Anime of the decade: #4

Five Cen­ti­metres Per Second

On first watch­ing Five Cen­ti­metres Per Second, the over­bear­ing sad­ness of Takaki’s jour­ney from love­struck adoles­cent to down­trod­den adult is depress­ing; the piano music that fol­lows him through the three stor­ies of the film is a heart­beat of yearn­ing for times gone by. Sub­sequent view­ings but build upon this and more than before, the wist­ful smile in clos­ing moments means more than the emo­tion­ally infused mont­age that pre­ceded it. Makoto Shinkai man­ages to evoke emo­tions that are dif­fi­cult to grasp but more than being a straight­for­ward story, the feel­ing one leaves the film with is a reflec­tion of them­selves more than what the movie has shown.

“not a yearn­ing for a par­tic­u­lar per­son but an ache for a clear, unspoken under­stand­ing with someone”

Split over three sequen­tial stor­ies, they fol­low Takaki Tohno from his time in ele­ment­ary school through to adult­hood and his rela­tion­ship with the reti­cent Akari Shino­hara which forms the core nar­rat­ive of the film. The first story, The Chosen Cherry Blos­soms, describes their lives: both con­stantly mov­ing schools due to their par­ents, weak bod­ied but strong minded and inex­or­ably smit­ten with each other. When Akari moves away, Takaki plans a jour­ney to see her after a series of let­ters; unfor­tu­nately, due in part to the inclement weather, the trip is beset with prob­lems. The second story, Cos­mo­naut, takes place when Takaki is a teen­ager and he has once again moved school. The focus is on an oth­er­wise unre­lated girl, Kanae Sum­ida who is infatu­ated with Takaki but is unable to express her own feel­ings, not helped by his intro­ver­ted and sul­len nature. The third story, Five Cen­ti­metres Per Second, fol­lows Takaki as a young man, now work­ing but unhappy with his situ­ation, not helped by his stan­doff­ish rela­tion­ship with a young woman from his work­place; that is until a fleet­ing encounter dur­ing cherry blos­som sea­son with a woman who bears a stark resemb­lance to Akari.

Under­stat­ing the film’s aes­thet­ics would be to call it visu­ally arrest­ing, it is sub­limely real­ised and gifts oth­er­wise mundane scenes with a divine beauty and a potent visu­al­isa­tion of the character’s thoughts. The detail that has been lav­ished on every shot is stag­ger­ing — even when only shown for the briefest of moments, one can’t help but be awed by the care and atten­tion afforded to them. The most pre­val­ent of ele­ments how­ever are the skies, always heav­enly rendered and unique. From the orange blue twi­light over a beach to the crys­tal cyan of an early morn­ing freeze, even sup­posedly alien skies are awash with artistic flair that only a per­spic­a­cious eye could pro­duce. Every scene is more vivid than real life could hope to muster, only ima­gin­a­tion and an appre­ci­ation for the beauty inher­ent to all things could have devised such a con­sist­ent vis­ion of the world. Almost inev­it­able then that the char­ac­ters are less illus­trat­ively accom­plished, favour­ing more tra­di­tional pro­por­tions they have a pleas­ing depth but lack the visual detail required for them to sit flush.

This is made irrel­ev­ant though by the rap­port built with the char­ac­ters through­out the film. Kanae, who is only present for the second story, man­ages to show an empath­etic side des­pite her tem­plate being lif­ted from myriad other anime school females. Takaki’s inner mono­logues which could slide into over­wrought and flowery prose are instead are astute and most import­antly, allow a far greater insight into his thoughts than would oth­er­wise be pos­sible. On first blush his mal­aise in the third story is a long­ing for the time he never had with Akari. Sub­sequent view­ings how­ever peel back lay­ers and infer that it is not a yearn­ing for a par­tic­u­lar per­son but an ache for a clear, unspoken under­stand­ing with someone that is mud­died by adult­hood. His reclus­ive rela­tion­ship with Kanae and his con­tempt for his co-worker in the final story des­pite both of their obvi­ous over­tures towards him, implies he is unwill­ing to try and build an affin­ity with other people, feel­ing he some­how lost that with Akari.

His story, from fraught jour­ney in the first story to mel­an­choly list­less­ness in the last has a human qual­ity to it that rever­ber­ates with any­one who has ever ques­tioned their decisions or felt a moment­ary nos­tal­gia for sim­pler, more pic­tur­esque times. Akari mean­while is left as an enigma, a human touch­stone for his feel­ings long ago before they were muddled by exist­ence and the final story, the tit­u­lar Five Cen­ti­metres Per Second, is a col­lage of moments sparked by his passing the sup­posedly adult Akari at a famil­iar train cross­ing. The back­ing song, One More Time, One More Chance, is bril­liantly pitched in both vocal and piano form and the melody per­meates the most poignant moments to cre­ate an evoc­at­ive and impas­sioned film that is dif­fi­cult not to be affected by.

The ques­tion of what happened between the two to make them lose con­tact is left unanswered, either through dis­tance or the detritus of life accu­mu­lat­ing, fun­da­ment­ally it is irrel­ev­ant. Takaki’s story is open ended and is craf­ted as a medium for con­vey­ing the del­ic­ate and eph­em­eral notion of long­ing. For love, for under­stand­ing, for sim­pli­city, is up to inter­pret­a­tion. Makoto Shinkai, ever the auteur, paints the back­grounds as bril­liantly as he does emo­tion; with a deft hand he has com­posed an unspeak­ably gor­geous cre­ation. A strong artistic vis­ion and bound­less skill has res­ul­ted in yet another near per­fect showpiece, all the more impress­ive for the lim­ited means he used to pro­duce it. Mourn­ful and mov­ing, this is a breath­tak­ing achieve­ment and the most emotive film of the past ten years.

Vitals

First aired: 03 March 2007
Avail­ab­il­ity: DVD — Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Ref­er­ences: MyAnimeL­ist, Wiki­pe­dia, AniDB, Anime News Net­work
Pre­vi­ously on chaostan­gent: Five Centimters Per Second

Screen­shots

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