Posted by Theowne on 08.05.2008, 04:22 PM:
I set aside this week to watch the full "5cm per second" as well as "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time". Just finished 5cm per second. With all the praise and comparisons to Ghibli, perhaps I was expecting too much. Review
Honestly, I can appreciate how finely-tuned the directing and writing is, I can appreciate how detailed the animation is, but emotionally, it just left me cold compared to anime like Whisper of the Heart or Honey and Clover. The main reason for this is that in the latter films/anime, you really become attached to the characters, their motivations, and their flawed-but-great personalities. But I felt like there was very little character exploration or development in this film. Only in the second part did you see a bit of it, with the character Sumida and her unrequited love. But for part 1 especially, the director is communicating the "idea" and "atmosphere" of loneliness and regret rather than doing this through his characters. I appreciated the sadness of the situation between the characters, I appreciated how well the feeling of loneliness was displayed in each of them, but I just didn't end feeling anything for the characters themselves, they were blank slates to me. And that eliminated any lasting emotional effect it may have had. In "Whisper of the Heart", I was made to care so much about the characters as people, human beings, that I wanted to see them happy together. I simply did not have that same feeling when watching this film and they felt just like characters, conceived by a writer, props used by the director to deliver (well-written) monologues about loneliness and regret.
But perhaps this is what Shinkai was intending to do, and he certainly does that well. The final part was a big-let down and mostly the reason why I don't consider this a great film. The final section should, ideally, connect the themes of the first or resolve the entire thing in some way, but for the most part, the whole thing could have boiled down to that one scene where the two characters see each other near the tracks. The director introduces a new character than doesn't do anything with them. The music video was intrusive and completely unnecessary, in my opinion. I think the director is good at exploring a "snapshot" of an emotion or a feeling, of regret, or longing, and etc, but it's difficult to sustain an entire film based on that - or create a connection with the characters. I guess my final opinion is that I appreciate the flash and detail, but I didn't get enough "heart" out of it.
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