In This Corner of the World: An Immersive Account of Humane Survival
October 2018
The lights dim. The chatter that bubbled around me softens to a hush, then silence. Slowly, the screen opens, blurry like blinking eyes, to a faded seaside landscape blooming in muted greens, blues, browns, and pinks. As I take in the scene, the clear voice of a young girl speaks out in Japanese over the calls of birds and the rumblings of the ocean.
The scene I’m describing is what greets you when you let yourself experience In This Corner of the World, a beautiful and critically acclaimed Japanese hand-drawn animated film co-written and directed by Sunao Katabuchi and based off a manga by Fumiyo Kono. The film opens in 1933 in Eba, a small seaside town in pre-atomic-bomb Hiroshima City, and follows 13 years of the life of a young girl named Suzu. Suzu is quickly established as a bright and creative girl; heartfelt, delicate scenes show her drawing stories for her younger sister, or painting the white-tipped waves of the ocean as if they were rabbits hopping into the distance.
Through the pastel colours and dream-like animation, her childhood seems to pass all-too quickly. Soon it is 1944, Suzu is 18, and a man who she met briefly in her youth has come to ask her hand in marriage. Suzu accepts his proposal and moves out of her family home to the home of her new husband, Kure, a naval town 15 miles away. The rest of the film follows Suzu as she navigates her life amidst a new family and the growing threat of U.S. air raids. It’s a film of supple domestic snapshots interspaced by the echoing thunderclaps of bombs; a narrative of how the normal and everyday shifts to accommodate the reality of war.
The inevitability of the devastation of August 6, 1945, constantly looms on the horizon of the film, much like the giant warships docked in Kure harbor. It tinges every smile or comedic moment with shades of gray. In the end Katabuchi shows only one scene of Hiroshima on that day; that of a young girl clinging onto the skeletal, decomposing corpse of her mother. The clip is short, but intense; the vivid reds, blacks, and grays a contrast against the subtle palette of the rest of the film. It is the only truly grotesque scene in the film, and that is part of what makes it so devastating.
In This Corner of the World feels like a dream that slowly transitions into a nightmare, only for you to realize you’re safe in bed. Suzu is a kind, positive girl that never leans too close to annoying. She experiences happiness, pain, and intense loss, but through her relationships and sheer will, finds a way to persist through it all. In the end she emerges not unchanged, but unbeaten. The other characters in her life – her husband, Shusaku; his widowed sister, Keiko; and her daughter, Harumi – are also well developed. Though their expressions can sometimes be exaggerated, their feelings and the silence between their interactions err unnervingly close to real. Katabuchi delivers the essence of all the characters, even when screen-time falls short.
That is what this film feels like; the essence of a story. It comes with no fluff or unnecessary drama. It’s unrelentingly subtle, until, suddenly and without mercy, it’s not. The emotions of the characters mimic the explosions that rattle their skies. Like a long, drawn out epiphany, the movie is scattered with small revelations that drive you, faster and faster, to the end. Suzu acts like a pillar of strength for most of the movie, and when she finally breaks down and cries it feels as though she tears down the very foundations of the story with her. Like all the weight has suddenly and irrevocably collapsed.
Then, silence. The closing sequence dawns on you, warm and slow, with a reminder that despite all the heartbreak, humankind has an unsurpassed gift for moving forward.
Corner is not a perfect film. It can sometimes feel erratic, or slow, and occasionally the animation doesn’t feel representative of the tone. But in the end, it is a pleasure to watch, and in my opinion, worthy of all the awards it has won.