Teenage girl Suzume lives with her aunt in Kyushu, ever since Suzume lost her mother in the 2 0 1 1 Tohoku earthquake. One day, Suzume meets a guy, Souta, who locks doors in abandoned places which serve as portals for supernatural red "worms" who come through them and cause earthquakes, but are invisible to other people. A cat, the keystone that keeps the portals closed, transforms Souta into a three-legged chair which Suzume received from her mom as a kid. Suzume and Souta-chair follow the cat in a ship to Shikoku and seal off further "worms" coming through portals. They travel to Tokyo. Souta becomes a keystone and is "frozen", but Suzume awakens him and the cat takes the position of the keystone. Traveling through the door, Suzume meets herself as a kid when she was looking for her deceased mother, and comforts herself.
One of Makoto Shinkai's lesser films, "Suzume" is a peculiar allegory on the 2 0 1 1 Tohoku-Fukushima earthquake, as well as a meditation on trauma and loss in Japan in general caused by earthquakes. It's a pity though that his melancholic symbolism, various motives and disparate ideas are not bound by a more harmonious storyline. Shinkai has a sense for perfect animation, with stunning colors and gorgeous details (a bird's eye view of hundreds of buildings in Tokyo appear for only three seconds), yet if he sends the viewers on such a convoluted story, it better have a much better payoff than we got here. Suzume's new friend, Souta, appears, and already when he is transformed into a three-legged chair, just 20 minutes into the film, one already senses this is the point at which "Suzume" stopped being a great movie and became "only" a good movie. For some reason, Souta spends 90% of the remaining film in the shape of this three-legged chair, when his human form could and should have given rise to much better character interaction with Suzume. This permanent chair transformation is a wrong turn which wrecks the movie. The surreal supernatural red "worms" which cause earthquakes are a metaphor for fatalism and the anxiety for lives that can be wrecked by random chaos and natural disasters in the Universe, yet this is watered-down in this road movie format where Suzume and chair-Souta travel from Kyushu to Tokyo and meet random people, with several episodes straining the patience since the running time of 120 minutes feels overlong. The ending is both emotional and underwhelming, since it doesn't have a worthy point at the end, and feels too similar to the ending in Shinkai's better anime "Your Name".
Grade:++
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