There are many reviews criticizing this movie. Many describe imperfections or technical flaws in the whole drama. From my point of view, however, none of those reviews (except one) get it right to look at the core proposal of the film -the struggle of a young girl to overcome a terrible trauma through a painful curative process- avoiding adjacent, varied topics.
Suzu struggles to understand why ("why, why, why", she writes) her mom gave her own life -and her life with Suzu- to save the life of an unknown child. As a result, Suzu has blocked her emotions and social behavior. The movie tells the deep process Suzu undertakes to understand her mom's decision and to overcome her trauma. Everything beyond belongs to contextual, adjacent elements of the movie -necessary to develop her process though.
Suzu's curative process starts off when she realizes that her perception of other people is imaginary, non-real: Ruka (which she assumes to be so exceptional) just likes a regular guy and her handicapped dog; the four chorus women are unable to explain what is happiness; powerful Dragon himself is in an imperious need of help. This connection with reality will unblock Suzu's inner feelings to a point where she will also be able to help another person and, through that, to comprehend her mom's impulse to save the child. The justice team is a metaphor of the river where her mom drown; her mom fought against the river to save the child and Suzu fights against the "order and justice" team that wants to unveil Dragon. Meanwhile, unveiling her in "U" is the inner fight to free herself from her mom's death. After wining the fight against Dragon's father, she returns back to her community entirely transformed, i.e. Singing.
Others opinions seem to focus on adjacent topics to the core theme, claiming that more analytical descriptions of secondary characters are needed, or even dispensable, more technical features of "U" ("can people shop?"), if Suzu is in love with one guy or another, and so on. To me, these opinions reflect how we have been educated for the past century by the film industry and the literature alike, which tend to emphasize through descriptions, visual details and easy-to-grasp, intellectually comfortable drama schemes. Armed with this legacy mindset, we develop predetermined expectations that, if not fulfilled, lead to criticism. The question is, therefore, that the problem is not in the movie itself, but in ourselves.
I love Suzu; and I love her dad as he encouraged her to pursue her purpose of assisting an unknown person -and be kind with him. I think we don't need so many extra details of other characters or to know if people can go shopping in "U", what we need is to accompany Suzu in her struggle and to be motivated and inspired by her. My takeaway is that we should have a blank mindset so the main message of the movie easily penetrates us and with it, we can join the forward looking, opening up attitude that she inspires.
Suzu struggles to understand why ("why, why, why", she writes) her mom gave her own life -and her life with Suzu- to save the life of an unknown child. As a result, Suzu has blocked her emotions and social behavior. The movie tells the deep process Suzu undertakes to understand her mom's decision and to overcome her trauma. Everything beyond belongs to contextual, adjacent elements of the movie -necessary to develop her process though.
Suzu's curative process starts off when she realizes that her perception of other people is imaginary, non-real: Ruka (which she assumes to be so exceptional) just likes a regular guy and her handicapped dog; the four chorus women are unable to explain what is happiness; powerful Dragon himself is in an imperious need of help. This connection with reality will unblock Suzu's inner feelings to a point where she will also be able to help another person and, through that, to comprehend her mom's impulse to save the child. The justice team is a metaphor of the river where her mom drown; her mom fought against the river to save the child and Suzu fights against the "order and justice" team that wants to unveil Dragon. Meanwhile, unveiling her in "U" is the inner fight to free herself from her mom's death. After wining the fight against Dragon's father, she returns back to her community entirely transformed, i.e. Singing.
Others opinions seem to focus on adjacent topics to the core theme, claiming that more analytical descriptions of secondary characters are needed, or even dispensable, more technical features of "U" ("can people shop?"), if Suzu is in love with one guy or another, and so on. To me, these opinions reflect how we have been educated for the past century by the film industry and the literature alike, which tend to emphasize through descriptions, visual details and easy-to-grasp, intellectually comfortable drama schemes. Armed with this legacy mindset, we develop predetermined expectations that, if not fulfilled, lead to criticism. The question is, therefore, that the problem is not in the movie itself, but in ourselves.
I love Suzu; and I love her dad as he encouraged her to pursue her purpose of assisting an unknown person -and be kind with him. I think we don't need so many extra details of other characters or to know if people can go shopping in "U", what we need is to accompany Suzu in her struggle and to be motivated and inspired by her. My takeaway is that we should have a blank mindset so the main message of the movie easily penetrates us and with it, we can join the forward looking, opening up attitude that she inspires.