Initial Thoughts on Suzume

Warning: This blog post contains spoilers for Suzume.

Man, what a night it's been! As I write this, it is around midnight EST. Usually at this time I'm in bed asleep, but given how much I liked Your Name and Weathering With You, I just had to catch Makoto Shinkai's newest film on opening night. And of course while my memory of the film is still fresh, I wanted to share some initial thoughts on it. Hence, here I am still wide awake and writing.

So, there are two parts of Suzume that I want to discuss. The first part is the way the dark energies arising from deep within the land were handled. Land is often used as a metaphor for the human being, since just as land has many layers, every human being also has many layers. In some spiritual traditions, there are myths about great adepts being buried deep within the land. For example, Christian Rosenkreuz is said to be buried deep within the land, as is Merlin. These adepts represent our true divine Self which is hidden at our very core. When the land in Suzume is seen in this way, the most obvious interpretation of the dark energies trapped deep within it is that they represent the energies of one's shadow. In the film, these dark energies are trapped within the land to prevent them from doing harm. Personally, I don't like this, because I see it as representing repression. In his essay on the shadow, William mentions that there is great power contained within the shadow. If we learn to befriend our shadow and work in partnership with it, then we can harness the great power of the shadow for productive ends. That great power can help us succeed at anything in life, including working through IIH. 

The second part I want to discuss is the prayer Sōta says at the end when he and Suzume use the keystones to trap the dark energies within the land. I think it's a very thought-provoking prayer. I'm not sure how true the English dub is to the Japanese original, but in the dubbed version I watched, Sōta's prayer includes a remark that every moment of life is something worth fighting for. I think that's so true. Life is a precious gift, so I can easily understand why Sōta didn't want to die. Every moment really is invaluable. Every moment contains within it the opportunity to practice. One moment may not be enough to go through an intense element-accumulating session or mental wandering session, but one moment is enough to take a mindful breath, and that too is a way of practicing. Every moment is a chance to really live, to really learn in the school of life and be transformed by the creative energy of life. I think if we can get ourselves to realize that every moment of life is precious, we'll be less likely to waste even a single moment of the time we have by spending it mindlessly. 

Well, I'm sure I'll have more to say about this film in the future. I've written quite a bit about the Hermetics-related lessons contained in Your Name and Weathering With You, and I'll probably end up doing the same for Suzume over the course of time. But for now, it's time for me to get to bed. I will probably be tired tomorrow, but hopefully I will still be able to see how precious every moment of the day is, even if it entails a difficult struggle to stay awake, haha.