Shinkai is an extremely talented filmmaker, and "Garden of the Words," his sole successful film, is evidence of this. This film had very little dialogue and there was no overarching plot that needed to be resolved. Shinkai put all of his efforts into creating something where he is really strong, a visually appealing mood poem chock full of visual communications. But it's sad aside from this film, Shinkai never really embraced his area of strength despite spending more than 20 years working in the field. I really hope he will eventually put down his pen and let someone else write the script and put himself fully focusing on direction. Because at the end of this decade, I want to remember the name Makoto Shinkai not some shadow of Hayao Miyazaki.

"Suzume" is exactly what you expect from Makoto Shinkai's narrative, with characters having shallow personalities and poor character development resulting from the non-existence of dimensional depth. Anything they do feels sudden and forced, lacking proper motivation. Because of this, it plagues itself with melodramatic scenes in climactic acts. And like every other Shinkai film Suzume has a bucket load of irritating plotholes.

The problems aside Suzume is admireable for what is it, It is Shinkai's most masterful film to date. This film is full of gorgeous frames, artistic visuals, creative camera pans and ingeniously done animated sequences. It has engaging camera composition, tasteful music and skillfully done cinematography. Suzume is the token of Shinkai's trademark direction which he has slowly perfected over the years. As I said earlier, I always bealieved Shinkai is very good at creating moments and Suzume just strengthened my belief more. It has these narratively and emotionally rich detours involving various side characters and stylised road trip scenes. Getting enhanced by these moments' chemistry between the characters works despite them having zero-dimensional depth.

Anyway, Did I enjoy Suzume? the answer is yes. But it's sad. Suzume had many emotionally compelling moments, yet it falls short of evoking my emotions when it really needed to. It really made me sad that despite loving about many things I did not care about the moments this film wanted me to care most about. But I think we are getting there, It's not so far for Shinkai to write something really amazing and Suzume is the first step of that, its the first where Shinkai found the balance between overeaching narrative and asthetic junctures . Or as I said I before he could simply put down his pen and paper, I am waiting for either of the day to come.