It was released on February 19 at the Scarlet cinema, the new film by Mamoru Hosoda, one of the most important masters of contemporary Japanese animation, class 1967. Presented at the last edition of the Venice Film Festival, the eighth feature film by the Japanese director is a networking of Hamnet, who curiously arrives to the public on days in which Hamnet is still present – In the name of his son, in which he tries instead to reconstruct the origins of the famous Shakespearean tragedy. The story follows Scarlet, a young Danish princess, who, in an attempt to avenge his father’s death, meets Hijiri, a paramedic who mysteriously awakens in Denmark from the 16th century.
In Hosoda’s cinema, the commistion reigns supreme. Commission of genera, of species, of times, of ordinary and extraordinary. It is no coincidence that in an interview with the program The Most Useful School in the World, as reported by Fumettologica, in elencare of his five favorite souls included Anna with red hair, Jenny tennis, Mobile Suit Gundam, Galaxy Express 999 and Lupin III – The Castle of Cagliostro. The perfect union between different worlds and times.
All this is evident from his second feature film, The Girl Jumping In Time (2006). The film revolves around Makoto, a high school student who discovers that he can travel over time whenever he takes a long leap. The girl thus begins to exploit her ability to have fun and, above all, avoid conflicts due to situations caused by herself. In The girl who jumped over time tells all the difficulty of life to the present. The crisis of Makoto is the effort of everyone: to live in the present, to come to terms with the present, with the errors of the past and with the fear of a future that seems an insurmountable monster is complicated. Returning to Scarlet, as IndieWire reports, the question that the director puts is the same: “How to change your own actions, what you do, can change your future, which for us is the present?” For Makoto, paradoxically the answer comes exactly when he stops running away and begins to live life really.
Similar topics are addressed in Mirai, 2018. Sixth work of Hosoda, the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animation Film. Protagonist is the young Kun, four years old, who finds himself to live with difficulty the arrival of the sister Mirai, a word that in Japanese means, watch case, own future. The child soon becomes the sworn enemy of the little brother, who does not know how to deal with the novelty. No longer able to understand the dynamics of the house, Kun finds refuge in the garden, where a series of characters will help him understand who he really is. It is not, however, a matter of casual meetings. In fact, during the film Kun interacts with a humanized version of his dog Yukko, of his mother as a child, of his newly deceased great-grandfather and, above all, of the future and raised version of the sister. And he finally manages to say: “I am the son of my mother, my father’s son, I take care of Yukko, I am the elder brother of Mirai.”.
“Human beings cannot survive without love. ” Hosoda told Variety about Mirai. “Life is about the desire to be loved, go around to find love and accept others to get love.” These words cannot help Wolf Children – Ame and Yuki wolf children (2012), the fourth film of the director. The film follows Hana, a widowed mother of two children from her late companion, half wolf and half man. Just like the father, even the children, Yuki and Ame, are not fully human. The nature of the two children soon poses educational problems. Hana doesn’t know how wolves grow. He barely knows how to do it with human babies. In addition, the two brothers develop a diametrically opposite character. Yuki would like to live as a normal teenager, while Ame, unlike his sister, wishes to embrace his wolf nature. What about Hana? You will have to learn to let them go, one of the most complicated things to accept for each parent. “This is why I love to show families in my films, because they always learn from each other. ” we read in an interview with Animation World Network.
Maybe that’s what really attracts Mamoru Hosoda’s work. The characters of his films learn the importance of listening, taking a step towards each other, welcoming each other. This is also one of the starting points of The Boy and the Beast (2015), Hosoda’s fifth opera. In the middle of history there is the unlikely relationship between a monstrous being like a bear, Kumatetsu, and a human child, Ren, mistakenly ended up in the world of beasts while fleeing from his father. The two are very different and not only because beast one and human another. Kumatetsu is in fact a warrior, Ren wants to learn to fight, but he is too gracious. The first is impulsive, the second most rational. Yet, differences are the true strength of their relationship. Together they grow, together they face the forces of evil and together they rediscover themselves family. Certainly, in a world torn by individualism and in which instead the difference is seen as something unconcilable all this fascinates. And inevitably, it provokes.
L’articolo Mamoru Hosoda, ie the importance of living the present proviene da SentieriSelvaggi.
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