Why “Your Name” is a masterpiece
Now and then, something will weave with your thread in our universe’s tapestry of space and time, and your life will never be the same.
That’s what happened to me over two years ago when I went to the local AMC theater and saw Your Name, directed by Makoto Shinkai. There were dozens of other movies that I could’ve seen on that boring, lonely, rainy night in April. Yet I scrolled to the very bottom of that alphabetical list and picked something I’d never seen before: an anime.
Your Name (Kimi no Na wa in Japanese) is more than just a time-traveling, body-swapping romance about a guy, Taki, and a girl, Mitsuha. At its core the movie is about unity, and how all things are interconnected. In Japanese culture this is called Musubi, the Shinto god of unions like love.
In the film, Musubi’s power is expanded to be the eternal force binding all things together. Mitsuha, her younger sister, and her grandmother are spending a bright autumn day traveling to the shrine of Musubi to make an offering. We’re treated to a montage of them making the trek to the mountaintop: sunlight falling between trees; a leaf blown from a tree; the leaf flowing downstream; the leaf resting in a still pond surrounded by other leaves.
Throughout this scene, Mitsuha’s grandmother explains: “So the braided cords that we make are the god’s art and represent the flow of time itself. They converge and take shape. They twist, tangle, unravel now and then, break, and reconnect.”
The power of Musubi transcends space, time, and even death. Though they’re separated by countless miles and several years, Taki and Mitsuha are inexplicably connected by a comet that strikes Mitsuha’s town and kills everyone. They figure out that they switch lives when they dream; their memories of it disappear when they wake, except the notes that they leave for one another and the humorous confusion their body-swapping causes with their friends and family. It’s up to them to use their power and evacuate everyone, including Mitsuha herself who had died in the original timeline.
Even after they save everyone, Taki and Mitsuha both forget about their dreams and one another. It’s a solemn, somber representation of loss, and that bitter feeling that something is missing but we can’t quite place what it is. Only by both of them searching for that thing — each other — do they end up reconnecting and remembering.
I saw Your Name another four times that week in April, by myself. A few times there wasn’t even another person in the theater. It sounds pathetic, but it’s worth mentioning how that added to my viewing experience. There were no crinkling of wrappers, coughing, throat-clearing, talking, or anything that would’ve snapped me out of my hypnotized state. I had no reason to be self-conscious because nobody else was there. I cried each time despite already knowing what would happen. No other movie has moved me like that.
I couldn’t quite figure out why. It took a while to realize how jaded I’d become because of past relationships, and the awful marriage my parents have. I still don’t believe I’ll ever know love, but I finally listened to a small voice locked away in the deep recesses of my soul that longs for the same thing Taki and Mitsuha were searching for. This movie opened my heart, hugged it, and still hasn’t let go. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from another person. But will I ever be able to give that to someone else?
The soundtrack by Japanese artist Yojiro Noda (lead singer of the band Radwimps) compliments all the scenes, reinforcing the emotions without drawing attention to itself. Noda also composed and recorded the English version of the score. This, coupled with the high-quality English dub, had a major influence on the film’s domestic and international success.
Makoto Shinkai has been heralded as “the next Hayao Miyazaki”, the latter of whom is claimed by many to be today’s grandmaster of storytelling and animation. Your Name is the second-largest domestic grossing film in Japan behind Spirited Away, one of Miyazaki’s many classics.
For a long time Miyazaki did not comment on Shinkai’s box-office hit. When finally asked for his opinion on Your Name by a Japanese publication, Miyazaki said, “[the film] goes just like I thought.” It was what he expected it would be, which coming from Miyazaki is not a bad compliment. (When Miyazaki saw Tales from Earthsea — an anime film directed by his own son — he stepped outside the theater mid-way through to have a cigarette and said, “It feels like I was sitting there for about three hours.”)
Shinkai himself does not like being called “the next Hayao Miyazaki”, saying in an interview that “you can only be the second Miyazaki, and that isn’t something to aim for.” And regarding Your Name, Shinkai has made statements urging people to not see it, shared his hope that it wouldn’t win an Oscar, and maintains that the movie wasn’t as good as it could’ve been partly due to budget constraints.
Regardless, every frame of Your Name is a work of art, each conveying the tangible kind of magical fantasy and wonder you likely left behind in your childhood. Makoto Shinkai used photo references of actual locations in Japan to help ground the story in realism. Every line was painstakingly hand-drawn before being transitioned into several different softwares. As a result, this film will be one of the most gorgeous ones you’ll watch in your lifetime.
Your Name is a touching love-letter that demonstrates the power of story. It’s a living, cohesive whole of music, imagery, voice acting and characters, all woven together into a beautiful braided cord. I hope one day I will create something that connects with people and changes their lives in the same way that this movie changed mine.
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Sources:
https://lwlies.com/interviews/makoto-shinkai-your-name/
https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-is-the-toughest-critic-1736009858
