to take this position for granted. This often
comes up when I talk to my European or Australian friends who have to wait a week or even a month for stuff that I usually get to see on opening
weekend. But every so often a movie comes along that reminds me how good I have
it. In the case of Your Name, I’ve
been hearing for months about how it’s been doing gangbusters in Japan,
breaking box office record after box office record, eventually becoming the highest
grossing Japanese movie of all time, and all I could do was watch from the
other side of the window. But now that the movie has a wide American release, I
finally get to see what all the hubbub’s about. Are we looking at the successor
to Hayao Miyazaki, or has the hype machine been revved up too much?
Our story follows two
teenagers who find themselves in a very strange predicament. Taki (Ryunosuke
Kamiki and Michael Sinterniklaas in the Japanese and English dubs respectively)
is a boy living in Tokyo, and Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi/Stephanie Sheh) is a
girl from a small, remote mountain town. Through some unexplained phenomena,
they wake up to find themselves in each other’s bodies. This seems to happen at
random. One day they’ll wake up as the other person and the next they’ll be
back to normal. But when they are body swapped, they have to live that day as the
other person, which they do with the help of messages that they leave for each
other. But one day, the switching stops. Taki tries to get ahold of Mitsuha to
no avail, a struggle exacerbated by the fact that the memories of the other
person are erased when they switch back. With only a few notes and sketches as
guidance, is determined to find her and figure out what’s going on. And that’s
when things take an unexpected turn.
Let me just get this out
of the way here and now: Your Name is
amazing. I was a bit skeptical of all the praise it’s been getting, with some
so far as to call director Makoto Shinkai the next Hayao Miyazaki, and even
though its success is highly impressive, box office numbers don’t always make a good movie. But if it was able to touch so many people, then it must have
something going for it. If I had to narrow down what in particular makes this
movie work so well, I can sum it up in one word: beauty.
While it’s come to be
expected for the animation to be beautiful, they definitely pull out all the
stops here. Shinkai’s movies have always excelled in animating skies and natural
light (see: 5 Centimeters Per Second and Voices of a Distant Star), and his last movie, The Garden of Words, was basically nature porn. Your Name is no exception, with
its breathtaking backdrops capturing the lush, verdant beauty of the Japanese
countryside and the tight-knit peacefulness of the small towns nestled within
them, as well as the shining majesty of the Tokyo skyscrapers and the organized
chaos of the people living within it. These backdrop, accompanied by the
fluent, cell-shaded 2-D animation (something I wish more western animators
would re-embrace) and a fantastic score and soundtrack from J-rock band Radwimps,
this movie is an absolute treat for the senses. It also strikes a perfect
balance with the writing without one overshadowing or drawing away from the
other, and when your attention is drawn to it (the editing here is also
phenomenal), it’s done for maximum effect.
But the real driving
force of this movie is the dynamic between our two leads. Comparisons to Freaky
Friday are almost inevitable, but what separates this from that or any other
body swapping story is the fact that these characters have never met. While it
does add a lot to the star-crossed lovers thing it’s going for, it also immensely
changes the way they interact with each other. At first, they try to improve
each other’s lives in simple ways. Mitsuha helps Taki get a girlfriend by
making him embrace his feminine side, while Taki scores popularity points for
Mistuha with his more outgoing personality. Eventually, by becoming one another
for a day at time, they slowly begin to truly understand and fall in love with
each other. It reminds me of other romance movies that had fantasy elements
like The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Lake House, but neither one of them
were able to pull off what Your Name
did as effectively.
The tone in the beginning
is very different from how it ends, but they manage to ease into it pretty
nicely. The best comparison in this regard I can think of is the tonal shift in
the severely underrated Everything Is Illuminated. It plants the seeds of a romantic drama at the beginning,
spends the first half lowering you into a false sense of security with its
comedy, and then there’s that one pivotal moment you can pinpoint where it
becomes a different movie. But just like how the story and animation are
perfectly balanced, the movie remembers to keep its sense of humor without veering
too deep into melodrama. There’s a running gag where every time Taki wakes up
as Mistuha, he starts doing what every teenage boy would do if they woke up as
a girl, but it converges with one of its biggest tear-jerking moments.
If I did have one
complaint, it would be that some of the sci-fi moments got a little confusing
at times. Without getting into spoilers, when Taki and Mitsuha switch bodies,
their souls are traveling not just through space, but also time, which helped
answer some questions like they didn’t just call each other, but opened up a
few others that I’m not entirely sure were answered. It also doesn’t help that
I sometimes had a little trouble remembering who was in who’s body. I actually
had to see it a second time before everything finally clicked. But this is more
of a failing on my part than the movie’s. Your
Name aims to speak to the heart, not the mind. And at the end of the day,
it didn’t take away from the overall experience or get in the way of its
primary goal of kicking my emotions in the balls.
Overall, Your Name is something that should not
be missed. I think it’s unfair to compare this to Miyazaki since stylistically
they don’t have a lot in common, but Makoto Shinkai is definitely a name to be
looking out for, and this breakout hit deserves all the success and praise it
has earned. Like the name of a long-lost loved one, it’s not something you want
to forget.
9/10
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