Dear all!,
as I am just starting on SteemIt, this is the very first post of the Awesome films Series. For starters, I will be posting here very personal reviews of an specific film or cinema topic and I really hope you enjoy my opinion. Please feel free to comment and discuss, I do really enjoy to talk about films with everyone.
Then again, I would love to start by writing my opinion of this amazing japannese movie, Your Name. If you have not seen it, please stop reading and go watch it, you are really losing such an incredible experience. Let me please start by just explaining, real quick, the context of the movie.
Your Name is basically a typical romcom with such plot twists and narrative elements that turns romcoms into classics. The story is about two teenagers which, by unexplainable reasons, change bodies with each other and this triggers a very deep connection between each other, up to the point of falling in love. As of now, this is a very well known plot; chick meets dude, dude screw things up, chick and dude get together by solving the issue... but we will be thinking this wrong if we just let ourselves guide by simplistic point of view.
Let's really talk about the cinematographic language of the film. It is quite easy to see that animation is absolutely stunning. Very few anime films have ever recreated nowadays Japan as this films did. Cities and little towns are characters themselves, they are part of the story being told and help to discover various aspects of both main characters and their surroundings.
Second item is narrative, it can be said that this is a relative easy story to tell. There is a beginning, a conflict and a resolutions. The story even have the two plot twist expected from this narrative structure, however when the main syuzhet is revealed then all flashbacks and flashforward take an impressive importance within the fabula, how the story is being told. Actually the revelation of the syuzhet is taken as the first plot twist. This happens at the first 20 minutes of the movie, once all characters are set up and when the spectator realize both characters are separated not only by distance but by time as well.
This helps as perfect introduction of, what I think, is the most important item of this film: The usage of time as a dramatic, cinematic and narrative element. Let me please explain myself. Japannese have being recognized by their usage of time in different movies, my main example is Rashomon from Kurosawa which relates the story from 3 different point of views but in the same time. This leads you to unanswered questions that should be put together by retrieving very small pieces all along the movie. Usage of time as a element actually lead to very iconic movies such as Memento, Irreversible or Donnie Darko. However, what I think makes this movie different from Rashomon or any other mentioned is that time works as a polymorphic element. All films I just mentioned, which are GREAT films, use time only as 1 thing, either part of the narrative (Rashomon or Irreversible), as a dramatic element (Donnie Darko) or as a cinematic element (Memento). Your Name achieves to take this into a new whole level by setting a connected story in two different times (dramatic element), then everytime we see any of our characters we are taken back and forth into the time in order to know what the director want us to know (narrative) and finally make an excellent work by setting very clear transitions of this time by showing sliding doors everytime we jump into time or every time we hear the little ring bell (cinematic)
Being said that, I can only conclude that this film will help the anime world to be more recognized by filmakers and consumers. It is the first time we see such and incredible use of a very specific item and everything surrounding this story is also very detailed. However, I would not say this is a perfect movie, I know by myself some clear narrative issues but they are tiny defects compared with all the legacy this movie is creating for future stories to be told.
