Suzume Review | Kittens Are for Closers

Warm, inventive, but also overstuffed, animation legend in the making Makoto Shinkai’s latest effort, Suzume, starts and stays rather strong despite lurching towards overkill by the conclusion. Continuing in his series of films about our collective connection to natural and climate based disasters – following the exceptional Your Name and the pretty good Weathering With You – Shinkai is playing well within his narrative wheelhouse, but it’s becoming apparent that his deeply heartfelt epics are in need of some reigning in sooner rather than later. Suzume remains a far more fascinating film than most any other animated or live action offering out there at the moment, but when a filmmaker like Shinkai has set the bar so high based on past efforts, it’s easier to spot the moments that have gotten away from them.

Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara) is a seventeen year old high schooler from a small town. One day, while cycling to school, she crosses paths with Souta (Hokuto Matsumura) a mysterious university student from out of town who asks if there are any ruins nearby. Suzume points him in the right direction, but immediately smitten with this dreamboat, she decides to follow Souta. When she arrives at the dilapidated remains of an old bathhouse, Suzume sees a giant wormlike creature emanating from a door that leads nowhere. It’s a creature that is capable of unleashing natural disasters upon Japan, and Souta is part of a long line of “closers,” or people tasked with keeping these spirits locked away behind these doors. But without knowing what she was doing, Suzume has accidentally disturbed a keystone – which takes the form of a needy, attention seeking cat – that helps to keep balance. The cat – Daijin (Ann Yamane) – curses Souta, placing the young man’s soul into a three legged kiddie chair from Suzume’s childhood. The mischievous animal sets about opening doors all over the country, and Suzume is now tasked with traveling around to stop disasters from happening, with her trusty chair by her side.

If Suzume sounds like a lot to take in, it is, but Shinkai’s film is really about two primary things. First and foremost, Suzume is a parable tied to inexorable memories surrounding the devastating March 11, 2011 earthquake that rocked Eastern Japan, and a reminder of the old adage that us human beings could be seconds away from death at any time. Secondarily, and in true Shinkai fashion, Suzume is a teen romance where someone who is head over heels for a person they barely know fights with all their heart to save them from tragedy and pain. And Suzume would be just fine if Shinkai had stuck to those two settings, but instead, the film keeps piling on subplots and asides that dilute the overall power of the final product, particularly during the admittedly lacking second half.

The first hour or so of Suzume finds Shinkai operating at the peak of his abilities as an animator and storyteller. Filled with loving nods to the works of Miyazaki, Shinkai paints a pretty picture, full of his trademark whimsy (watching a wobbly chair chasing after a cat never gets old), well incorporated sci-fi elements, an eye for history, and likeable characters (even if the age difference in the romance draws some eyebrow raising here and there). The cloud pocked skylines are gorgeous, the action sequences are rousing, and the road movie concept about the bong between a girl and her beloved talking chair works surprisingly well because Shinkai takes his silliness very seriously. The genre hopping soundtrack and score – once again provided by Radwimps, with an assist from Kazuma Jinnouchi – works wonders and adds to the fantastical vibes. There’s plenty of visual symbolism that suggests a filmmaker taking the utmost care to get their points across with a good blend of social impact and melodrama. Shinkai always thinks visually and narratively in big blockbuster terms, and Suzume is no exception.

But once the film crosses the halfway point – sailing past what would be a satisfying and tidy conclusion for most other filmmakers – Shinkai switches the plot up a bit, and the remainder feels like a lesser sequel baked into the fabric of something original. The lore established at the start becomes less interesting, more unnecessarily convoluted, thinly explained and repetitive. A subplot involving the parentless Suzume’s relationship to her aunt and caregiver (Eri Fukatsu) is standard stuff that could sustain its own film, but is thinly drawn here. Another gratingly pointless subplot involving the unexpected arrival of one of Souta’s “friends” (Ryunosuke Kamiki) drags things way down and ends in one of the stupidest ways possible, amounting to one of the most frustrating things to ever mar an otherwise decent movie so far this year. The steam in the narrative starts running out, and the love story becomes harder to buy into because everything between Suzume and Souta essentially gets put on pause.

When Suzume finally reaches a logical conclusion that could’ve arrived a lot sooner and without so much fuss, it feels like it wasn’t entirely worth all that effort to get there. But visually and philosophically, this fits in rather nicely with the rest of Shinkai’s filmography to date. It’s clear that Shinkai has firmly established himself as a major voice in the medium of animation, but also someone in need of more self-editing. Even if Suzume doesn’t totally nail what Shinkai is going for, it’s clear to see the love, effort, and care that has been poured into every gorgeous frame, and that he’s a masterful entertainer keen to give filmgoers every bit of their money’s worth. It won’t go down as one of his best, but Shinkai has such a promising career ahead of him that even something that’s slightly off is still worth taking notice.

Suzume returns to select Canadian theatres on Friday, October 27, 2023.