Berlinale Bloggers 2023  Suzume and Art College 1994 ... Two Sides of the Animation Genre

Anime is an increasingly popular genre. Ahmed Shawky reviews two of this year's promising entries to the Berlinale, and questions if the movies can live up to the hype.

The various previous editions of Berlinale witnessed the screening of animation films in the international competition; the most notable of which being in 2002, when Spirited Away, directed by the legendary Japanese director, Hayao Miyazaki, claimed the Golden Bear prize. However, Berlinale 73 witnessed a unique event, which is choosing two animation films to compete in the international competition. It is a choice that doesn’t only reveal the wish by the festival to diversify shapes and break the stereotyped pattern of choices, but also basically confirms the admiration of the festival programmers for the two films. If choosing an animation film to participate in a big festival like Berlinale is not common, then choosing two films at once is certainly brave.

However, the truth is that after watching the two films, it seems that choosing Suzume, directed by the Japanese director, Makoto Shinkai is fully justified. However, we do not find such confidence in including Art College 1994, a film for the Chinese Liu Jian, in the competition films.

Fantasy Wins

Suzume has all that it takes for you to fall in love with animation films: the exciting story that combines the vivid imagination that benefits from the mediation tools and touching on the concerns of people in the modern world, the efficient craft of graphics and animation, and the continuous ability to raise eyebrows throughout the film time. The story is about a girl in early adolescence. Having a crush on a young man leads her to open a bizarre door in an abandoned place, only for her to find out that she unleashed a curse that drives her to take a journey across the cities of Japan to close similar doors and protect the country from the danger of earthquakes. The main theme here is the ability to deal with tragic events in human life. However, the screening of the film coinciding with the humanitarian crisis that took place in Turkey and Syria granted Suzume a deeper effect and interaction with the present moment the film maker deserves.

 

Not Taking Advantage of the Medium

On the contrary is Art College 1994 in which the choice of animation seems to be a casual one that does not intrinsically link to the shape nor to the content of the film. It is a story about a group of youths who are studying arts in the early 1990s in China. They indulge in several disputes relating to their artistic orientations and their understanding of their fast-changing reality in conjunction with China opening up to the world. The Story World is quite realistic and can be embodied in a narrative film using actors. The director does not make use of the animation medium most of the time. Most of the effective film scenes take the form of a long dialogue between two characters. It is visually expressed with the least possible number of photos and least possible amount of animation. It is of course the choice of the art director who has full liberty to do so. However, we also have the right to declare that the film did not benefit at all from the radical decision of telling a story through animation.

February 2023