ATTENTION, THE ARTICLE HAS 100% SPOILERS, BECAUSE IT ANALYSIS THE STRUCTURE OF THE PLOT OF THIS TITLE!!!
5 Centimeters per Second (2007)
Film links: Wikipedia Myanimelist
Genres: Drama, Romance, Slice of Life
Writter, Director: Makoto Shinkai
Studios: CoMix Wave Films
This is a story about life of an ordinary guy and his mistakes. About the moment in his life when he realized, that he has lost something very important, and he found it out only when he completely lost it.
Plot
The story is set in Japan, beginning in the 1990s up until the present
day (2008), with each act centered on a boy named Takaki Tōno. The
first act takes place during a time when cell phones are uncommon and
email had not yet reached the general population.
Full anime includes 3 parts (Three stories about love, time and distance)
The love story of the main character Takaki at it's ending could have a bunch of interpretations. At the end of the third part of the story, Takaki smiles and goes away in silence. He leaves the audience free to interpretate the climax of the film and the thoughts of the main hero at the final moment.
Their own interpretation the meaning of ending the film, and the reasons that became the main drivers of the story every viewer create by him/her self. In the text bellow there are a few my own interpretations of the footage on the screen.
The First. Main protagonist is still loyal to his childhood promise, that he will met with his lover again. This thought doesn't leave him for the whole of his life. After the climax of the story, he became free of his promise, and he face the first day of the rest of his life.
The Second. The main hero, couldn't forget his first love, and because of that he couldn't love any other girl and became happy again.
The Third. Is more philosophic and on it we will look more clously.
With this story the director is trying to show the way more fundamental things in the life of every human.
Important to light up the name of the title "5 Centimeters per Second". The keynote(the main theme) of the film is the passing of time, which was linked with the periods of sakura's bloom. Slow, unstopable, elusive stream of time and the life of the human being which dissolved in it .
His love to that girl representse the personal meaning of life for Takaki. Main character stay alone without it. The directors idea that he's trying to convey through his movie is "if you met the thing witch became your personal meaning of life - don't lose it!". The film shows us the story of the guy who forgot and lost the most important thing in his life.
This idea could find the confirm in the life of the main hero, after his last met with her.
He getting far from what makes him happy in the past. In the childhood, protagonist was maximum clouse to that thing. You can put in the place of "the girl of the dream" things like "sport practise", "your favorite hobby", "your goal in life", " that thing which fills your life the meaning and joe".
Passing time, we can see actions and thoughts of the main character. All of them are situative. Only the audience can feel the semantic link between two different fragments of the Takaki's life. For the main character it's a long solid line of obstacles in front of him, and because of that, he forgot that oneday in the past he was full in love with a girl. In the third part, the audience can see the similarity of all three short movies and find the idea which links all of them. Takaki forgot about it long time ago. The film's director has chosen and cut out this three parts of life of the protagonist from the stream of time of his life. For the main character this three parts of his life has no difference with the others. This moments of Takaki's life are not seems for him as the life changing moments. Makoto Shinkai noticed this, and the director, as the observer, highlights recorded on the footage three moments of the life of main character, and show us the changing of that inconspicuous little thing for a character that is so important for us.
When Takaki became more mature, he make new relationships with the girls which mean nothing for him. Girls here are the same representations of hobbies or desires suppose to bring some meaning in his life. The training in the sport section, from the second short film, which had no links with his future job and daily life, could represented another variation of time killing.
In the protagonist's monologue with himself we could notice the way of thinking of Merso, the main protagonist of the novel written by Albert Camus (1942) "The Stranger". In "5 Centimeters per Second" like in "The Stranger", we can hear the inside voice of the character. The character is estranged from whole things around him and carrelesly commenting what happened with him, and what he feels and about what he thinking about at this moment or in the next one.
Main character of the novel "The Stranger" live and communicate with the enviroment which his creator directly called "the absurd". Telling of the meeting the absurd, Camus, shows that you could face with it only if you find yourself in the state of complete boredom, feeling meaningless and pointless of the your life. Right when the human becomes feel boredom, he starts asking the question of causality of all around him. This is not only simple questions, it's his or her moment of meeting with sencelessness of the reality witch arounds all humanity. This is the moment of awakening, which the human could ignore and keep doing with out any changings or take the challenge and start asking the questions about the meaning of life. Especially about the meaning of his or her particular life.
Life of Takaki surrounded by trash, and text massages from his ex girlfriend who mean nothing for him, are good illustration of how the main hero faces the meaningless world of "absurd". Takaki diving in the world of "absurd" like in the deep water. His reality became senseless and pointless for him.
"I was surprised to hear that you were the one transferring schools
this time. We both got used to transfering schools when we were
little... But still... Kagoshima. That's kind of far away, isn't? It's
no longer a distance where I can just jump on a train and see you
whenever I want... So... I guess... That makes me feel a little
lonely. Please be well, Takaki-kun."
The girl tells him that the phisical distance between them is getting bigger. Takaki could feel her desire to deliver her thought to him from the letter, but her wish doesn't change anything in Takaki. His life keeps going as always, filled with the daily routine. And it's look like the relationships with that girl is just a part of that daily routine.
It sounds like a call for help from "what_is_such_an_important_thing_in_life" to the main hero. But offscrean voice and the frames with fast changing planes, shows the audience, that all of that are perceptions by the protagonist as her babble on the background of his life. He doesn't pay attention on the her words.
He graduates from the middle school and transferng to another school onece again. Now, "that important thing" got far away from him.
In the third part of the story, we see what happend with the hero, who forgot and lost "that thing witch fills his life of meaning". He starest to waste his life and time for pointless and senceless things. Here we can see more cleare the first stages of the boredom which will fill all his life in the future. From the second part of the story main hero is completely lost.
Takaki feels that and starts to analyse his life and surrounding him reality. After he estranged himself from the daily routine and look on the world anew, he started to notice all the absurd around him. All that used to be well known and familiar has lost it's sence Main character starts to to rethinkeverything about the situation he put himself in by all of what he has done before.
Like the protagonist from the novel "The stranger", the protagonist of Makoto Shinkai get out from the dull daily routine to the experience of saturated life. Merco experienced the feeling of life only before his own death. Takaki aslo experienced the real life only when he saw the ring on the ringfinger his first love. At that moment he goes throught symbolical death of his old world.
This is not physical death of the character, but it was the death of his childhood dream. When he sees his first love married the other man, he realizes that they will never be together again. And even thought they don't talk with each other for decades after that moment, Takaki realizes that he has realy lost something in his life, and from now on his life will never be the same.
I've chosen this film like as an example of films which could make an effect on the emotional state of the viewer, because I think this film work as the warning. The destiny of fiction character was sacrificed for sake of the real people. To give them chance to identify themselfs with him and think about their own lifes. Could they make the same mistake in theyr life? Could they forgot and lose the most important?
I hope, I could put your attention on this feature of the modern culture.
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Special thanks for Dmitrii Konshin (Дмитрий Коньшин) for the helping me with literature for this film analysis.
Special thanks for Kang Yao for the helping me with translation article to the english language.
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Text was written spetal for the STEEMIT project.
Author: Philipp-James West