“Wolf Children,” and Life’s One Candle to Burn

I had a couple of hours to kill, and I knew I wasn’t going to do anything productive with them, so I started scrolling through my list of films to watch, and settled on Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children, which I knew very little about, but had heard mentioned in videos I’d seen recently that discussed film.

I didn’t know what I was getting into at all.

Look, this sounds silly to others — probably. Loads of people have seen this movie (it opened at number 2 at the Japanese box office) and there are no end of emotional movies out there. Furthermore, some have criticized the film for being, at times, predictable, and that’s fair. I think that’s part of its simplicity, its earnestness, personally — but I’m getting ahead of myself. The bottom line is that, whatever it makes me, I found this film extremely affecting.

By affecting I mean I cried my way through it.

I don’t mean to go on about myself, because that isn’t the point, but it’s important to understand two things: first, I am someone who in practice selectively represses my emotions. I don’t stop myself from being happy, or angry (as you may have read in an earlier post — which I shall revisit soon with a tempered heart, if not a changed mind) — but I do try to avoid falling into the deep wells of joy or sorrow that occasionally appear beside the road of life. Or maybe I don’t avoid them; I know I want nothing more than to drown in them, actually. But I half-heartedly dodge the depths that might overcome me, because I know that my deepest feelings (not all my deep feelings, certainly, but in my personal experience, my deepest) will always lead me home, and I’ve been fighting that for a long, long time. For me, home is where I slough off my earthly gods and mirrors, and face the truth, that beauty in the end is all from Christ.

The second thing you need to know about me is that, secretly, I want to cry at movies.

The moments on film that consistently make me cry, because they did once before, because I’ve invested them with meaning, because I expect them to now, because they catch at something I’ve always felt but cannot speak — these moments have become a personal filmic liturgy of sorts. The final moments of The Wrath of Khan, the river scene at the end of Big Fish, the Doctor telling his story to little Amelia in “The Big Bang” on Doctor Who — they all get me. And when they do, they perform the function of a sort of memento mori — a reminder of one’s mortality. But that’s never really about death, you know? The point is that this life is finite, and you get to spend it. Well, these moments, they remind me that my time here is running out, and that I am missing out, deliberately, stupidly, on what really matters. You see, to truly open up and experience the full pitch of emotional response to something that appeals to you on its aesthetic merits — to a sunset, or a story — you have to be honest with yourself. You cannot, you must not lie to yourself if you want to let it all sink into you, rain into ground. So, if you know what I know, believe what I believe, then you see in that moment the source of that beauty, that truth that’s transfixed your soul — and how can you honestly embrace what you’re crying about, without also acknowledging Him?

I’ve done the opposite of what I wanted to do when I started writing this — I’ve talked more about myself than about the film. But maybe that’s all to the good, since I wouldn’t want to spoil it for people. Then again, it’s not really that kind of movie. All I will say about its plot is this: it is a story about how a life can allow itself to be hijacked by love, and how we can spend some measure of our time entirely on the good of others, to what might seem to be our earthly detriment. That, and it’s one of the best marriages of music and image I’ve seen.

So I cried through the whole movie, because it was beautiful, but also because I knew what the beauty meant, and because at the same time as I knew that, I was & am denying its power by my inaction. I know the truth, and I can ease a little of the pressure on my conscience, perhaps, if I share it — but I hope it worries me until I do fall down one of those wells again, for good.

The truth is that it is dangerously easy to get through life on our own terms, without being hijacked by love. But to do so would be to miss two things that you must know. First, the greatest beauty in life really does come in love, when we look beyond ourselves, and put another’s needs above our own, without any hope for reciprocation or reward, other than their joy, and ours in turn, and the hope that they, too, might love someone else in the same way.

The second thing you really must know is that we have but a little time in this world, but one candle to burn as we choose. Please, whatever you do, let your life be burned up for someone else.