You’re the light of his life.
There’s not much light in a cardboard box.
In this animated film from visionary Japanese director Satoshi Kon, three homeless people find themselves thrust into a strange situation when they find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve. This is a more conventional film, I’d say, than Paprika or Perfect Blue, the films Kon is, I think, most known for. It’s more straight-forward in its aims, its methods and its story, but this isn’t to say that it’s a bad film by any means. The three main characters are all very well-written and performed. They’ve formed an odd little family: Gin, a bitter alcoholic, is the gruff father figure; Hana, a sorrowful transgender woman, is the mother; and Miyuki, a violent teenager, is the daughter. They’re at each others throats as often as they’re friendly to each other (I DID say they were a family) and when the three of them stumble across a baby abandoned in a trash pile, their relationships with each other are tested as are their own personal moralities. For me, it really did all come back to these characters, each of whom is tragic in their own personal way. The vocal performances are big and not subtle by any means, but the characters are in extremis in a lot ways, so it works. Beyond the character journeys, Kon is also getting at something about the miraculous and the mundane. This movie is filled with coincidences, but they’re intentional; for Kon, coincidence might just be another word for miracle, or maybe it a word that means specifically a miracle that occurs at street level. At one point, there’s one of those strange coincidences and the Hallelujah Chorus actually plays; the thing is it, it’s playing out of a beat-up speaker that’s in the scene and it’s filled with static and tinny and a little out of tune. That’s kind of the aesthetic of this film and it philosophical point rolled up in one.
I will admit that I enjoyed the film so much as a personal drama, albeit an absurdist one and one with a dark streak of comedy, that the film started to lose me toward the end when things kind of take a turn into action movie territory with a chase scene that just didn’t really work for me at all. But that’s honestly kind of minor quibble because that’s a fairly brief digression and the movie ends on an absolutely perfect note. This isn’t a movie I’ll watch every Christmas or anything; I don’t really do that with any movies though, so that’s not a slam. I don’t know if this rises to the level of classic, but it’s certainly heartfelt, raw, honest and hopeful in a way that feels both earned and magical, but never cheesy or manipulative. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – animated film from Japanese auteur is gritty, tragic, hilarious and magical; great characters elevate this quite a bit and Kon’s vision is both honest and hopeful. 3 ½ stars.