Movie Review: Mirai

Mirai *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Mamoru Hosoda.

Written by: Mamoru Hosoda.

Starring: Rebecca Hall (Mother), John Cho (Father), Daniel Dae Kim (Great Grandfather), Jaden Waldman (Kun), Victoria Grace (Mirai), Crispin Freeman (Mysterious Man), Eileen T’Kaye (The Grandmother), Victor Brandt (The Grandfather).

 

The first 15 minutes or so of Mirai are about as accurate a portrait of what it’s like to raise two kids as you are likely to see in an anime film. Young Kun is probably around four, when his parents return home one day with his new baby sister – who they will eventually call Mirai. Kun doesn’t take this well – he feels like he is being replaced, that his parents don’t love him anymore, and he ends up acting out. He tries to get attention, and when he doesn’t get it, he lashes out, he throws temper tantrums, and basically acts like a brat. The baby is, well, a baby so that’s no picnic either. And the parents are doing everything possible to try and keep things going.

 

That’s the first 15 minutes, and then the film introduces its fantasy element – and while the rest of the film is still delightful and charming, I kind of wish we would have stayed in the vein of the first segment – without the fantasy. The rest of the film will be about Kun meeting various members of his family in their yard around the magical tree, which we are told holds his entire family’s history in it. At first, he’ll meet a strange man – who he will figure out is really his family dog. Later, there will be a teenage version of his baby sister Mirai, his mother from when she was his age, and a trip to see his great grandfather. There will also be a very scary train trip.

 

Mirai is a film about children, and I guess it would work for older ones – ones that are past the stage Kun is in, and could accept what brat’s little kids can be. But I almost think it’s more for the parents in the crowd, then the kids. There are a few conversations the parents have – voiced by Rebecca Hall and John Cho in the English version – about whether or not they are good parents. She worries that she works too much, and cannot be there for her kids. He worries that he missed Kun as a baby, and now that he’s the stay at home parent, he was to deal with both him and Mirai. We get the sense that there’s hasn’t always been a blissful marriage – no marriage is – but although they struggle with Mirai and Kun, they are doing better than they did the first time. He’s more present, she’s less angry, etc.

 

But it’s also a comforting nostalgia trip to a certain extent. A comforting movie about childhood as seen from the distance of being an adult. Kun doesn’t quite understand what precisely is going on – it’s just another series of adventures for him, but will hit an emotional core for adults.

 

The film was directed by Mamoru Hosoda – who has been building up quite a resume in recent years. His last film was The Boy and the Beast – not a favorite of mine – another fantasy involving a young boy. This is a much better film – it is visually stunning, especially the climatic train station sequence. It is a gentle, warm film – perhaps a little too laid back, too episodic, for its own good. But it is a quietly moving film – and one that takes on some serious question – and even if offers little more than comforting answers, well, sometimes you want comforting answers.

Movie Review: The Boy and the Beast

The Boy and the Beast
Directed by: Mamoru Hosoda.

Written by: Mamoru Hosoda.

Starring: Koji Yakusho (Kumatetsu), Shota Sometani (Kyuta), Aoi Miyazaki (Kyuta – child), Suzu Hirose (Kaede), Yo Oizumi (Tatara), Lily Franky (Hyakushubo), Masahiko Tsugawa (Soshi), Kazuhiro Yamaji (Iozen), Mamoru Miyano (Ichirohiko), Haru Kuroki (Ichirohiko – child), Kappei Yamaguchi (Jiromaru), Momoka Ono (Jiromaru – child).

 

The Boy and the Beast is the latest anime film from Japan to get a cursory release in North American theaters, before heading to home viewing options. Even if these films often do not make much waves when they are released theatrically – they are often among the best the world of animation has to offer in any given year. Animated films made in Japan tend to treat children with more respect – they don’t coddle or comfort them too much, and certainly do not shy away from some darker, more realistic aspects of childhood. In some respects, that is true of The Boy and the Beast – which really does try and treat children with more respect, and draw an interesting contrast between the real and fantasy worlds in the film (a staple of children’s stories – but rarely handled this way). Unfortunately though, all of the good stuff in The Boy and the Beast is buried under a disjointed, repetitive and not particularly engaging story. There is some good stuff here – just not enough to make The Boy and the Beast a good movie.

 

The hero of the story is a 9 year old named Ren, who is shipped off to live with some relatives after his mother’s death (his father is no longer in the picture) – and almost immediately runs away. He ends up in a fantasy world, as the apprentice to Kumatetsu – a giant bear-man creature, who could become the ruler of this fantasy land, but first needs to prove himself to its current ruler – a wise, old bunny-man. It has come down to Kumatetsu and his arch-rival, Iozen, for the “promotion” as it were – and while everyone loves Iozen, no one seems to much like or respect Kumatetsu – and for good reason. He is lazy, crude, rude and quick to anger – and unlike Iozen, he doesn’t even have one apprentice. With Ren, he hopes to show that he can be a good leader and teacher – and as the years pass, it becomes clear that both are learning from each other.

 

In the second half of the film, the film skips ahead about 8 years, to when Ren is 17 (strangely, the decision regarding who will be the next ruler, still has not been made). In that time, Ren has matured in some ways – and is actually returning to the “real world”, developing a sweet romance with a shy bookworm, who helps him learn to read better, and prepare for things like college, while at the same time, he tries to reconnect with his real father, who he barely knows. In some ways, he has outgrown Kumatetsu, who is a creature that only an angry 9 year old boy would find cool in the first place. The film is ultimately about that anger and rage that young men of all kind have to deal with and overcome – in the fantasy world Ren has escaped to, humans are feared, because it is assumed that they will eventually become monsters incapable of controlling their rage.

 

In some ways, all of this makes for interesting subtext to the movie – but as is the case with most films, if the text itself isn’t very good, you don’t much care for the subtext. The film kind of beats you over the head with its message, and drags on its minimal storyline for nearly two hours, even though it doesn’t have enough material to fill it. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the animation of the film either – its fine, and the action sequences are well handled, and yet, I don’t think there’s a memorable image in the entire film – not that that sticks out anyway.

 

I appreciate that The Boy and the Beast is trying to do something here – trying to show how Ren outgrows Kumatetsu, and that world, and tries to forge his own path – that essentially, he can only hide from the real world for so long. Yet, all that is buried beneath a surface that just isn’t all that good.