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5 Centimeters Per Second Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru |
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Atria35's Review This movie is divided into three parts: A Tale of Cherry Blossoms, Cosmonaut, and 5 Centimeters Per Second. Each tells a part of the story of the character’s lives. All have the director’s trademark themes of time and distance weaving through them. In A Tale of Cherry Blossoms, you see the first couple- two children, Takaki and Akari, as they go through the later years of elementary school and jr. high together. Childhood friends, their relationships is looked on teasingly by their classmates and they were just friends- until a final move tears them apart for a while. There’s something about first love that’s poignant- we remember it fondly, with smiles and regret, since first loves are usually just those- firsts. This dove right into the relationship, most of it narrated via letters, and from Takaki’s point of view: The one who was being left behind as his first love moved, came back, and then had to leave once more. At the tender age of thirteen, he gives a final push to tell her his feelings and make them clear. It’s almost impossible to be drawn in as his struggle to tell her encounters little problems that soon become hurdles, ones that he does manage to overcome with perseverance but at a great cost to their relationship- one that she pays, too. Cosmonaut is a slice of life later in Takaki’s years, told through the eyes of another girl that has come to love him. Now in his senior year of high school, Sakae doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life, and desperately wants to tell him how she feels. Takaki, though, has his eyes and heart elsewhere. Sakae’s story isn’t quite as sorrowful as the first one, but it nonetheless allows for us to see where he is in his mind, and how others see him. 5 Centimeters Per Second is where the conclusion is. Through music and montage, we see where they came from in life, the little things that they saw and did, and where they are going in the future. First loves are never quite forgotten, but we still go on to lead our own lives regardless. There may be brief moments of remembrance, but in the end, life is what it is. One of the interesting things is seeing how all these come together to create a beautiful story- distance is told time and again: 5 Centimeters, 5 kilometers, 8 kilometers, 1 centimeter. Time has clearly passed in each of the segments, and at each stage of his life something is happening. And yet, you see how time hasn’t affected Takaki at all... Or one could say that he’s stuck in time, with that noted in a particular background song played in the third segment. There are little things in this that add to the beauty of the movie, such as the background music (exceptionally beautiful piano scores), and how realistic it can seem. After all, who really forgets their first love? However, this part on re-watch didn't really connect with me. It's disjointed, and lacks a certain something that would make me give it a 10. There's no violence and no problematic theological themes in this movie. Nudity/Sexual Content: There is one short scene where Sakae is wrapped up in a blanket, with one bare shoulder (and I do mean just her shoulder showing), along with the strap of her bra having slid down her arm. It’s a completely non-sexual scene, and in fact, I mistook her bra strap for the strap of a tank top or spaghetti-strap top at first. In the third segment there is a scene of Takaki and a girl (assumingly his girlfriend of 3 years) in bed, though it was so brief that I had to stop the dvd to really see what the picture was of- and it was him and her in the same bed, completely covered by the sheets and facing opposite directions. Other Themes: Takaki as an adult is seen smoking, and a few cans are scattered around his apartment, though since in Japan those hold anything from beer to coffee to fruit juice, you can just assume they’re for pop. There are two brief scenes of him actually drinking in a bar that last for perhaps two seconds during a montage in the last segment. |
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| Added: August, 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
