| Japan, 2021 | Musical | Author Work | Trailer |
It has been very long since my last Corner. Very very long. Probably since March or April didn’t I write anything, mainly due to my thesis, paperwork, regular work and whatever things more that agitated my life and made it a scorching mess of exhaustion and excitement. Given that the human nature tends to inertia, it has been tremendously difficult for me to gather strengths to write this Corner and give it a satisfactory shape. But, why did I want to invest in this effort, when it costs me more energy than enjoying the rest of my time in Vienna?
A simple reason is to blame. When I exited the screening room, I immediately took out my travel diary and wrote the following words: “Life can be very beautiful. I didn’t remember how much good cinema does to my soul.”
And only because of this ephemereal thought, it is of incalculable worth to me returning to my habit and writing this. Mamoru Hosoda’s latest work deserves the effort.
To be honest, I am not even sure why I wanted to see this movie at first. Mamoru Hosoda is a known name among the anime-loving audience, and whilst my experience with his works is not very positive (hello, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time!), it is also enough reduced to not have had many prejudices against his savoir faire. Aside, in some of my ordinary scans through the cinema news in the net, some drawings and screencaps of Belle have come to me throughout last year, and the aesthetic was powerful enough to draw my attention. And hell why, something that was praised in Cannes has to have some good in it, ain’t it?
Belle is, in its most lucid aspect, flamboyant. The whole movie is a pure, raw, unfiltered dose of grandeur in vein. These colours, these light effects, these pristine shots and storyboard, THAT SOUND. I remember it and a chilly burn snakes through my spine, and my feet feel the imperious urge to tap with the music in a crescendo of excitement. Of course a story about a singer must have a wonderful sound, but I assure that the sound in Belle is out of this world. It’s almost as it was composed with the exact intention to convey in the audience howa musician feels music in their body. We can enjoy it, but we will never know the exact plethora of reactions the concept of music awakes in a musician. I am sure that the sound in Belle is the most similar thing to this hieroglyph a musical profane as me can get.
In a synesthetic exercise, the visual aspect is perfectly entwined with the acoustic waves. The movie oscillates between two atmospheres: the real life –where most action (and the most interesting script) takes place– and the metaverse –where most emotional storytelling takes place-. The latter serves also as a testing ground for showing psychophysical stimuli to produce that effect of grandeur in the audience. Whilst the first atmosphere is depicted as a tasteful, preciosist, clean and vivid animation in some of the best standards of the industry, the metaverse produces a terrific display of irreal colours, intrincate architectures and overall excessive, impressing footages meant to leave the audience in a state where our mind can only be occupied with what we are witnessing. The escapist aspect of cinema is 100% achieved with this impressive visual rhetoric. I like to say that cinema is my happy place because the darkness isolates me from everyday’s problems and the light of the screen draws me away, but this time i can say that Belle is the quintessence of this feeling. I don’t know what kind of artistic experts and psychological dexters Hosoda has hired for creating this movie, but the budget was worth it.
But, an orgy for the psychophysical reception is not the only secret Belle can offers us. Once we are in the mental place this movie wants us to be, the real shit starts. Anime has us fans accustomed to a variety of common tropes, plot stereotypes and overall quirks that we all end expecting to happen -and some of the audience wants to-, and this movie is no exception to this. Or is it not? Who knows. Belle apparently starts with a known worldbuilding, leads it to common places and when we think that we have seen everything… something happens. It starts to feel odd and venturing places it didn’t look it would. Little by little, the mental place we gained commences to exceed and the mood that the footage has put us in allows us to experience the real shit coming after in much more intensity than what we would if it was bluntly shown. I have seen people in the screening room crying, others laughing, others leaving the room, and others just subjugated, blank-faced. But, when the lights came, we all looked at the other’s faces and smiled, as we were sharing a small secret now that nobody else, out of that screening room, would understand.
There is probably much more to say, but I think this is enough to express my feeling towards it. Everybody has reacted differently to Belle, and I am sure you will have a different impression than mine too. It’s understandable and what I expect. Go see it, but go to the cinema to get all its grandeur unfiltered.
Definitely, life can be very beautiful. Now I remember how much good cinema does to my soul.