Amateur Recommendation Hour: Mirai

Today’s recommendation may be among the best animated films of the decade in my humble opinion. I’m sure this is a bit hypocritical for me to say as I’m sure I have or will contradict myself down the line at one point or another, but I’ve never really been a big believer in choosing a singular work as “the best” of a bunch of fantastic art. I think all nominations of this nature are more than deserving of winning the “top prize” and the fact that we feel we have to choose one over another is an unfortunate and too often random formality. It is the most meaningful and impactful of art that is earned through how it builds itself throughout its runtime that leaves the deepest marks on us. While there does exist and is a difference between “good” and “bad” art. To simply reduce art to that binary is unfair and unhelpful. Art has value in all of its forms, methods, and final interpretations.

Mirai, written and directed by Mamoru Hosoda and produced by the fine folks over at Studio Chizu is what you might call a masterclass of artistry, whimsy, substance, and sentimentality that will resonate with many an audience, particularly an audience of parents and the most emotionally intelligent of young children. A fine film of beautiful resonance and personal histories. All of the struggles that generations have to outlive, survive, and overcome is a deep tangled web of confusing “almosts” and “what ifs.” The miracle of life’s endurance is a special and often unknown quantity in our right now. Only told through anecdotal evidence and official documents. 

A young boy named Kun feels neglected by his family as they welcome home a new baby girl whom they decide to name Mirai. in a fit of disappointment Kun discovers a magical garden in his home that serves as a time-traveling gateway in which he meets with numerous members of his family from the future and the past, in particular his newborn sister, and starts to learn more about his family and himself through each trip through time he takes with his newborn sister.

Portraying children in art is a difficult proposition, especially one as young as Kun is, doubly so when they are the main character tasked with moving the plot forward through believable interaction with the elements around them, as they often have to act older than we are supposed to believe they are. Our main character Kun truly comes across as a believable very young and petulant child, an example of which being his penchant to flop between loving and “hating” his mom and dad very quickly based on the situation as it suits his particular aims and goals in those given moments. While also being able to naturally move the plot forward through things that a very young boy would actually do in his setting, interacting with the environment around him. It rarely feels like forced or contrived drama for the sake of moving the plot forward. Kun quite literally stumbles between story beats and important narrative and character building moments. Just as a young boy would stumble through his life at such a young age with parents understandably focusing on their newborn and their needs. 

As a middle child myself, I was none too thrilled with the prospect of having to relinquish the spotlight to my younger sibling, who has coincidentally since in the subsequent years of our lives become one of my closest confidants and biggest inspirations to this day. Fortunately it all worked out in the end, even though his future self didn’t have the foresight to guide me through our family history and show me what a silly child I was being. (Or maybe he did.)

The dialogue and dynamic between the family members feels so natural and authentic. You’d be forgiven if you thought that these animated characters were real people that would continue living their lives even after the credits roll. A remarkable imitation of a family of four with two young children. The score provided by frequent Hosoda collaborator Masakatsu Takagi is a mix of majestic splendor and subdued piano pieces that works fabulously to convey tone and supplement it’s smart use of coloring. And while I’m CERTAINLY no animation expert (though I figure that’s implied) but as someone who knows just enough about it to judge whether the animation I see on screen is of a high quality, and as far as I’m concerned the team at Studio Chizu has turned in one of the finest efforts I’ve seen in quite some time. The color palette is one of gentle and warm colors, a welcoming and humbling abode for a young family of four in Japan. The drama is very much domestic and whimsically supernatural through Kun’s interactions with Mirai and as such it is never depicted as dire or helpless. After all this is for Kun’s benefit, and I’m not sure it would be beneficial to his development to bring him through experiences at such an impressionable age that would emotional scar him and be detrimental to his growth at such an important point in his development not just as a growing human being, but as a living, breathing soul worth loving in all of his rough edges.

My personal interpretations of this work are three-fold: Mirai is about the importance of understanding the bigger picture, how much personal sacrifice, struggles, and hardships were gone through, both big and small, by those who came before in order for us to become who we are meant to be, and the importance of doing the little things for each other in a familial unit can have a more defined impact on our overall quality of life. It is presented in a very deceptive and subtle philosophical manner until it all comes to a head as it nears its conclusion. A very unexpected pleasure for someone who enjoys the unexpected in their storytelling. Undoubtedly a sign of Mamoru Hosoda’s auteurism and the fact that these ideas are conveyed not only through its treks through time but also through a family setting is no small feat. In fact to do so in such a fashion with such gentle and respectful energy conveyed throughout the film’s runtime is remarkably impressive.

To be able to do as much as Mamoru Hosoda and Studio Chizu were with what they had and what they ultimately produced is an incredibly unique family drama. Not one that relies on creating the discomforting and uneasy in a domestic setting, but one that conveys the hopes and dreams of an entire lineage through a wholesome, but very real dive into familial histories and the futures that they bring with them. They may be messy, even unceremonious, but they all have tangible meaning in the form of us. Our living, breathing, loving, suffering, hoping, selves. In all of what they can be.